plan:: vienna - december 23,24,25,26 | salzburg - december 27,28,29,30
reality:: vienna - december 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and most of the 28
sleep 4 hours december 22.
december 23 - wake up at 6am to catch a 7am student agency bus that takes us to brno. carry our heavy shit around brno. find an over-priced cafe to park in for our 2 hour layover. maybe it was 3 hours. it was long. get on another bus. get to vienna. find new zealander and aussie chicks in our room. settle in. head out. walk into magic-ville. huge lights on streets. 
there are the adjectives i was looking for. imagine your christmas tree and house on crack. imagine a city that is chevy chase style. lights that are 2-3 times the size of you hanging between buildings, each street holding it's own magic and own style. walk by buildings created, oh, you know, 1,000 years ago. stumble upon christmas market after christmas market with people from all over europe drinking hot, sweet wine, eating sausages and pastries and candied nuts. 
everyone is smiling. homemade ornaments and gadgets and toys and puppets and art in miniature houses all in a row. christmas lights, christmas trees, christmas spirits, aaaah. i think i found my favorite building so far in vienna. the biggest christmas market was outside of it. we never could attain entrance into said building, but it was lovely and detailed and gothic with several towers and stained-glass windows, the color of a super vibrant rainbow. it made me want to lie down in front of it and fall captive to it's architecture. but my freezing body told me that wasn't so smart.
there are the adjectives i was looking for. imagine your christmas tree and house on crack. imagine a city that is chevy chase style. lights that are 2-3 times the size of you hanging between buildings, each street holding it's own magic and own style. walk by buildings created, oh, you know, 1,000 years ago. stumble upon christmas market after christmas market with people from all over europe drinking hot, sweet wine, eating sausages and pastries and candied nuts. everyone is smiling. homemade ornaments and gadgets and toys and puppets and art in miniature houses all in a row. christmas lights, christmas trees, christmas spirits, aaaah. i think i found my favorite building so far in vienna. the biggest christmas market was outside of it. we never could attain entrance into said building, but it was lovely and detailed and gothic with several towers and stained-glass windows, the color of a super vibrant rainbow. it made me want to lie down in front of it and fall captive to it's architecture. but my freezing body told me that wasn't so smart. december 24 - hausdermusik. 
so much fun. mozart's lounge - we want to purchase this album. we created miniature symphonies, listened to the sounds of thailand, nyc, kids playing, the woods, water, etc etc. we read about the great composers and austria's role in the great musicians like beethoven, mozart, etc. 
we went to starbucks. don't judge. starbucks tastes like home and when being so far from home for quite a while now, starbucks was welcomed with wide-open arms daily while in vienna. delicious drip coffee s hasselnuss. hosteled. then went to christmas eve mass which was in english at yet another hideous central european cathedral - you know the ones that catch bad flack for being too big and impersonal and cost too much money - those ones that steal your breath and remind you that the history of christianity is jaded and beautiful - one that couldn't be contained or boxed in by cathedrals or catholics or protestants - ones that make you realize the awe and majesty of one we serve that is greater than us - we had christmas eve mass in one of those. and then hosteled again and made friends i think that night downstairs.
