No kangaroos in Austria.

Day One in Vienna began with, of all things, smørrebrød. Apparently Austria has its own version of open sandwiches...but I've got to tell you, they're pretty much the same thing, down to the love of lox. We also got a good look at the Wien Rathaus; I guessed based on my detailed knowledge of Danish that this was City Hall (rådhus in Danish) and was right! Go me. Parliament was quite a sight, too, but I was so government-building-ed out after my study tour that we went to the Hofburg palace complex instead. First stop was the Crown Jewels exhibit, which included a heck of a lot of royal clothing, very funny hats, and no shortage of reliquaries. Despite not really appreciating the latter category, the artistic value of everything was fairly high. Austrian royals really liked their washing bowls fancy! The Spanish Riding School, also in Hofburg and home to the Lipizzaner Stallions, was closed, sadly.

We walked through the Albertina museum next; the Max Ernst surrealist collage-novels were a bit above our heads, but the impressionist exhibit was phenomenal. There was everything from Picasso to Monet to Rothko and anyone you can think of in between, organized roughly by school. Everything was translated into English, happily, and we spent a solid hour or two perusing. Man, I love a good art museum, and Vienna, we found was chock-full of them.

Lunch for me was spinach strudel and mushroom soup-- look at that, family! Somehow this whole study abroad experience has nixed a lot of my picky eating tendencies of old. I don't eat meat, of course, but I now love vegetable soup, and can do Indian and Thai food, and had no problem eating anywhere I went for the whole three weeks of traveling. I think Andy (who sampled wiener schnitzel, of course) was starting not to recognize me at a few points.

Anyway, lunch was followed by a walk through Stephansdom, a beautiful cathedral with a pretty funky roof. To counteract the church visit, we went to Judenplatz, which is home to a small museum housing archeological finds of the Viennese Jewish community, including the foundations of the city's first synagogue from the 1300s or 1400s or so. Only the bottoms of the walls really remain, but to be there, and imagine standing in the women's section or on the bemah with just a few like-minded families so long ago in a place that may or may not be friendly to them was really extraordinary.

The later afternoon brought my favorite part of Vienna, the KunstHausWien. It's a four-story art museum in one of my favorite buildings ever-- I'll get pictures up as soon as I can, because I really can't do it justice in print. The first two floors were filled with the art of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who apparently loved very bright colors, spirals, and metallic flecks. His style was pretty uniform, but the work was really gorgeous! There was also a section on his architecture, some of which looks like the museum building, and some of which was never built but involved models of Hobbit-like homes build into rolling hills for minimum human impact on the environment. I ended up with a posted depicting the museum building to go along with my older one of the exterior of MoMA for my room next year.

We took a tram back in the direction of our hotel and stopped for dinner at 7 Stern Braü, a restaurant and microbrewery. It was terribly fun, enjoying Viennese-style gnocchi and brie with 20 cl brews you can't find anywhere else. One of several meals in which we definitely ate too much because it was so different and good!

We slept in a bit the next morning-- travel is tiring!--and then rented CityBikes near the hotel Metro stop to get to the center of the city. That was fun! We did go over a cobblestone road at one point, though, which I do not recommend. It snowed right before we parked the bikes at our destination, which was really special-- that was also the point at which a traffic light got us stuck on opposite sides of the street, so we took it as a prime photo op.

Brunch was Starbucks (in German!) and a raisin challah that we demolished while watching the Anker Clock, which has a little music-accompanied mechanical show of sorts at noon in which various figures in Austrian history move across it. The description was in German, though, so I'll need translation at some point to fully appreciate that one.

We spent the early afternoon at Schönbrunn, a palace apparently modeled after Versailles located not too far from the city center. My guidebook had recommended the "Grand Tour," which includes all 40 rooms in the Prunkräume (palace rooms), which was totally worth seeing. It's not quite clear why people thought it would be good to invest so much in making way more than 40 rooms so individually detailed and ornate and uniquely beautiful, but at least the results were drool-worthy. Schönbrunn also has some spectacular gardens, called the Schlosspark, with a pavillion-restaurant that we scaled for--you guessed it--more amazing views of a different city.

The next stop was the Belvedere Museum, which has an upper palace housing a lot of Klimt works, including "The Kiss," which was (unlike other 'great works' I've seen in the past) very worth seeing in person, mainly for the colors and metallics and details. The lower half of the Belvedere had a temporary exhibit that was cool, too, but we lingered there for too long, it turned out. By the time we left, it was a major and unanticipated time crunch to rush back to the hotel for our bags (which took a long walk, a tram ride, and a several Metro stops) and then to the train station to get the last train out of town.

We made our train with no more than a minute and a half to spare. I'm still not sure how. I think it was two hours before my lungs fully recovered, and that was in spite of Andy's wonderfully volunteering to carry my not-quite-20kg backpack. We treated ourselves to a nice dinner in the dining car in celebration and relief, and spent a good chunk of the ride to Innsbruck in awe of the fact that we'd actually gotten on the train.

Vienna, in short, seems to be characterized by going to museums, and staying there for longer than you'd expect. But I'm smiling just thinking about it. Not as much eye candy (to my taste, anyway) outdoors as Prague-- and the whole place was of course much more manicured--but well worth our visit.