Yellow Hostel - Roma

BY this point in my trip I was largely booking hostels based upon the ratings on reservations websites. I had learned my lesson in a few previous places. In Rome, I stayed in the Yellow Hostel. It was near the train station and it seemed to be very fashionable and cool.
+Very fast free internet
+Common areas were good for hanging out and relaxing
+Good kitchen/cooking space
-cramped bathrooms and showers
-advertised air conditioning, but it was ineffective. They insisted on keeping the windows shut even when it was cooler outside than inside.
-unhelpful staff

Colosseum at night

I stopped by the Colosseum on my way home. They were setting up for a concert and people were gathering on the hill looking down into the stage area. I didn’t ask anyone who was playing, but later found out that I had missed the opportunity to attend a free Elton John concert. The people I talked to who went to the concert said it was pretty good. Oh well.

Language Barrier

At the restaurant where I had dinner my first night in Rome I went to go to the bathrooms and found the doors labeled Donne and Uomini. I didn’t know which was men's and which was women's. I took my best guess (Uomini) and was correct.

Castel Sant' Angelo

Santa Maria in Trastevere

The church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. At the time I didn't really know its significance but the interior had amazing mosaics.

Piazza Navona

Roma

Today I wandered around Rome. I traveled light without a guidebook or my tripod. The only thing I was carrying was a little map I got from the hostel which had some of the sights marked. I found that a lot of the time I didn’t really know what I was looking at in the places I visited. I especially felt like Rome is the sort of place where you need someone or something to tell you the significance of things. After reading my guidebook when I got back to the hostel, I discovered that I had missed things like a Michelangelo in one church and famous frescoes in another. Lots of things in Rome are hidden or maybe just don’t stand out as much because there is so much to see. This is a famous Bernini statue. I didn't take too many pictures today because I didn't know what I was looking at. Rome sure has a lot of big opulent churches.

Venezia - Roma

After spending the day in Venice I caught another train to Rome that night. It was dark for most of the trip so I didn't get to see much scenery, but it felt like we were going through mountains. I arrived in Rome and checked into my hostel. I had come a long way from being in Vienna 24 hours ago.

Narrow Streets

Some of the streets in Venice are ridiculously narrow and the walls lean inward as well. This one was about the width of my shoulders.

Pigeons

Outside the Basilica there were these vendors selling seed to feed the pigeons. The idea was that the pigeons would eat the food out of your hands. In practice this led to pigeons attacking any person who had purchased seed. Strangely they never attacked the vendors. Talk about a bad idea to let these guys sell seed. I think the Piazza would be better without having thousands of pigeons walking around and attacking people. When you walked through you almost had to avoid stepping on the pigeons. They are violating the pact!

Basilica di San Marco

The Basilica di San Marco in Venice was one of the most impressive churches I saw on my trip (and I saw a lot). I visited twice during the day I was there. Once was not enough. It was built in 1068 which is amazing enough and for such a grand structure to survive the way it has is unreal. It was the only Byzantine structure I saw on my trip and it was very different stylistically from other architecture I saw. Inside practically every surface is covered with gold mosaics. It is a pretty incredible sight. Photos were not allowed inside, so I had to take a picture of this mosaic outside the exit.

What to do in Venice?

I wasn't really sure what to do in Venice besides walk around and marvel at the canals and the buildings. I checked my bag at the train station and set out for the Piazza San Marco. I guess I have a problem with canal cities, because like Amsterdam I got lost in Venice again. The problem is that Venice has lots of dead end alley ways and streets that end at canals. I finally found the main tourist route again which had painted arrows leading to my destination. I arrived and waited in a short line to get into San Marco. Afterwards I kind of just wandered around the city the rest of the day stopping at things that I found interesting. It was a hot sunny day and it was quite a change from the northern, continental and mountain weather I had seen on most of my trip. It would have been nice to have a tour guide in Venice to point out the important things and keep me from getting lost. I still had an enjoyable time wandering around the city. Venice has a reputation for containing swarms of tourists. I didn't really feel it was all that bad with the exception of the area around San Marco. Most of the city to the North and West felt like it was deserted and that surprised me a bit. Here are a bunch of pictures of Venice which was a very scenic place.

The Piazza San Marco with the Basilica di San Marco, the campanile and the Doge's Palace





The Rialto Bridge


The Grand Canal which snakes through the city







Me up on the North edge of the main part of the city. It was a beautiful day and the waters of the Adriatic looked very inviting.

Vienna - Venezia (Venice)

I took a night train from Vienna to Venice. I had heard mixed things about night trains from other travelers, but I actually had a very pleasant experience. I reserved a sleeper car for 20€. There are 6 bunks in a car and it is a little cramped, but being able to travel while you sleep makes it worth it. I think we left Vienna around 9pm and arrived in Venice at 8:30 or so the next morning. It was nice to get a long night's sleep, especially since my cold was still lingering. I think the train went through Salzburg for when I boarded the train, several cars were headed to Paris, while others were headed to Venice. I guess we split up in the middle of the night somewhere.

Slicer

Roman's family had a meat slicer in their house. It is apparently a pretty common item in Austrian households. I thought it was pretty funny. Roman didn't really understand the humor even after I tried to explain the Seinfeld episode to him.

