I wasn’t exactly disappointed by Vienna, but it definitely wasn’t the type of city I expected it to be. It was actually very American. It reminded me a lot of San Francisco and even some parts of NYC at times. Sure it had the cool architecture going for it in places, but overall I was pretty underwhelmed.

Rewinding: My first night in Vienna was pretty mellow. Actually it was very mellow. I went to the grocery store next to the hostel, grabbed myself some yogurt and muesli and pretty much just settled in and sorted out what to do over the next 2 days.

Since I was asleep so dang early (before midnight!), I was also up really early and managed to get up, shower, and be on my way to Schloss Schönbrunn by 9:15AM. Whew! I didn’t want to go into the palace, but I’d heard the gardens were really beautiful, so I figured I’d roam around there for a bit.

One of the guys at the desk at the hostel recommended the garden and said “it’s only half the size it used to be, but it’s still pretty big.” I wasn’t expecting much, but I had two entire days to roam around so I figured I’d check it out. I think the word “garden” was throwing me off, because this certainly wasn’t a garden. It was a park. And, like always, I get lost in parks. This park was no exception.

I wound through the paths for a long while til I found myself at the top of this hill that had pretty neat views of the city. I also stopped at the fountain of Neptune which was turned on for the day only a few minutes after I got there (yeah, that’s how early I was up!)

The park was pretty, but I really wasn’t in the mood to just sit around and take in the scenery so early in the morning. I wanted to be more productive, so I decided to hop on the train back to the main part of town and to the Naschmarkt.

Saturdays are flea market days at the Naschmarkt so I thought that could be entertaining for a while. It was soooooooooooooo crowded though. It was fun to poke around the various tables, but, though the vintage cameras were tempting, I didn’t end up buying anything.

I was, however, in desperate need of some food. I hadn’t eaten yet and it was really, really warm out. I went to the food portion of the market and grabbed myself some cherries (they’re really easy to eat on the go) and some dried banana slices. I also went to the grocery store to grab some drinks – they’re always cheaper there.

Speaking of cheaper: I didn’t know that Red Bull is Austrian and their headquarters is just outside of Salzburg. Consequently, Red Bull is really cheap (well, relative to what we pay in the States). I decided to get a can just because and kept walking.

When I twittered about arriving in Vienna, I got a bunch of responses directing me to the Museum Quartier (the MQ). I’ve avoided museums for this entire trip, so I was going to skip it entirely, but I’m so glad I didn’t! Armed with my cherries, fanta, and tired feet I arrived at the MQ. This was, by far, my favorite part about Vienna.

The MQ is this great little area in the middle of town with lots of museums and public spaces. It’s best known for these weirdly shaped benches that are scattered all throughout the square and seems to be frequented by college-aged people as a hangout spot. There were cafes all around, but I’d read it was best to BYO, so I did. The cafes also pumped music into the square which added to the hangout factor.

So I grabbed a bench. It’s tough to describe the shape of these benches, but they’re designed for lounging. I wasn’t planning on staying for long – perhaps long enough to snap a few photos, drink down my Red Bull, and eat some cherries, but somehow a few minutes turned into a few hours.

I’m a huge fan of public spaces like the MQ – the kind that let you just relax, hang out, and do whatever you want to do, but even if you’re completely alone you still feel like you’re a part of the bigger community. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it just has a great feeling about it.

Anyway…I was feeling particularly reflective that afternoon. I don’t know if it was the music, the people, being surrounded by museums, or finally having time to myself after being with other people for a few weeks, but I grabbed this tiny notebook I’ve been keeping in my backpack and started writing all sorts of stuff – pretty much whatever came to my mind over the course of those 2-3 hours. It was fantastic. I got to just relax and do my own thing, something I could have easily done at home, but I got to experience more of day-to-day Vienna instead of tourist Vienna. I’d take these sorts of experiences over seeing another palace any day.

I was so into my own world as I sat in the MQ that I didn’t really notice just how sunny it was and how tanned I was getting. I didn’t have any sunscreen on and it’d already been a few hours, so I decided it was time to move on.

