Vienna

Before I get on to Vienna, I have to share a picture that was meant to go in the Prague post. We snapped this photo of a restaurant in Prague because we thought it was just a little too close to Mad Cow Steakhouse.

"Our steaks cause spongy degeneration in your brain!"

Anyway. We were surprised how chilly it was in Prague, but we were not even close to prepared for the August winter that greeted us in Vienna. It rained without stopping, and the cold and wind kept us bundled up almost beyond recognition—I swear it's really us in these photos.

Our room was close to downtown, so after we put our stuff down, we went out for a preliminary investigation. The first thing we ran into was this Mozart memorial.

They love that guy around here, probably because of that sassy swagger.

As we wandered through downtown, we agreed that Vienna looks quite a bit like Prague, only on a larger scale. The architecture is very similar, but Vienna's wide promenades and tall buildings make it as imposing and impressive as Prague is cozy and quaint.

The anchor of Vienna's tourist district is the towering mass of Stephansdom. It's impossible to show in a photo just how enormous it is unless you have a helicopter or a very tall tree, so I lifted this photo off a travel site to give you some idea:

It is large. The tower is 445 feet tall.

We wandered around it for a bit, then watched a street artist paint one of those spray-paint pictures with the shooting stars and fantasy waterfalls and whatnot. That's some talent, but who really hangs those things on their wall?

We took a restaurant recommendation from the Austria book the Ladners gave us for Christmas and enjoyed one of the best meals of our trip and a much-needed break from the cold.

The first order of business the next morning was a(nother) tower climb.

We put on our game faces and charged up the many, many stairs of Stephansdom's tallest tower. The view was great and all, but really, we were just happy to get out of the rain for a few minutes. It was terribly drafty in that stairwell, though—couldn't anybody do anything right in the twelfth century?

Cool double-headed eagle.

I'm getting cold just looking at these. We climbed back down and tried to catch the Ankeruhr at noon, but it was broken.

Phil had to drag me away from my shelter.

After that, we headed to the Prunksaal—a baroque library acknowledged as one of the most beautiful libraries in the world. It cost seven euros just to go in, so I went alone to get some photos. It absolutely lived up to the hype.

I could have stayed in there all day, snapping photos and smelling those old books, but we had things to do, and poor, wet Phil was falling asleep on a bench in the library foyer.

We took the subway out to the Belvedere complex, once the summer home(s) of some Habsburg prince who apparently needed two palaces right next to each other. It now houses an art museum with a beautiful Gustav Klimt collection. It was cold there, too. Weird.

The grounds were gorgeous. This next photo was taken from inside one of the palaces, and at the far end of the gardens is the other palace. In the gloomy distance, you can see the massive silhouette of Stephansdom.

I might as well have jumped in; I wouldn't have been any wetter.

We sloshed onto the train and rode out to Vienna's HUGE cemetery (approximately one square mile) in search of some of our favorite dead people. It was a spooky place, all overgrown and deserted (maybe on account of the driving rain?). This guy was particularly creepy, and the handles on the slab are disconcerting.

A sign at the entrance mapped out several sections of the cemetery devoted to particular religious groups—Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and, to our surprise, Mormons. They weren't hard to spot:

Over 2.5 million corpses, and look who we ran into!

We also said hi to Brahms, Schubert, Schönberg, several Strausses, and another Mozart memorial. We sprinted back to the train station to avoid a miserable half-hour wait for the next train.

Our Austria book yielded another culinary jackpot—definitely the best meal of our trip. Potato pancakes, pork loin, roasted vegetables, and chanterelles in the most heavenly sauce.

Happy camper.

Vienna was beautiful, but our perception was colored by the oppressive weather. We were eager to move on to the last (and hopefully slightly warmer) leg of our trip: Croatia!

Praha and Česky Krumlov

Phil really wanted to write up the CZ leg of our trip, but I think you'll all forgive him for being swamped with secondary applications.