so much fun. mozart's lounge - we want to purchase this album. we created miniature symphonies, listened to the sounds of thailand, nyc, kids playing, the woods, water, etc etc. we read about the great composers and austria's role in the great musicians like beethoven, mozart, etc. we went to starbucks. don't judge. starbucks tastes like home and when being so far from home for quite a while now, starbucks was welcomed with wide-open arms daily while in vienna. delicious drip coffee s hasselnuss. hosteled. then went to christmas eve mass which was in english at yet another hideous central european cathedral - you know the ones that catch bad flack for being too big and impersonal and cost too much money - those ones that steal your breath and remind you that the history of christianity is jaded and beautiful - one that couldn't be contained or boxed in by cathedrals or catholics or protestants - ones that make you realize the awe and majesty of one we serve that is greater than us - we had christmas eve mass in one of those. and then hosteled again and made friends i think that night downstairs.december 25 - lonely on christmas without friends and family you ask? if you don't consider the some of the greatest artists of all time friends and family - then maybe YOOOU would've been lonely. bean and i survived just fine with monet, klimt, grosz, van gogh, etc. so museum in the morning, starbucks to detox from the mass amount of beauty we had just taken in, then - the little piece of heaven sent from the angels - kunthausvien. i think i will do a whole other post on him. he's that good... hundertwasser that is. then we were famished. oh this is good. so bean and i don't eat when we travel - especially when grocery stores close for 3 days and we were unaware that they were going to close in the first place. so by about 7pm - i thought - hm - bean looks appetizing, maybe i'll eat her. you know - like looney tunes when bugs bunny turns into something so delicious and then gets hunted. that is how i felt about gina. so i ate her. we had a good relationship while it lasted... no no - everything was closed, of course, bc what crazy isn't with a family on christmas day? so at wit's end - we found an adorable little italian place where we received homemade pasta and salad. thank you, vienna. my one meal today was delish. then we decided to go completely crazy and splurge on an expensive english movie. FAIL. australie. if you liked it - well, good for you for finding entertainment in the lame, boring, crap that movies have become. ha. i don't judge you. we just couldn't sit through it after the beauty of everything else we had seen on christmas day. so we left mid-way through and went back to the hostel and maybe made friends again? i don't remember. maybe we just went to sleep, satisfied. christmas was a good day.
december 26 - boxing day over here across the atlantic - grocery stores still closed. museums = open. albertina and belvedere. the best part of the belvedere was the klimt exhibit. beautiful is an inadequate adjective. sparkling maybe? or graceful. idk. but we were way distracted bc we found out that getting to salzburg was going to be 50 euros and then another 50 to get to praha - 100 euros that we did not have. so beyond bummed that half of our trip was now going to fail - we decided to book another night in our hostel. we quite liked vienna and then we would be able to go out saturday and enjoy sunday in vienna before heading on up to prague sunday evening, 2 days earlier than intended arrival.
december 27 - save money and just walk around the city all day admiring more european buildings and structures that i'm sure you look at in pictures and go - building, pretty building, pretty building, but in person - they still have the allure of something that reeks of history and a culture that cared about aesthetics and took time to have a city that looked like something awesome. then - the nutcracker for 4 euros - yes please - i wish i had taken more pictures at the opera house. mmhmm. nutcracker in the vienna opera house. that night was just terrrrrrible :). when i was a kid, i remember the ballet boring me. when i was 23, i thought it was genius that your mood could be affected solely with costumes, a stage, dancers and a phenomenal orchestra. we were in the standing section (ie: the cheap section) and smiling for a good 2.5 hours. magical. i know - lame to keep using that word... but magical it was.
that night we met up w/ 3 friends from the hostel (that we had gone to the ballet with) to try to find good dancing. good - not so sure - shady, on the river, dark, really loud bass, dudes entranced by the lights overhead, hipsters everywhere, smoke everywhere - that is what we found. a european experience - sure. an experience we kept laughing through - of course. the nice part - we paid ourselves back at the end of the night. bc if you take empty glasses or bottles back to the bar - they give you money back. GENIUS. so we went around collecting other people's trash basically and made ourselves a few euros. more bars should do that. we got home at 4am. or 5am. i don't remember. we were supposed to wake up in time to go to the vienna boys choir and check out of the hostel before that -- no - we woke up at like 9 i guess. and laid around the hostel and used our little book to try and find some decent place to have coffee or eat - we failed at 3 attempts all over the city - so we went back to a place that we had the day before that was near the center and the opera house and enjoyed a superb meal. we walked down the streets - freezing our asses off - and said goodbye to the city sprinkled by magic fairy dust and christmas cheer from santa's sleigh. then our bus left at 6. and we got to prague at about midnight. it was a cold and long bus ride. so the next day we slept in and shat around the boys house, enjoyed catching up w/ ems from hungary and had dinner w/ the crew. then guitar-heroed our night away and off to bed. mom and dad arrived the next morning.......
this post is long and i'm sure i'm leaving out important things. but let's be honest - you don't really care that much :)
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