There were a few more places I had to see (I call them “the usuals – the usual tourist spots where you go, snap a photo of some building or statue, and move on) so I headed in that direction. Snap, snap, snap through some government buildings, past some museums and more government buildings, and then I heard some classical music coming from a park-looking area. I’m always drawn to the music, so I detoured. The park was really crowded – the benches that lined the path were completely full and there seemed to be some sort of commotion. I kept going to see what was up, following the music until I stumbled upon some sort of festival. I couldn’t really tell from the signs, but it looked like some sort of film festival.

At first I thought I’d stumbled into a beer garden, but after seeing the various food stalls lining the square and the types of food people were carrying around, I knew it couldn’t be. I walked about three circuits of the place before I finally settled on something to eat. This wasn’t just festival food, this was really high-quality stuff! It looked to be mostly local restaurants, but the food choices were very international – there was Mexican, American, Japanese, Greek, you name it! Though I’d snacked pretty recently I decided that I couldn’t pass up a spot like this so I decided on some potato wedges and a cherry schnapps type concoction from the American stand. Why was I so unadventurous with my eating? Well it was the 4th of July and I wanted something “American”. I wasn’t hungry enough for an entire burger, so I just got some fries and ketchup and chose the cherry thing because it looked intriguing and I considered it an homage to George Washington. Even while in Europe, I’m a sucker for tradition and cheeziness.

So I sat down with my fries and bizarre cherry drink and just enjoyed the hustle and bustle around me. I have no idea where I was or why those stands were there, but it was fun! If this is how they do festivals in Europe, the festivals in San Francisco could take a few pointers!

Sufficiently stuffed and really exhausted from spending so much time baking in the sun, I decided to head back to the hostel. I’d been walking around for over 8 hours at this point and I was just dead. It was a good kind of dead though. A satisfying kind.

I spent the rest of the evening just hanging around the hostel and trying to organize my life back at home in preparation for my return (doing things like ordering The Sims 3, reactivating my Netflix account, poking are craigslist for an apartment, and looking through Ikea for furniture for said apartment.

When I first got to Vienna I saw a sign saying that you could do a day trip to Bratislava, Slovakia which is only about an hour’s ferry ride from Vienna. I decided that it would be a good thing to do for one of my days in Vienna and planned that for the next morning.

I went to bed early again, but I didn’t get very much sleep that night. Let’s just say that one of the 3 other girls in my room brought some company back with her for the evening and they weren’t exactly discrete about it.

The two other girls in the room and I woke up around the same time and just looked at each other saying “What the eff!?” We decided to go down for breakfast in hopes that the 4th girl would be out of the room before we got back. At some point in the middle of the night while I was kept awake by the rude French girl I realized that the next day was Sunday and that Sunday in Europe basically means “don’t bother leaving your house to do anything besides going for a stroll through the park” because absolutely NOTHING is open. Not even the grocery store!

This led to two things: 1) I didn’t go to Bratislava because what’s the point in going somewhere to be greeted by nothing but gated up storefronts? and 2) I had the BEST BREAKFAST EVER.

Seriously, this breakfast was amazing. It was only 3.70 Euro and was basically a feast. 3 types of bread, butter, cream cheese, jam, nutella, peanut butter, ham, salami, cheese, cucumbers, peppers, hard boiled eggs, cereal, yogurt, muesli, fruit, and I’m sure I could go on for a bit longer. You have to understand the mentality of a backpacker to appreciate why this was so exciting, but in a very short period of time I found myself with a plate piled high with a little bit of nearly everything at the buffet and even went back for seconds. It was probably the most satisfying breakfast I’ve ever had. I managed to hit every single one of my food groups in ONE MEAL. That’s really tough to do around here and it sometimes takes me a few days to accomplish. Breakfast was so filling that I wasn’t even remotely hungry for the next 12 hours! Now that’s a good breakfast.

With nothing really on my agenda for the day I decided to take a lazy day. I felt like I’d gotten everything I wanted to out of Vienna and that even though I didn’t cover EVERYTHING in the city, I was content with what I’d experienced and wasn’t going to go see X building or Y statue just because you’re supposed to.

I ended up spending nearly the entire day in the common area watching Wimbledon with nearly the entire hostel, especially as the final sets came on. I’m not a tennis fan, generally, but that was a really good match.

