Eating our Way Through Europe, brought to you by Project Runway: Vienna

It was in Vienna that all the language skills we've acquired from watching Project Runway really started to kick in. It's a good thing too, because, as our overnight train was pulling into the station in Vienna, I asked, "What does Austrian sound like? Is it like German?" There's an intelligent Notre Dame student for you, right? I'm going to say it was the lack of sleep talking, not me. And then try to forget it ever happened (which begs the question of why I mentioned it in this blog post...). Because they in fact speak German in Austria. Not Austrian.

The overnight train from Prague to Vienna was our splurge purchase: a private three-person compartment, complete with a sink. Basically living in the lap of luxury for the night. And no roommates meant plenty of space for a dance party to Party in the USA (what? we were missing good old 'Murica). And by plenty of space, I mean that it was a teeny tiny compartment with barely enough room for us, our backpacks, and the beast, but we made it work anyway, as evidenced by the hilariously cramped picture of Megan to the right. The rest of the evening was wholly uneventful. We woke up around four am to a man screaming "Help me, someone help me!" in the corridor. So no big deal, really.
Ok, so it was a bit of a big deal. We all assumed that he was yelling because he missed his stop and wanted them to stop the train, but that still isn't the most pleasant way to wake up in the middle of the night, while on a train chugging through central Europe. The first thought that I had was: "What is making that man scream and how is it going to affect us?" Which probably is not the most compassionate thing that has ever crossed my mind, but I figure in these situations its better to be safe than sorry. Which means that we all stayed in the compartment and didn't go near the door, just in case. I eventually got back to sleep, once the visions of masked bandits coming to kidnap us faded (yes, I'm still a slightly dramatic worrywart, Europe hasn't beaten that out of me yet). We arrived in Vienna around 6 am, slightly exhausted, and then began the trek to our hostel. Two trains and a bus ride later, we found ourselves on a hill overlooking the city of Vienna, way on the outskirts, and standing in front of a large, beautiful hotel that was aptly named the Palace Hotel. We jumped the gun a bit and thought that that was our hostel and got pretty excited, before realizing that we were staying at the Palace Hostel, not the Palace Hotel. Down a tree-lined lane behind the hotel was the Palace Hostel, which was still pretty fabulous: a private room with our own bathroom and a sweet old Austrian woman working the reception desk who let us check in early and gave us a free breakfast even though we weren't technically guests yet and hadn't paid for it. Overall, the people in Austria were incredibly friendly (much more so than in Germany), but more on that later.
We got a bit of a slow start this morning, since we were pretty tired by this point. We had left London on Thursday night and it was now Tuesday, just to give you a time frame. So we were happy to be able to check in early and relax a bit before starting our day. I had brought my laptop with me on the trip and we took advantage of the free wireless in the hostel to make a game plan for the day. Actually, when I say we, I should say Megan and Kaitlin. Because the second I lied down on my bed to test out how comfy it was, I was out like a light (See, Sarah? I have become just like you, able to fall asleep anywhere, at anytime). So I missed the majority of the planning phase, but my little cat nap did me good. I had had a bit of a cold since we arrived in Brussels and had been willing my body not to get sick and ruin my European adventure, so any bit of sleep helped and I was feeling better by the time we set out to take the metro to begin our explorations.

