Tag Archives: austria

Out & about in Vienna

We had a few vague ideas about what we’d like to see and do in Vienna, but no firm plans, so when our lovely Dutch friend Mickey asked if we were planning on visiting Zentralfriedhof, the Central Cemetery, we thought that was a great suggestion! We like cemeteries – we visited the Pere Lachaise cemetery when we were in Paris a few years ago and paid our respects to Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Gertrude Stein & Alice B Toklas and Jim Morrison and others I’ve forgotten now, and Arlington in Washington DC, then when we were in St Petersburg we visited the incredible Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery. 

Some of Mickey’s family members have a grave at Zentralfriedhof, and quite a few famous composers are also buried there, conveniently all located in the same section quite close to one of the main entrances. The cemetery is on the outskirts of the city and it’s huge! It occupies over 600 acres of land and its dead population is nearly double Vienna’s current living population. We drove there as it’s a bit of a long haul on public transport; parked outside and we must really have acquired the mindset that we have to pay for parking everywhere, because we were very careful to check with the local Wurst stand seller that we could park there for free.

The composers’ graves are all in a very well-tended section, with nicely mown lawns, flowers and a plan to show who is where. We visited Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, the senior and junior Strausses, and a cenotaph honouring Mozart, who is buried in another cemetery. We followed Mickey’s excellent directions and found her family’s grave. We took a yellow flowering succulent in a pot and placed it on the headstone, took a few photos and walked back to the entrance along a different path so we could see a bit more of the cemetery. It’s feeling like early autumn here, although the weather is still warm, lots of leaves starting to change colour and starting to fall.

Then we drove to see the Danube River just outside the city limits and to visit another, smaller cemetery, Friedhof der Namenlosen, Cemetery of the Nameless, for people who drowned in the river. And then to the Gasometers, 4 huge cylindrical gas storage tanks which have now been ‘repurposed’ into shops, residential & commercial use and entertainment venues. The buildings themselves are interesting enough, but to then see what they have become is really something!

Today we caught the metro into the city centre, walked along the mall, visited St Stephen’s Cathedral, ate strudel & cake at Gerstner Cafe (established 1847) and strolled around the fascinating Naschmarkt. Bought a couple of things – corn on the cob for dinner, an interesting-looking Turkish cheese, zopfkase, which looks like a bundle of string tied into a ball. I’ve just tried it and it’s very salty – I’ll soak it in water for a while.

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Mickeys family grave
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Guess who…?
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Strauss and Brahms
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a small part of Zentralfriedhof
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Friedhof der Namenlosen
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a barge working its way up the Danube
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One of the Gasometers
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The two middle Gasometers
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Central Vienna
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St Stephens cathedral
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inside St Stephens cathedral
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Naschmarkt
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Naschmarkt rope cheese
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Naschmarkt
Paid bike storage at the local U-bahn station - like you would never get in Adelaide
Paid bike storage at the local U-bahn station – like you would never get in Adelaide
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View of the street outside the Apartment. Its free parking on weekends, so we got a park at 6pm Friday night but by 8pm there were no parks left. A few spaces Saturday morning
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Panorama outside the apartment window. Another sunny day in Vienna

 

 

Vienna, Austria

Our last post was 3 days, dinner at a Michelin-starred bistro, a visit to a salt mine and 2 countries ago.

Dinner at Zazie Bistro was wonderful! We got a table in the cellar part of the restaurant rather than in the smaller street-level section. Great menu, which you can see here. When my parents see the menu, they will know immediately what I had for an entree, but I’ll tell the rest of you anyway – the veal sweetbreads. And they were superb. Then I had French potatoes gratin with chicken etc, and Greg had the veal chop(s) on the bone etc. With 2 big beers, the total came to less than $35, and we were so impressed with the meal and so surprised that it was so cheap that we left a 20% tip!

Next day, Tuesday, we left the apartment in Krakow and drove to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. We put on our walking boots and some warm clothes and spent a couple of hours doing the excellent English-language guided tour. We didn’t take any photos while we were in the mine, partly because it cost a few dollars extra and we hadn’t realised when we bought our tickets, but mostly because there are already loads of photos of the interesting things at the mine on the interwebz, and one of my commonly uttered phrases from this trip has been  … ‘for f@#ks sake, how many selfies and photos do these people need?’ So many people take photos of themselves at very uninteresting places, as well as at interesting ones, but do they ever look at any of them again?

