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Vienna may have been my favorite European city so far. Although the weather could have colored my opinion somewhat. Thursday night Brianne and I took an overnight train from Rome. Its a 13 hour ride but went by pretty quickly. When we crossed the border though, things got a little interesting. A guy who was in our compartment got taken by the boarder policemen, they weren't speaking english so we couldn't really tell what was going on. They had scanned his passport and looked at some other form he had, then took him and his bag with them. To make it weirder one of the officers then took a flashlight and looked under the seats for who knows what. It was a little crazy.

The next morning around 9:00 we got into Vienna and this is what we saw:

there was about 4-6 inches on the ground already and it was still snowing. I was super excited because I was hoping it would snow. We were a little cold though, since Rome is about 60 degrees right now and Vienna was probably 30. Our trip basically consisted of us walking around for an hour or so until we got too cold and then going inside a building.

Our first build was the Stephansdom which is a gothic cathedral. Its the first European Gothic church I've seen (Rome really doesn't have any). The stained glass was beautiful. Even though it was dark and snowy outside the inside of the church was full of light (and it wasn't electrically lit).


Next we strolled a bit more and got somewhat lost looking for an Adolf Loos building. Throughout the trip we ended up going the wrong way down this same street on about 3 separate occasions. Eventually we ended up where we needed to go and ran into the Hapsburg palace along the way. It was a rather large complex and is known as the labyrinth, because all the different pieces were built up over time.


We walked through the grounds towards the museum quartier, to look at some Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele works, and we were getting cold. As you can see in the picture below I have 2 hats on.


After the museum we got a room for the night in a hostel. We ended up with the last open room. We then hiked over to the other side of the city to see the Schoenbrunn Palace. There was a giant tree in front when we got there.


We went particularly to see the greenhouses,which are the largest in Europe. It was breathtaking in person. I think the combination of the snow and the time of day also added to the beauty of the building.


Afterwards we headed back to the city and into a nice warm pub. Turns out they brew their own beer and we had a hearty Viennese meal. I hadn't realize how much I missed eating potatoes. We took a stroll after dinner and walked towards the town hall. We had seen it in the distance earlier and wanted to check it out. Waiting for us was the best surprise ever, a christmas market! It was closed for the night, but we decided to come back the next day. The building was set up as a giant advent calender, the windows all had numbers in them.


The next morning we woke up and headed towards the Secession Building, it was slightly warmer since it was sunny out, but still very cold. We went inside to see Beethoven's Frieze by Klimt, and to check out the spaces, like good architecture students.


Then it was off to the Christmas Market. We ended up spending a good two hours there. We had hot Viennesse beverages (the cappuccino was classic, it was a latte with some whipped cream on it, but so good). And we ate and ate and ate. There were a bunch of pastry stands and we got a cinnamon pastry and some toffee peanuts, which were incredible.


Then Brianne and I walked down to the Danube...or so we thought. We knew there was a river and just kind of assumed it was the Danube, since it was murky and brown. Well we realized when we were on the train that in fact we only made it to the Danube Canal...oops. So here is a picture of a murky brown canal in Vienna.