We hopped off the metro at St. Stephensdom Cathedral, near the center of the city, where I received quite the welcome to Vienna. The Cathedral is one of the most touristy places in the city, so there are all these people dressed up in wacky, old-fashioned clothes trying to sell tourists tickets to the Opera and various other musical performances that evening, since Vienna is famous for its music. As we exited the subway, one of the crazily dressed guys made a beeline for us and says to me, "You're from the United States of America, aren't you? You're from the USA, you have Proud to be an American stamped across your forehead!" I was unaware that I had gotten a tattoo since my arrival in Europe (Sorry Mom!), but I'm thinking there was probably something else about me that pegged me as a tourist. Perhaps it was my pigtail braids--that make me look about 12 years old and a bit like a Midwestern cowgirl (but your hair style options shrink when you have limited access to showers and bathrooms...)--or the look of utter awe on my face as I gazed up at the Cathedral.
Since we had had a slow start, the rest of Tuesday was relatively easy-going. We grabbed some Viennese sausages for lunch (yum!) and just wandered around the city for awhile before taking a tour of the beautiful, ornate Vienna Opera House. Vienna is known as the city of music, and it is most famous for its Opera. The Opera House was beautiful and it was really cool to see them setting up the stage for the show that night. Especially since we ended up going to a show that night at the world-famous Vienna Opera House! They have this ticket lottery where you can get standing room seats for only 4 Euros the night of the show. So after the tour we waited in line for a few hours (and had our second chance encounter with the Dans!) and got our tickets. But this isn't your typical ticket lottery. Once you have your tickets, you wait in line again to go mark your place in the standing room section with a scarf, a Vienna tradition. We rushed in with the crowd and somehow ended up with front row places for a brand new opera, Medea. We marked our territory with scarves, ran to grab a quick dinner, and then came back to watch Medea, which is based on a Greek myth and tells the story of a slightly crazy woman named Medea who goes to great lengths to try to get back together with her husband (including killing her children...). So I wasn't the biggest fan of Medea the character, however I loved Medea the opera. Apparently its an atonal opera (thank you, Dan Crupi) which means it doesn't sounds very pretty, but I thought that the singing was amazing and the story really compelling. It was in German, so we had little subtitle things so we knew what was going on, which was very helpful. I was really impressed with the staging: I liked the use of light at key emotional points in the show and they simulated this cool rock slide at the end that was pretty amazing. Going to the Vienna Opera was definitely one of my favorite experiences of the whole trip, because it was just such a once in a lifetime thing and it was quintessential Vienna. Definitely unforgettable.
Day two in Vienna consisted of walking around the city and taking in the sites. It definitely was not as beautiful as Prague, but we saw the Palace and Spanish Riding Stables (the horses were coming out for their exercise right as we walked by!). We rode the famous Ring Tram on the loop around the city to take it all in before heading out to Prater Park. The park was the place where the Nazis made their last stand against the Russians during WWII, although now it is a wacky amusement park with half the rides open during the winter months. We sampled the delicious Vienna hot dogs at the park, almost causing a pigeon frenzy with the crumbs that we left behind. And there were only crumbs left, because these hot dogs were that good. The guy at the stand took a baguette, hollowed it out, put in the ketchup and mustard, and then put in the hot dog, which just so happened to be filled with cheese. I know it sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen, but it was delicious and I've been craving another ever since we had those. After our lunch break, we went to see two German anti-warcraft towers on the outskirts of the city, near the park. It was eerie to see the towers and know how much death and violence occurred at the site, from the air. And it was even more poignant for us, since we were going to see Auschwitz, the concentration camp in Poland, the next day. A lot of this trip centered around WWII history, which is something that I have been fascinated by since I was little, so it was amazing to see it all come to life and to go to places that I had heard and read so much about.
As you can see, going off the map into uncharted territory was a trend for us in Vienna. It was unusually adventurous and spontaneous for boring old me. Which is one of the great things about this whole abroad experience, that I've been able to mellow out enough to just venture off the map and see where it takes me. Although I've never been that good at reading maps in the first place, but I suppose that's a story for another time. Our last excursion off the map before we hopped our train to Krakow, Poland, was into the suburbs, to the last stop on one of the tram lines. Kaitlin had found this winery for us to have dinner at, so we ventured off into the cute, but dark and somewhat deserted suburbs of Vienna. In what was one of the few strokes of bad luck the entire trip, the restaurant was closed. But our luck turned around moments later when we found a similar place up the street. The only problem was that no one spoke English. Enter our Project Runway language skills (with a little help from the sheet of useful German phrases that Kaitlin had fortuitously decided to print out). We ordered the best bottle of white wine that I have ever had and felt very classy. There was a small section of the winery that served food and I successfully angered the lady at the counter in my confusion about what to order and ended up with an unidentified meat, potatoes, and an unidentified vegetable that may have been cauliflower, but we aren't sure. Besides the angry food lady, everyone else was so sweet. Our waitress dealt with the language barrier beautifully and complimented us on our sheet of useful phrases. Although the compliments may have been partially due to the huge tip that we gave her, since we weren't sure what the protocol was for tipping in Austria. When Kaitlin tried to ask her if we could keep the wine bottle, things got a little dicey. No one knew what she was saying and she had no idea what we were saying and it ended with the four of us just sitting there looking at each other confused-ly when all we really wanted to do was leave without being rude.
But then Megan came up with the solution: pointing to the door and saying, "Auf Wiedersen?"
Suddenly the waitress understood that we were trying to leave, not order anything else, and it was like the lightbulb went on, and she gave us all warm handshakes and said "Cheers!" to us as we went out the door (I think she thought we were from England, which, technically, right now, we are).
Thank you, Heidi Klum and Project Runway.

My one regret from this leg of the trip? That we didn't think to take Sound of Music-esque photos on the hill behind the hostel. Maria's "the hills are alive" pose would have been pretty perfect here:

Here's the link to the photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=404923&id=538960556&l=8d7747cee3