So then we pooled our remaining Polish zloty and went to the supermarket where we thought we were loading up on everything we thought we needed, but only managed to spend half of the $40-odd we had left in local currency. So I went back and bought some wine and cider, but we STILL have zloty left! We’ll keep it for when we go back to Poland some day, or if someone we know goes there.

We camped at a municipal campground in the north of Czech Republic last night (Tuesday). We had to find an ATM to get some Czech koruna, but the campground reception was closed when we arrived there at 6.30pm, so we just pitched the tent and sorted out payment this morning. Nice camgpground, but it was almost next to a railway line, so it was a bit noisy.

And now we’re in Vienna! We’re staying in this Airbnb apartment until Sunday. It’s just across the street from the grounds of Schönbrunn Palace, close to the metro and the Museum of Technology is nearby as well. The apartment is used for tutoring primary and high school students during term time, but it’s still the summer holidays in Austria until the middle of September, so our host is renting it out until her ‘real’ work begins.

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in the cellar of Zazie Bistro
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Dinner at Zazie Bistro
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The $35 bill at Zazie Bistro
A picture of the wieliczka salt mine we took from the internet because we were too cheap to pay the extra money to be allowed to take pictures in the mine.
A picture of the wieliczka salt mine we took from the internet because we were too cheap to pay the extra money to be allowed to take pictures in the mine.
The Salt mine in cross section
The Salt mine in cross section
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The internet doesn’t have enough cat pictures – so here we are camped at Hranice Czech republic
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camped at Hranice Czech Republic
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More cat pictures….

Camping in Liechtenstein

Last night we camped in Liechtenstein. Well, there’s something I never thought I’d get to say.

But let’s catch up on the last few days. We flew Qatar Airlines from Adelaide to Doha to Munich on Sunday-Monday. Good flights, almost-new planes, both of them fairly full. Getting through Immigration in Munich was probably the worst experience we’ve ever had, and we’ve been through the LAX ordeal a few times. Too many people, not enough officials to process us all. Anyway, both our enormous duffel bags were there, with the 60kgs we seem to travel everywhere with – tent, sleeping mattresses, gas stove, ice box, about 8kgs of travel guides and all the rest of the must-haves.

We picked up ‘our’ shiny white Ford Focus station wagon from the Avis counter, and that was a bit complicated because we’re renting it for more than the standard 30 days, but it eventually got sorted and headed to our hotel in a little village about halfway between the airport and Munich.

Then yesterday we started the drive south towards Croatia, passing through Austria and into Liechtenstein. It’s always such a thrill, going to another country without catching a plane, and in fact yesterday we were actually in 3 different countries in the one day!

We’re having the usual minor problems of trying to find things – folding chairs, gas cartridges, ice. The folding chairs seem to be rare here, or we’re just not looking in the right places. Finally found some, at 3x the price of home. Gas cartridges are even rarer, and much more expensive, and ice is non-existent … so far. Hopefully as we head further south and it gets warmer, we’ll find some.

We tried a campground in Austria last night, but they only had one tiny site, so we kept on going to a campground between Feldkirch and Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein. $50 for an unpowered tent site, but the campground is gorgeous … terraced sites built on a hill, fruit trees everwhere, and the apple trees are all laden with ripe fruit at the moment, cute little chalet-style cabins, grass and an outdoor pool. It’s 11C here today,  so we’ll be giving the pool a miss, I think. We can see across the valley to villages on the mountain opposite. It rained last night, but is fine today … so far!

And here are a few things we’ve learnt about Liechtenstein – population 37,000 (no, I didn’t leave any zeros off that number!), 3rd highest GDP in the world after Qatar & Luxemburg, 6th smallest country in the world and it’s double land-locked, which means it is landlocked by countries which are also landlocked. I really hope that last fact is a question at a Quiz Night sometime soon! Like Norway, they are not part of the EU, but are in the European Free Trade Association. Unemployment rate of 1.5%, German speaking and they have a monetary union with Switzerland, so prices are in CHF Swiss francs, but the campground also accepted our euros, at a rate of 1:1. When we were checking in, there was an Asian family who were not happy about that exchange rate for complicated reasons, but we just figured that paying the equivalent of $50 for a tent site was so outrageous that saving a couple of bucks wasn’t going to make much difference.

Camped in Liechenstein in Mittagspitze
Camped in Liechenstein in Mittagspitze
with the Alps in the background
with the Alps in the background