We took a later train to Prague than we had meant to, so poor Ivana Mikšik was pretty worried about us by the time we showed up. But we made it, at least, and Phil had no trouble remembering the way from the subway station to her house. It was a wonderful reunion (as far as I could tell, not speaking Czech), and she showed us upstairs to a nice little apartment--a comfortable bed, our own bathroom, and a fridge full of food. We had a short visit with Ivana before heading over to the Jiraseks' house for a dinner appointment.

Marketa had prepared a beautiful meal for us--no surprise there--and we had an excellent visit. Phil had fun practicing his Czech, and I had fun trying to figure out what was going on. I could understand a little, because of Czech's resemblance to Russian, but only about enough to know what was being discussed--family, food, even politics--but not what anyone thought of it. Anyway, the Jiraseks have two adorable dogs who understood my English perfectly. We looked through Zuza's wedding album over a delicious plum crisp and headed for the subway station so we could take a night stroll around the city. Thanks, Jiraseks!

Downtown Prague is INCREDIBLE. The moon and clouds were so dramatic that I took about a billion pictures. Here are just a few:

The National Museum

Tynsky Chram

Karlův Most

The Batmobile

The next day we hit the town again to see it in the light of day. We caught the apostles at the Orloj (Prague's Astronomical Clock)...

took another stroll on the Charles Bridge (there's Prague Castle behind us)...

and got the obligatory castle guard photo.

Ooh, a tower!

Let's climb it.

Wait, why are we doing this again?

Oh yeah. We had a beautiful view of the city, the Vltava, and the bridges. So naturally, the first thing I said when we got to the top was "Cool chicken." Phil laughed at me, but I stand by my assessment. We took some model shots of Phil and then headed back down.

We walked through all these tiny streets Prague is so famous for.

It's sort of pretty, I guess.

When we got back down to the river, we found the hospital where Mrs. Čechova (Phil's mother's "second mom") is staying. Luckily, it was visiting hours, and Phil got to give her the gift we had brought her and chat for a while. He dominated the arm-wrestling contest.

We made our way back to Ivana's house to get ready for the opera, and Ivana had made the MOST SCRUMPTIOUS blueberry dumplings.

These were the fluffiest, meltiest, smotheredest, most perfect dumplings I have ever eaten. I almost wanted to stay and eat more instead of going to the opera. But off we went...

La Traviata was amazing. Phil stayed awake through the whole thing (not counting intermission, because, come on; let's be realistic). We turned in early so we could catch an early bus to Česky Krumlov.

The bus ride was comfortable--we even had a stewardess (a ride attendant?) and free cocoa. My only complaint was the in-ride movie, a Christmas movie (in August) about a bunch of obnoxious adolescents rampaging through an airport, and probably a career low for Lewis Black. Phil tried to sleep and I concentrated on not poking my eyes out. Success on both counts.

A climb up to the castle seemed like a good way to stretch our legs.

We munched on sandwiches and strolled up to the castle gardens.

Sandwich face.

Handsome face.

The gardens were so pretty.

Here's how I felt about how pretty they were:

And here's how I felt about this log:

On our way back down to the village, Phil saw this thing, and he was like, "wow, look at this cool thing!" And I was like, "Uh, okay. Show me how cool it is." This is how cool it is:

I tore Phil away from his cool thing so we could eat lunch by the river. Deer goulash, yum!

This is what this wasp gets for trying to eat my food. Get your own food!

Here's Phil, sleeping repenting for killing that wasp:

By this point, our early bus ride had caught up with us, as evidenced by the remainder of our photos from that day.

Jessie: "Let me take a picture of you in front of the castle." Result:

"I love this flower. Phil, take a picture of me with this flower. I love it."

Phil was thrilled to climb to the top of the castle.

After a long, lazy, fun day, we moseyed back to the bus stop. Our bus ride back was with a different company. And by "company," I mean "guy with a bus, a mullet, and a stuffed animal collection." We snuck a photo of him using Phil as a decoy.

We made it back to Prague in one piece, despite our seatmate's powerful body odor and blasting Russian techno and my nearly catastrophic peemergency. All's well that ends well.

Tune in next week for Vienna!