A Day in Vienna

Today was our first full day in the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria. We began our day with a breakfast at our hotel. Although it was okay, it was nowhere near as good as the breakfasts we were having in Budapest. Once we finished our breakfast, we took the metro to Volkstheater and went to Maria-Theresien square. This square, surrounded by various museums was the meeting point for our Vienna walking tour.

The tour itself was 2.5 hours and brought us by the Imperial Palace, Volksgarten Park, Main Theater, City Hall, Rotenturmstrasse (pictured above), and the St. Stephen's Cathedral. Although it wasn't as exciting as the walking tour in Budapest, I still learned a lot and saw many amazing buildings. Most of the architecture in the city was from the 18th and 19th century, and many of the famous people who lived there included Mozart, Beethoven, and Sigmund Freud. We concluded our tour near the cathedral where the tour guide talked about how we should always keep exploring the city, as 2.5 hours was too little to see the entire city. Before continuing, I had a quick Bratwurst hot dog.

After our tour, we had an interesting adventure getting to the Science/Technology museum, or Technisches Museum in the southwest part of the city. We first took the metro to a remote station, then took a bus, and walked another half-kilometer, going in an unnecessary circle. We eventually found it and ended up spending the majority of the day there. There were 4 total floors each with their own themed exhibitions. The first floor, or ground floor in Europe, had an exhibition about the advancement of astronomy. I got to see how the science progressed from medieval telescopes to massive observatories and satellites, and how our understanding of heat and the universe was radically changed in this time. The other exhibit on this floor was just a bunch of illusions, mostly regarding light.

The next floor, the first floor, had three main parts. The first part we visited was a history of heavy industry (mining and processing raw ores). I learned how raw materials were extracted from the ground once with buckets, then trains, and now massive excavators, and how they were manufactured into steel and tools. The next part was dedicated to the evolution of the motor, starting with massive steam engines, and how they eventually became electrically powered. I also got to see the sleeping car of an empress in the early 20th century. It was practically a mansion on a train, and I would definitely like to travel in such comfort. The last part of the floor was dedicated to energy and electricity, where I saw how energy could be converted in so many different ways. I powered a television by riding a bike and rang a bell by pumping some water in a large chain reaction device.

The next floor was somewhat insignificant, as there was only one exhibit, about the history of everyday life. I saw what vacuum cleaners and refrigerators were like before electricity, and most interestingly, the process by which metals, plastics, paper, and glass are recycled into things we use everyday. The final floor had three exhibitions. The first one we went through was about the history of media, covering the printing press, telegraph, telephone, radio, television, calculators, computers, and the internet. One cool thing I saw was an early 20th century phone operator board, where the operator would manually connect the phone lines of two callers together.

The next exhibit was about the many different types of transportation. First, I saw land transportation by horses, bikes, and then motorcycles, cars, and trains. Next, I saw how sea transportation evolved from fishing canoes to massive cruise ships. Lastly, I saw the history of air travel, from the first hot air balloon, to zeppelins, airplanes, and then helicopters. The last exhibition we saw was about musical instruments. I got to see the inner workings of different types of pianos, and I got to see how an organ actually worked. Overall, the museum was incredibly interesting and there was as much English as there was German.

After returning to our neighborhood from the museum, it was already 6:30PM. Since we only had a single hot dog for lunch, we were quite hungry. What we learned from the tour and simply walking through Vienna was that it was not the kind of city with many sit-down restaurants. Everything was about fast food. Schwedenplatz, our main metro station was a haven for hot dogs, kebabs, fast-food chinese, fast sushi, falafel, and many more things. Since it was raining, we couldn't just have food from a street vendor like this. We needed to go the neighborhood we accidentally discovered yesterday.

We decided after a while to go into a nice looking Japanese restaurant where I ordered pork dumplings and beef teriyaki. The pork dumplings were good and the beef was absolutely excellent. They served it to me in a metal bowl while it was still being fried in teriyaki sauce. Because it was so fresh, it was the most delicious teriyaki beef I have ever eaten. I guess stumbling upon this neighborhood by accident yesterday was a very good thing. Since we were exhausted and it was rainy outside, we returned to the hotel and spent the rest of the day relaxing at the hotel.

We still have two full days in the city, and have only a preliminary plan of what to do. Tomorrow morning, we will be going to the Schonbrunn Palace for a guided tour. Next, depending on the weather, we may go to a nearby mountain known as Kahlenberg to see some great views of the whole city. For the evening, we will either go to a classical music concert if it is rainy, or a space observatory if the skies are clear. On Tuesday, we will go to an Art Museum, potentially go on a guided tour of the UN Offices in the city, and either do the concert or observatory, depending on what we did the night before. We still have an exciting few days ahead of us in Vienna and I can't wait to share my experiences.