On to Vienna
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Apparently Austria is a very environmentally friendly country, with very limited buses between cities, preferring trains instead, so it would make sense that there would so many turbines. They’ve obviously been doing it for a long time though, as most of the turbines are quite small, about the size of Wellington’s Brooklyn Turbine, not like the big ones that are going in these days. The other thing that we’ve seen heaps of, is sunflower fields! Where there aren’t turbines, there are sun flowers. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but there are lots anyway. It’s so sweet looking at all the sunflowers competing with each other to be the tallest, looking at the sun…. (Okay, so I like sunflowers, big deal!)
Sunflowers enroute to Vienna We arrived at the train station, fairly confident for a change that we were at the right one. Well it had to be really, ‘cause it was the end of the line! With no accommodation booked we were happy to see a guy handing out flyers for another student accommodation. We really wanted to stay in a hostel but at this time of the year it’s getting really hard to find. After we got the flyer and found out the position of the hostel we jumped onto the net and looked for better options, just in case. Turns out that it did have the best position of any that had beds available, and it was within close walking distance. We got there and checked out the room and found it to be the nicest yet. We had bought a public transport pass from the train station so we wasted no time getting into the city (mainly to buy socks and undies! It costs 4 Euro to do washing here.)
Vienna is a really nice city, super modern but with the old buildings and LOTS of green. They have the most public gardens and trees of any city I’ve seen so far. There seems to be a lot of money in the city, as it’s well kept and grandiose. We didn’t spend all our time shopping although it would have been very easy to, it’s the first real shopping that we’ve seen since home. Not that we bought anything but our socks and undies but was nice to finally see an EMI and Sarah was relieved to see some clothes shops. Anyway as I was saying we didn’t spend all of our time shopping as there is a lot to see just in the streets, there are buskers everywhere. Sarah gave money to a ‘statue’ as he was really good at standing still and suddenly he came alive! Wanting to kiss her hand and letting me take a photo. It was really nice, you could watch them for hours. This was right beside St Stephen’s Cathedral, which is pretty much the middle of the city. After walking done the main street and getting another of Europe’s wonderful ice creams (I’ve become quite addicted, will have to lose some weight when I find a home), we came to a lovely fountain, where we took some photos and rested our weary legs. Then headed back to the hostel for an early night to prepare for tomorrow’s sightseeing
Maarty Enjoying a beer at the hostel
The Summer Palace Gardens
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
