Vienna Christmas, part 1

When I last left you, the two Koniecznys were about to arrive and we were going to do...well, something. And a week later we were all going to Vienna for Christmas to see some of my family members who live there (one of them is Norbert, who you might remember from canyoning).

Carly and her mom got in on Sunday and we just kinda hung out the first day or two, but they wanted to see the sights and took off to see some nearby things and places, which is something they might tell you about if they were blogging but I don't think they are.

Anyway, the real excitement started at the end of the week. Carly and her mom took an overnight train to Vienna on Thursday/Friday and Jenna and I had to wait until Saturday to go. We took a two-layover train; once in Verona to turn to the north and then a second stop in Innsbruck to switch onto an Austrian (OBB) train that would swoop through southeastern Germany en route to Vienna. It was a nearly 12 hour day of trains and, believe it or not, it was quite pleasant. Fun fact: there are subsidies involved with using solar panels/energy on your home in Germany, particularly in southeastern Germany, and it is really surprisingly common. Also, it's really pretty in that old area.

So we arrived in Vienna and had Carly meet us at the train station because she wanted to have the "living with locals" experience with us, as we were staying at Norbert's old apartment, nextdoor to his parents' place. This was a fun hurdle: Norbert had to come pick us up and Carly had to meet us at the station, yet Norbert was the only one with a communication device.

He was there when we got off the train, but Carly was not yet.

I'd like to pretend we panicked and it was a crazy adventure of will-we-find-her?? but she showed up about 90 second later and everything was fine, so we went to the apartment to hang out and relax a bit.

We were promptly met by my aunt and uncle, who served the new arrivals a wondrous meal of meat, pasta, a broccoli-and-cheese thing, and potatoes. It was so adorable and sweet and delicious that I even took a photo of the two gals holding their plates, smiling wide at a fantastic home-cooked meal in their honor.

And it came out really really blurry, so I'm not posting it here.

Next day was Vienna-time: We hit some of the bigtime sites that Carly hadn't yet seen - she would only be there til Monday evening, so we had our work cut out for us. Schonbrunn Palace* is just about the best royal palace in Europe, in my opinion, and the three of us stomped around it quite a bit and had a wonderful time.

We're very attractive. And we took real photos too. 

Out in front was a Christmas market, which was fantastic and made up for the lack of Christmas marketing I got to do in Stuttgart. But in a cruel twist of fate, Jenna was sick at this point and that would carry through for...a long time.

The three of us had a bit of a busy morning, but we had to get back to the Wiegele household for a big family Christmas lunch where we'd sort of be important guests (or at least the only international ones). Unfortunately, again, Jenna was still stick, and that meant Carly and I went nextdoor for the food and Jenna did the noble thing of not getting the 95 year old grandmother sick. We sort of stayed out of the way because we don't speak German, but we had a lovely time chatting with Norbert and his best gal. 

A totally unrelated to anything picture from a sunset in Vienna

That was the majority of our Sunday, and then Monday was back out into the world, seeing what we could see of Vienna, before sending Carly back to Italy where she'd fly home. This was a full day though. We saw all the city-center sites of Vienna (the ones you don't have to go inside for, that is), which includes St. Stephens Cathedral, the Rathaus (town hall, which will reappear in a future post), the Hofburg Palace and nearby Volksgarten, the Museumsquartier and its magically symmetrical plaza with matching museums and Christmas market, Parliament (pictured below), the Royal Opera house, and a few other things. It's a hell of a city. 

                                      

Sadly, Carly had to go back. We bid farewell the same way most kids from Chesterland do - by putting her on the city-to-airport public transit express train in Vienna, of course.

There's a lot more coming from my Christmas trip though: a day-trip in Bratislava, an overnight in Budapest, the totally-different-than-in-the-US Christmas present customs, New Year's Eve, and of course, my first attempt to ever go alpine skiing. That last one will have plenty of photos. You're welcome in advance.

*It bears mention that on our way to Schonbrunn Palace on the first day, we had an idea of where we were going but couldn't find the right tram when we got to the place we were supposed to switch, so we asked a gruff looking vagabond-y kind of guy how to get to the place we wanted to go. He gave us directions to a place we were pretty sure was not the right place. We thanked him and then wrote off his directions because we'd asked a crazy person. Well, long story short, he was very much correct. We'd incorrectly thought the final destination of our train was the current stop, and that's where we wanted to be. The lesson, as always, is that Austrians know what they're doing.