Travels with Myself and Another: Day 34/35 (3-4/1/10) Madrid --> Vienna (There's No Kangaroos in Austria)

As faithful readers will be well aware, we spent all of our Spanish leg getting up at unreasonable hours, usually in the afternoon or late morning. On our last day, we swung to the opposite extreme, rising at 5:30 in the morning. Very, very unpleasant. Yet somehow we staggered out into the lobby, luggage in tow, by 6 in order to make our airport shuttle. We actually made it out the door about 10 minutes later after a confusing encounter with the woman at the desk who spoke only Spanish: she thought we hadn't paid (we had), we thought our payment had been noted on the register (it hadn't). We sorted it all out only after the computer in the lobby was fired up and a conversation was conducted via Google Translator. In the end, we made it to the airport without too much of a hassle.

Iberia's online check-in system turned out to be a big scam. The line to drop bags, the one thing we were required to do at the actual airport, stretched well outside the roped-off area and around the corner into other parts of the terminal. But then the airline mercifully decided that one person checking everyone's bags probably couldn't manage, and opened the rest of the desks. We chose some airport cafeteria for breakfast, which was a terrible choice in hindsight after Zarah found maggots in her orange juice. Yummy. But before too long we were on the plane for Vienna, leaving Spain behind as we brushed up on our German and prepared once more for the cold.

The first thing we learned about Vienna: the phrasebook was hardly necessary. Whilst they may have appreciated our feeble attempts at "bitte" and "danke", all the Austrians we met spoke English and did so very well. We caught a shuttle into the city, and arrived at Wombat's City Hostel/Lounge, one of a number of Australian-sounding hostels across central and eastern Europe (Wombat's is also in Munich and Berlin; Budapest hosts the Boomerang and Aboriginal Hostels. Also, should you walk into a Vienna souvenir shop, you may choose to purchase a "There's No Kangaroos in Austria" t-shirt). It's clean and new, and has nice amenities. The downstairs bar is a cut above your normal hostel drinking hole, and has a nice series of happy hour specials between 6 and 8. We didn't really get up to very much that first afternoon/evening. We were tired and Vienna was more or less closed for business, being a Sunday and all. We wandered out for lunch, eating at one of the innumerable pizza/kebab/schnitzel combination shops surrounding the hostel. When we came back, our room was steadily filling as other guests arrived. We went to the bar, chatted to some people and headed out to a traditional Viennese restaurant around the corner, Mozartstube (they love Mozart here). It was here that Zarah discovered the joy of some kind of dish consisting of a potato stuffed with ground meat on a bed of saurkraut. Much fun was had.

Vienna also saw us take control of our sleeping pattern back. It was early to bed and early to rise as we got up at 7am (7:10 for me, I must confess: upon being awoken, I pretended that we had never agreed on a 7am start at all). We ate breakfast at the hostel, which was basic but cheap and nice. And then we hit the streets. We caught the tram down to the Schonbrunn Palace, the summer residence of the Hapsburgs. Those Hapsburgs sure knew how to live. The Schonbrunn, which is huge, is just one of like a bajillion palaces within Vienna proper.

The tour included the room Napoleon slept in during both his occupations of Vienna, the ballroom where Kennedy and Khrushchev met and much more. We were on an audio tour - there were no English tours that day - but we did have to navigate our way past tour groups whose guides were speaking German, Japanese and Hungarian. We walked around the grounds and then visited the nearby zoo (apparently the oldest zoo in the world). Most of the animals were asleep or trying to escape the cold (the monkeys were huddling together) but others were more active: the polar bears were fighting and the Siberian Tiger was prowling about.

After the zoo, we walked up the hill to the Gloriette, a monument/dining room overlooking the Palace and the city itself. It was very nice up there. Whilst at the top, we took the time to have a coffee at the cafe which has been built into the structure, a unique and interesting experience.

We walked back down and got on the U-Bahn to get to the Naschmarkt, an outdoor market space sitting over the now-sunken Wien River. We ate first at an Italian restaurant off the side of the market, which was nice. I thought it was good to have pasta again - Spain was very big on its own cuisine, but I had a hard time finding other stuff.

We did have one awkward encounter with the waitress. Zarah had seen a soup special advertised outside, and asked about it; the waitress thought Zarah was asking about some lamb dish also placed outside on a board. So we had Zarah saying, "Soup, soup?" and the waitress, thinking that we didn't understand that she was saying 'lamb', resorting to going "Baaa, baaa." Eventually we sorted out our communication difficulties and had a nice meal before heading into the markets. A lot of the stuff - clothes and the like - was a bit so-so, but the food on display was amazing. Fresh fruit, cheese, meat, fish all on display with small restaurants and bars integrated into it on a strip of road about 1.5km long.

Once we were done at the market, we walked up to the old city centre and got on the Ring Tram, a special tram that just does a loop around the city centre. Onboard, it's fitted out with equipment for an audio tour of the city's beautiful buildings: museums, palaces, the Austrian parliament, city hall, statues, the old Vienna stock exchange (the exchange had to relocate due to high rents).

It was lovely, especially as the sun was going down. The whole process took about half an hour. After that, we needed to warm up, so we headed to an Aida cafe. It's a local chain which receives much praise in guidebooks and stuff, and has a cool retro feel. A middle-aged Viennese couple at the table next to us complimented us on our choice of coffee shops, saying we had chosen the best in all of Vienna. It was nice to be validated.

After a busy, busy day we came back to the hostel, regrouped and went out for dinner. Tonight's meal was at Pizza Mafiosi, a weird but exceptionally cheap pizzeria located a few minutes away by tram. We had a massive pizza and a couple of drinks for about 10 Euros. Money well spent, as far as I was concerned.