Post-Wimbledon and now starving, I decided that I needed one more thing before I left Vienna: Wiener Schnitzel. Luckily for me, there’s a restaurant that serves just that right around the corner from the hostel. Off I went. Mmmmm.

The next morning I had yet another wonderful breakfast (not as big this time because I knew I would be spending the day on the train) and went for a little bit of a walk through the shopping district before I got on the train. I’ve been dying for some new clothes lately, but I settled on getting just one tank top to tide me over.

Back to the hostel and on the train to Prague! My last stop before my final city. I’m still completely shocked by just how quickly time can fly!

Though I wouldn’t say that Vienna was one of my favorite cities of the trip, I would say that it’s definitely the type of city I could see myself living in. Perhaps I should start working on my German?

Because I had decided to go to Salzburg at the last minute (I love spontanaeity, especially when traveling!) I had to find myself a hostel – a task that is becoming increasingly difficult as we reach the high season. Hostelworld only listed about 5 hostels in Salzburg, 2 of which didn’t have any ratings at all. The best rated hostel (YoHo) was all booked out. Nathan and I settled on the next best one and booked our beds. It wasn’t in the most central location, but it was better than sleeping on a bench.

While en route we decided that since YoHo is only a few mintues from the train station we’d be arriving in that we’d give it a shot and just walk there in hopes that someone didn’t show up or that someone left early and that there were beds available. After getting a bit lost (seriously, why can’t they put street signs around the train station so that people can orient themselves before they’ve walked 5 blocks in the wrong direction?) we made it to YoHo and surprise, surprise: there were lots of available beds. It turns out that they’re changing their booking system and hostelworld is showing them as booked out even though they’re not. Go us!

YoHo was a really nice spot. Really well-located and the rooms were clean and spacious. That’s pretty much all you could ask for. Our roommates for both nights were also really nice people which makes things even better. Oh…and the best part: They play The Sound of Music every day at 10 AM and also upon request.

After settling into our room Nathan and I decided to go for a wander into the Old Town. We grabbed our maps and set out with no particular destination, which is really the best way to go in my opinion!

Our first stop was a pastry shop. It was the first food shop we’d come across after leaving the hostel and we were both kind of hungry. I got some sort of lemony fluffy roll thing. Mmmmmmm. ANYWAY…

So we ate our pastries and crossed the street to a park. We didn’t know it at the time but it was Mirabell Gardens. The landscaping in that place is absolutely gorgeous! I didn’t exactly realize where I was until I saw the arbor. I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not it was the one they ran through in the movie, but I took a few photos just in case. It turned out that I was right – that was the arbor. And not just that – I’d passed the Do-Re-Mi steps, the fountain they run around, the statues they pull the needle through the thread through and more! This place was a veritable treasure trove of Sound of Music nerdery!

I can’t exactly remember where we went after the park, but it was in the general direction of the Old Town. We crossed the bridge over the Salzach and ta-da, there we were. At first it was a little too touristy and there were way too many American shops lining the streets. It was cute (nicest McDonald’s ever), but it wasn’t what we were looking for. We then stumbled upon this random car tunnel thing by these murals of horses. I didn’t recognize them at first, but it turns out they’re in the movie too. We went through the tunnel (it was intriguing) and didn’t find anything on the other side so we just went right back in the other direction.

More wandering and we came across some more squares, some shops, and some markets, where I stopped off to get an apple-filled pretzel. Soooo tasty. The streets get to be a bit like Venice at times – they wind and weave and you really have no idea where you are, but it was so pretty. So many churches and steeples and it was all just so quaint and picturesque!

At one point we turned a corner out of curiosity and found ourselves in a cemetery – a really beautiful and ornate cemetery. It reminded me of the scene in The Sound of Music where the family is hiding from the Nazis behind some grave stones (and it turns out that the set was modeled after this particular cemetery). We walked through it just admiring how nicely appointed some of these gravestones were and we noticed some windows in the cliff. Nathan mentioned that it would be cool to go up there but we figured that it wasn’t an option. A bit further on, though, Nathan found the entrance to the catacombs. One Euro and you could climb to those windows.

Such amazing views! What a hidden treasure! The catacombs weren’t all that special – it was just some empty crevices in the walls and things, but that really wasn’t the point. I’m pretty sure it was just for the views. What a lucky find!

