My next stop, as foreshadowed by the title above, my next stop was in Vienna, Austria. I decided to go there because Dominik, an exchange student who joined the Judo club at U of I, suggested that I come visit him and his family while I was wandering throughout Europe. The first thing that I have to say about my stay in Vienna was that the hospitality was amazing; I was treated like an absolute king during my stay. I'll get to the why soon, but that was my biggest impression of my stay, and I wanted to thank everyone involved in making my stay there amazing.
I got into Vienna early in the morning, and Dominik was there to pick me up. We went to overlook the city, then his house right away and there was a breakfast waiting. I met his mother, who was incredibly hospitable, and she spoke English very well, which was great for conversation (Austrians and Germans all generally have very good English). During breakfast, I learned an Austrian myth that the frog can tell the weather, based on an idea that if you put a frog in a jar with some stones, the height at which the frog perches indicates what type of weather is coming. I always like learning myths and tales of other cultures, it's interesting to see the differences between theirs and mine. Anyway, after a filling breakfast, during which I had hazelnut butter for the first time (DELICIOUS!), we went downtown to do some sightseeing.
We walked around downtown for a while as I took pictures of everything, and I was told a great deal of history about the city (Dominik is very knowledgable of such things). We then spent a few hours at a public beach on a river bank baking in the sun and just relaxing. It was nice to go for a swim, as I hadn't been in the water much since having been in Europe. Next was dinner. Dominik's father once spent a day in the kitchen of a very upscale restaurant in downtown Vienna helping the cooks and watching the process of kitchen. While I was staying with them, he invited Dominik and I to go to the restaurant for a nice dinner at his expense (I tried to help pay, but no dice). Anyway, I couldn't believe how the experience went. When we got there, we were seated immediately, then a waiter came over and translated every single item on the menu for me, in addition to explaining what each thing was and how it was prepared. The menu reading took about 15 total minutes... I was impressed. For dinner, we had several courses that were all absolutely DELICIOUS (I'm not the only one in the restaurant who took a picture).
We were served a couple of the things that we had weren't even on the menu, such as leberkase. The funny thing about leberkase is that it literally means "liver-cheese", but neither liver nor cheese are a part of the dish. The other funny thing about leberkase was that it is generally fast food, but I made a comment to Dominik about how I really liked it, so he asked the waiter if they had some and they made it for us. I didn't know it was fast food at the time, but it was certainly delicious. With each course, we had a wine (one course had beer), and the dinner lasted a good 2-3 hours. I couldn't believe the hospitality of the restaurant, and I don't even want to know what the bill was (I guess about 200 Euro, or about $250 for the two of us). After dinner, Dominik took me to a few bars where we just enjoyed the beautiful evening and met up with some of his friends, who were all very friendly. We then went to a giant party at the Rathaus, which was the town hall downtown. The venue was cool, but the bartenders were terrible, so we went to a local club known as Chelsea, which was amazing.
We spent the whole night crammed in a room with hundreds of other people, drinking beer and dancing and singing. I would say it was comparable to a rock concert at Bogart's. Anyway, the evening was a ton of fun, and I even got to see the pretty dawn over the vineyards across the street from Dominik's place.
Dominik and I both got up the next day about 12:30, since we were out all night. We had a bit of lunch where I was able to try some hollunder sirup (syrup), which syrup extracted from a flower and concentrated. It was so tasty (I'm going to try and get some here, but I doubt I'll find it). Anyway, after lunch we went downtown again and got caught in a torrential downpour for about a half hour. It was kinda funny watching the police stand around trying to figure out what to do. Nothing you can do about Mother Nature. I actually got a pic of a trolley getting towed by a huge truck. After that, we walked around the city some more seeing buildings and talking politics.
When we were done, we picked up Dominik's car (which we'd left downtown overnight), and returned to his house where I found shirts that I had in his room ironed. His sweet mother had seen my nicer shirts sitting on my bag, and she took it upon herself to iron them and return them, without saying anything. I noticed and, of course, thanked her. That night, we went again to see the city from atop one of the hills on the way to dinner with his mother. It was tasty, and I was able to have an assortment of Austrian food. For the evening activity, Dominik took me to a pig roast in honor of one of his friends' birthday. It was really a fun group, and they all spoke English very well.
However, most of the conversation was in German, so I didn't understand too much (however, I did learn a fundamental truth: despite the fact that I couldn't understand what they were saying, I couldn't help but smile and laugh when they did, thus proving that smiles are contagious). Anyway, through conversation with everyone, I learned that I was in the presence of the coach and entire Austrian national hammerthrowing team (male and female). They were so kind to me while I was there though. They made sure I was fed, tried Austrian desserts, and the father (coach) even started serving me wine that had to have been expensive. I felt a bit guilty about being treated so well, Dominik told me not to worry about it because the guy likes to spend his money (he was rather wealthy, as was evidenced by the size of his house). Anyway, part of our conversation that was very interesting to the Austrians was when they started asking me about guns in the US. Since I know close to nothing about guns (I've never even touched a gun), I didn't feel like I could answer very well, but it actually turned out to be pretty funny because they started posing "what if..." questions about when you can and can't shoot someone. Anyway, the father (coach) told Dominik of a couple places to go the next day where people owe his company favors, so we could go and put our orders on the company tab (which was very nice of him). The next day, Dominik took me to a museum of work done by Hunderwasser Friedensreich, which is really cool. The guy was generally distrusting of straight lines and such, claiming that they have no place in reality, so the floors were all curvy. In the museum, I read a quote that I felt worth writing down: "If we do no honour our past, we lose our future. If we destroy our roots, we cannot grow." (If you don't like it, I didn't want you to read it anyway). The museum was cool, and we got free lunch at the cafe from the hammerthrowing coach.
We then went to Vienna Palace, which was really amazing. The most impressive part of the palace was the garden, where you can walk to the top of a hill and look back at the palace. They also had a shrub maze, which of course I had to walk through (come on, honestly, who DOESN'T want to do a shrub maze in their lifetime?). 
Lastly, we went to a Judo practice where, again, I got my ass whooped all over the place. I enjoyed the practice, but with having 3 weeks of time off, I had very short wind. I never want to feel that out of shape again (it was also a million degrees in the dojo, so that didn't help). Anyway, they were very kind to me, and I actually picked up a few techniques, so that was pretty cool. Immediately after Judo, I got on the train to Le Cinque Terre. However, along the way, I went through Switzerland and took some pictures of the BEAUTIFUL landscape from inside the train, so I hope you can enjoy those as well. I will definitely be going to visit the Swiss on my next trip. OK, on to Cinque Terre!
Pictures of Vienna
Pictures of Switzerland
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