The centre of an empire - Vienna

02 - 06 August

The overnight train from Kraków was better than expected - I was jolted awake several times during the night but managed to get a reasonable sleep and arrived in Wien (German for Vienna) at the early time of 6:20 am. After dropping my bags and finding breakfast, I had a good opportunity to explore the city centre. For a €1 admin fee, I rode around on the excellent city bike system during my stay - better than the metro.

As I followed a suggested walking route around the city, the fact that it had been the centre of the powerful Austro-Hungarian empire was immediately noticeable - there were many lavish, impressive buildings exhibiting some stunning architecture in the city centre. I started at the Stephansdom - St Stephen's Cathedral.

Stephansdom with Austrian roof tiling and the fire-damaged bell tower

Stephansdom interior

Walking down one of the most expensive streets in Europe - a string of high-end fashion and boutique stores - I made it to St Peters church, a small church with some Michaelangelo-like dome frescoes - and the square around it was Petersplatz. It's kinda cool seeing placenames with your name on them!

Petersplatz!

From there, my suggested route took me past the oldest church in Wien - built in 740. Seeing that gave quite a perspective on the amount of history in the city, how long it had been there for - the oldest building in New Zealand (in Kerikeri) was completed in 1822.

Passing the unimpressive Danube Canal I got to the Votivkirche, which displayed some more stunning architecture. Although the continuous stream of churches can get a bit tiresome, this one was interesting in that it was built to thank God for saving the life of the emperor Franz Joseph from an attempted assassination attempt in 1853.

At Rathausplatz (Rathaus = City Hall), the square and gardens were hosting a free open-air film festival. The hall itself was another masterpiece of architecture, though the massive screen ruined the view somewhat. A number of speciality food outlets had been set up, as well as a bar serving some craft beers, so I got a refreshing Radler to try and get some relief from the midday heat of the sun. For the afternoon, it was stunning architecture left, right and centre...

Rathausplatz set up for the open-air film festival

Rossauer Kaserne

Parliament Buildings

Michaelerplatz - where some 20-odd horse drawn carriages were waiting to take wealthier tourists on a pompous trip around town

To be honest, I saw so many architecutral wonders, I can't actually work out where this is. I think it's the Hofburg Wien...

Wien has, of course, a long history of musical culture - during the 1700s & 1800s, the city played host to many of the best composers of classical music. The tourist hotspots are amusingly surrounded by touts dressed up in baroque costumes, complete with wigs and long socks, trying to sell tickets to classical music concerts. Given I was in Wien, I did fork out the somewhat inflated ticket price to see a string quartet play a selection of pieces performed inside the Stephansdom. Hearing top quality classical music in one of Europe's largest churches with excellent acoustics was a neat experience.

The next morning I headed off to Wien's southern suburbs for quite a different tourist attraction - the Zentralfriedhof. This massive city cemetery is host to the graves of some of the best minds in classical music and Austrian history. A specific section dedicated to musicians included Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and several of the Strauß family as well as a monument to Mozart, but not his actual grave. Many Austrian presidents are buried there, as well as the likes of physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (famous for theory on kietics of gases and the Boltzmann constant) and pop/rock singer Falco.

Ludwig van Beethoven's well-adorned grave

A monument to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the city centre

After several hours walking around the cemetery, back at the hostel I caught up on some of those things that are sometimes hard to find time to do - organising the next stages of travel, booking trains or hostels, writing my journal, replying to emails, doing washing, packing and unpacking my stuff. It's amazing how much time this can often consume - depressingly so - especially when on the road for almost a year. While there are many highlights to travel, there are also the boring old realities as well!

In the evening I went to a free organ concert at the St Peters church I'd visited the day before - where the acoustics were even better than the Stephansdom. On the Sunday, a jazz band was scheduled to be playing in the Rathausplatz, so in the scorching summer weather I headed back there and spent several hours listening to some real old school jazz. I was younger than the average age of the crowd by about 40 years - some elderly locals were really enjoying it, and I have to admit I was too - jazz, sun, beer - what could go wrong?

The Orignal Storyville Jazzband playing in Rathausplatz

The afternoon, and on my last day, I headed to several empire palaces, the Belvedere and Schönbrunn. The Schönbrunn in particular had a huge palace and grounds - which now also incorporate the city zoo - where there were many statues, immaculate gardens, a dominating palace, and a hill within the ground allowing an excellent view over the whole complex.

Belvedere Schloß against the backdrop of gathering clouds (What's this? Rain?)

Schönbrunn Schloß & gardens (no, no problem, sunny & 30°C again)

Schönbrunn Hill

View of Schönbrunn Schloß from Schönbrunn Hill

Back at the hostel, I was discussing how to get to Budapest with the receptionist at the hostel, who managed to organise me to meet some Hungarian at a metro station to buy the second half of a return ticket - the Hungarian railways sell cheap return tickets (cheaper than one-way!) from Budapest that have to be used within four days, so many people on-sell them. I was a bit sceptical whether I'd been duped, but at €12 instead of about €30 for an Austrian ticket, I gave it a go. I was nervous when the inspectors came on the train the next morning, but everything was fine. The Austrian RailJet was the nicest train I've been on to date - pity there weren't any seats - and by lunchtime I was in Hungary, hungry for more adventures (sorry couldn't resist the pun)...