Wikimecum:Vienna, Austria
Vienna, also known as Wien, is the capital of Austria with a population of 1.7 million people. Austria is a German speaking country surrounded by Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Liechtenstein. Austria's current form of currency is the Euro, but their former form of currency was the Schilling.
I traveled to Vienna with three other girls on my second weekend of being in Venice (the weekend of November 1st and 2nd, 2008). It was a very spur the moment kind of trip and was planned within a few days of leaving. Despite the fact that we didn't have a lot of time to make travel arrangements it was a very easy trip to plan.
Getting There
In order to get to Vienna we took a train leaving out of Venezia Santa Lucia, which is Venice's railway station, and arrived in Vienna's South Train Station (Wien Suedbahnhof). We left on a 12:37 a.m. train Saturday morning (known as a midnight train) and arrived in Vienna around 9 a.m. that morning. We had to change trians in Mestre, which is the station next to Venezia Santa Lucia. We waited about an hour, but once we were on the train we were able to sleep for the rest of the ride.
In order to check times for the trains you can either go to the train station and talk to someone who works there or you can visit www.trenitalia.com and then search for times on the website. The website is in English you just have to change the options on the top of the webpage. I found that it was easiest to search for the train times online and then go and purchase the ticket in the train station.
Prior to going to Vienna I purchased a Euro Rail pass because I knew I was going to be doing a lot of train travel. There are various passes that you can choose from, but the one that I purchased gave me 6 days of travel within a 2 month period and cost about 250 Euros. The only thing with the Euro Rail pass is that you still have to make a seat reservations for the train you want which you have to pay for. I believe the seat reservation for Vienna cost 14 Euros round trip with the Euro Rail pass (the cost for the train ticket without a Euro Rail pass is about 140 Euros round trip).
Where to Stay
We made reservations to stay in the Westend City Hostel in the city center. It cost about 19 Euros a night and we stayed in a room with 8 beds. Since there was only 4 of us, we had 4 other people in our room that we did not know. You can get rooms that have either 2, 4, 6, 8, and 12 beds in a room. Our room also had our own bathroom which was nice (not all hostels have bathrooms in every room). The hostel allowed us to store our bags there before and after we checked in and also offerend breakfast which was a nice advantage. I really enjoyed the hostel, but if I were to stay there again I would get a room for the exact amount of people that I was traveling with.
The hostel was in a great location which was a big plus. From the South Train Station it took about 20 minutes to get to our hostel by tram, which wasn't a bad trip at all. Our hostel was located in a nice neighborhood that had a lot to do. It was also located off of one of the major shopping streets in Vienna (Mariahilfer Strasse).
When you check into your hostel be sure to ask them for a map. All of the hostels that I stayed at offered maps of the city with key places pointed out. I found these maps to be very helpful and always got us where we needed to go.
Moving Around the City
The city has both a Tram and Subway system that runs throughout the city. We paid for an individual ticket for the Tram to get to our hostel and then used the subway system for the rest of our stay. The subway's were very easy to use and made it easy to move around the city. Many times we would have to take two different subways to get to where we wanted to go, but it never took us long. It cost 5.70 Euros for a 24 hour subway pass, which allowed you to ride the subway as many times as you wanted in a 24 hour period. You can buy a pass at any of the subway stops.
Our Weekend Itinerary
After we stopped by our hostel and dropped off our bags, we decided to walk around and see what the city was like. After walking around for a bit we realized that a lot of stores were closed. We thought this was strange because it was a Saturday and most of the stores should have been open. We came to find out that it was a holiday of some sort and that all of the stores would be closed for the day. This was kind of bad luck since all of the stores are closed on Sunday as well. This turned out to be a good thing however, because we spent all of our time sightseeing and no time shopping.
We walked all the way down Mariahilfer Strasse, which lead us to the Burg Garden and Volks Garden. We spent time walking round the gardens and looking at the various statues (there is a very impressive stature of Mozart). The gardens were beautiful and it was very relaxing to walk around them and enjoy the sights and people. The far side of the garden led us to the Alte Hofburg, Boys Choir and the Albertina (a museum which houses a the largest graphic collections). We decided not to go inside any of these buildings, but instead went to a local information center to find out more about the city.
The information center had hundreds of brocures and information packets about the city. After spending about 20 minutes here we decided to take a bus tour. We chose the Red Bus City Tour because it was very affordable (only 13 Euros for about 2 hours) and showed us all parts of the city. It highlighted over 20 different buildings in Vienna. There was also a 20 minute break where we got to walk around and shop at a few tourist stores. The bus had a headset with various languages and talked about the important buildings that we passed.
On the bus tour we learned that there was a huge ferris wheel still functioning in the city. We decided that it would be fun to check it out and see what it was like. Upon arriving at the ferris wheel we also realized that there was an amusement park. We were extremely exicted and found tons of fun rides to go on and over 200 different game booths. You had to pay per ride, but they were very affordable (prices ranged from 1 Euro to 5 Euros). We only went on 2 rides and had an amazing time. Our favorite had a huge lightening rod on top and harnessed you in and then swung you forwards and backwards while spinning you around. It was a lot of fun and if you go to Vienna you have to go to the amusement park.
After the amusement park we went out to dinner at an Australian pub called Crossfields. It was very close to the information center and that is how we found it. They had really good burgers and bar food and was reasonably priced. It was a nice environment, but very busy. I suggest making a reservation before you go. It may sound a bit ridiculous, but we had to wait for like 30 minutes to get a table. Although this may not seem like a long wait, no other restaurant we looked at had a wait.
On our last day in Vienna we decided to do a bit more touring around. There was much to see, but we eventually decided on going to the Schonburnn Palace. The palace was very extravagant and located on a huge piece of property. Not only was there a palace, but there was also extensive gardens, a bakery, a zoo, and much more. The bakery had an interesting Strudle making tour that we wanted to go on, however they cancelled the one we wanted to go on so we missed out on that. The gardens were beautiful and we had a great time walking around them. It does not cost anything to go see the gardens, but if you want to go into the palace or do any of the extra things you will have to pay for that.
We had a 1 p.m. train to catch so after the Schonburnn Palace we had to go to the train station. We cut the timing a bit close so I would suggest leaving plenty of time to make sure you get to the train station a good 20 minutes or more before you train leaves.
Other Things to Do
- Go Bungee Jumping at the Danube Tower - This is only available on certain weekends and costs about 140 Euros, so look into this before you go to Vienna.
- Visit the Old Vienna Brandy Museum - The museum is only open on certain days of the week and are by appointments only. We did find another tour that had to do with brandy tasting, but we found out this information in our hostel. If this is something that interests you, I would look into it before you get there.
- Go ice skating - There was an ice skating rink near the subway stop Stadtpark. I saw people skating while we were on our bus tour and that that it would be fun. We went to check it out after and found out that we could rent skates and everything there. We decided not to do it, but if I went there again I would go skating.
- Visit St. Michael's Church - We didn't get to go inside, but it looked quite amazing from the outside.
- Opera House
References
--Jlund 04:16, 13 January 2009 (UTC)