Schnitzelhaus

In Austria they have fast food places that sell Schnitzel. We stopped at one on the way home from Soporon.

Look at me! I'm in Hungary!

On my last day in Vienna, Roman and I decided to cross the border into Hungary. It is only about a 30 minute drive from Roman's house in Ebreichsdorf (see map below). Roman was telling me that Hungary was to Austria what Mexico was the U.S. I had to find out, and I didn't really think it was true. We went to the border town of Sopron which was not in any shape or form like Tijuana. Apparently it is pretty common to go across the border to go shopping or party. Roman and his friends go to get cheap haircuts. We went into this mall right across the border and it was basically like any American mall. They got haircuts while I sat and pretended to read a German magazine. We drove around Sopron a bit and you could really see the Soviet influence with the ugly, boxy high rise apartments and things like that. Roman pointed out a few old Soviet cars too.
The center of Sopron felt much different and was more like any other old European city. The iron curtain was basically an artificial division created after WWII. Before the 1940s, Austria and Hungary were part of the same empire and in the older part of town you can see this. We went to a cafe and I had a Hungarian beer. Things were a lot cheaper in Hungary than in Austria. A beer was something like 350 Forint ($1.66). It was an interesting little trip across the border. Hungary has recently joined the EU, so I guess I never even left the eurozone, although I did get my passport stamped.

Soviet style buildings
the old part of town

Wine Festival

Wednesday night we met up with some of Roman's friends and went to a wine festival in a nearby town. It was called the festival of a thousand wines and all of the local wine regions had tents where you could get tastes. It was pretty cool. They had lots of good food too like pretzels and pastries. One food which was really cool was these potato chips which were made by putting a potato on a drill which spins the potato against a blade. This results in paper thin chips which are deep fried and served hot. They were probably some of the best potato chips I have ever had.
There was also a relatively famous band playing Austrian folk music. They were dressed almost like Vegas lounge singers and the music was pretty bad. Roman and his friends thought so too. They said that this sort of music is what the Austrian equivalent of rednecks listen to.
On the way home we stopped at a dive bar near Roman's house. I really had fun tonight not because we did anything super exciting, but because I got to do what Austrians my age do for fun at night. It was a cool experience. That was the experience I had for my entire time in Vienna. I felt I got a local's perspective of Viennese culture.

Caverns

After the castle we had lunch at a restaurant where I got some authentic wiener schnitzel. It was excellent. Later we visited underground caverns which contain Europe's largest subterranean lake (It's not very big). I believe the whole thing is an old mine which was accidentally flooded. During WWII the caves served as a German aircraft factory where they built jets.
After the caverns we went back to Roman's for a while. This was when the whole Katrina thing was going down and we sat around watching CNN for a while. It was probably the only time on my trip where I wanted to watch tv.

Vienna Castle

Wednesday, Roman and I went to check out a castle outside of Vienna. It was pretty cool with nice views from the top. The interior was furnished with medieval pieces as well. I'm not really too sure about the history of the castle, but it is apparently authentic and pretty old. It had cell phone antennas hidden up near the top which I thought was funny.



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Viennese Nightlife

On Tuesday night, Me, Roman and another one of his friends went out into Vienna at night. Every night during the summers, there is an outdoor opera festival in front of city hall in the center of town. It was a beautiful night. They set up a big screen with opera playing and there are probably 30 food and beer vendors selling all sorts of styles of food (Californian food was one of them). It is a pretty cool nightime event. I think this sort of thing could and should be imported to the U.S. After that we went out to some bars/cafes and just hung out. It was fun.

Schweizerhaus

We had dinner that night at the Schweizerhaus, also located in the Wiener Prater. Over the past few days whenever Roman would tell his friends that we were going to go to the Schweizerhaus their eyes would light up with envy. I was interested to find out what it was all about. The Schweizerhaus is a Biergarten which as you would expect, has great food and beer. Roman and Simona did all of the ordering and we got a pork knuckle which is a big, golden, crispy, fatty, and of course delicious piece of pork. It was very very good. We washed it down with a couple of liters of Budweiser (the Czech kind). It was an excellent dining experience and now I know why everyone was so envious of us going to the Schweizerhaus.

Wiener Prater

In the late afternoon we went to the Wiener Prater which is a big park in Vienna. There is an old amusement park there which has this big ferris wheel (Featured Prominently in "The Third Man"). The amusement park is so old fashioned, they have real horses pulling the merry go round (They did have bumper cars and stuff like that too).
My second favorite thing (more on the first in the next post) in the Wiener Prater was the nation of Kugelmugel. Read the Wikipedia description for background. It really is just a little sphere with some fence around it. Pretty funny stuff.

Me, Roman and Simona on the Opera tour.

Opera

In the afternoon we took a tour of the Staatsoper (Opera House). Again, it was mostly destroyed during WWII, but was later rebuilt. It was very impressive. For those of you who have seem Amadeus, it should look familiar.

Otto Wagner

After Belvedere, we did a bit more wandering around town. There are several Otto Wagner Art Nouveau builings in Vienna which are well known. We walked through a nice outdoor market and had some food too.

Belvedere Palace

My second day in Vienna involved more touring of the city with Roman and Simona. We started off at the Belvedere Palace seen here. It was very impressive with cool gardens too. Kind of like a mini Versailles. Mad props to the guy that cuts the hedges.