So…then we wandered some more and found ourselves at the entrance to the funicular that takes you up to the fortress high above Salzburg (the name escapes me at the moment). we decided to go for it. More great views! The fortress itself was really cool (I could definitely live there!), but the museums and things inside weren’t particularly interesting. The only things I did enjoy were the few rooms such as the bedroom (it had a toilet that basically stuck out beyond the main plane of the wall and basically just dropped everything down about 5 stories. Grossss…) and some other rooms that were absolutely beautiful. I wasn’t too interested in the military things that were on display, but it was still a cool mini-trip. We decided to walk down instead of taking the funicular. Those hills are STEEP. Like San Francisco steep. Good thing we decided to take the funicular up.

I’m pretty sure that after the fortress we decided to head back in the direction our hostel. We met our roommates and chatted for a bit and decided to get dinner in the hostel. The six of us ate together and afterwards we decided to go for yet another wander around Salzburg, but this time it was dark out.

Salzburg is also gorgeous at night and it feels incredibly safe. We found some really cool little spots like this shop that sold really ornately decorated Easter eggs and things like that. We also walked over the Mozart bridge (yet another spot from the Do-Re-Mi song!). It was a nice little jaunt and it made me love Salzburg even more.

The next day I was scheduled to go on The Sound of Music tour. I knew it was a tourist trap, but come on. I had to do it. I was scheduled to get the 9AM tour so that I could be back with enough time to explore the city and anything that I missed. I was waiting in the lobby along with six other people. 9:40AM rolled along and still no bus. We finally decided to ask reception what was up. OH. They forgot us. LOVELY. They said we could take the afternoon tour.

So now it’s almost 10AM and I have about 3 hours to kill. Katie, one of the girls also waiting for the tour wanted to go up to the fortress and I knew I wanted to go back to the Old Town just to wander around some more. I ended up showing her the way to the fortress (it’s amazing how quickly you can get oriented to some cities but how lost you will always get in others) and then went off on my own. I don’t know where I went really. I passed the Mozart statue at one point, but that’s the only new spot I can think of.

On my way back, though, I decided to stop off at Mirabell Gardens again so that I could take some more pictures and just maybe plop down on a bench for a few minutes to kill time. I ended up sitting there for about 45 minutes, just people watching and attempting to read some of the book that I had in my backpack. Then I started to get hungry.

Excellent timing, too. Right across the street from Mirabel Gardens is a church and Mirabellplatz whose parking lot had been turned into a market for the day. WIN! It was absolutely packed. I didn’t really know what I wanted, but I ended up getting a pretzel (when in Rome, right?) and a 1/4 kilo of fresh cherries for super cheap. (Side note: I still associate kilos with drug busts. Thanks for the brainwashing, American movies.)

I walked back to the hostel with my snacks, grabbed my laptop, and sat down in the common room to catch the end of the daily showing of The Sound of Music. I love the little moments like that where you’re not doing anything particularly special, but the fact that you’re in a cool place doing something that you don’t normally get a chance to do at home makes it all the more fun and memorable.

Then it was time for the tour. They remembered us this time.

The tour guide was SUCH a cheezball. Really. I don’t think there’s a word in the dictionary to explain this guy. I can probably do a good impression if you see me in person, but wow. The tour itself was…decent I guess. I wasn’t too amazed by it, mostly because the trivia he was telling us wasn’t all that new. I’d heard most of it before – in the Special Features section of the DVD (NOW do you see why I love the special features!?).

It was cool to get to see some of the shooting locations though. Most were from afar (like the I Have Confidence yellow path) and some weren’t accessible any more (like the gazebo), but when we got further into the countryside, in the pouring rain I might add, we did get to stop in this small town where they filmed the wedding scene. The church was really gorgeous and the apple strudel was even better!

Back at the hostel after the tour I met up with some of the people I’d met during the day and we went out to dinner, which was quite tasty. I believe the place was called Indigo. It was in my guidebook and I wouldn’t have gone if these other 3 girls weren’t, but I was hungry and feeling spontaneous (I was just in the common room with my laptop, but luckily I had some money in my pocket) so I went along. It was nice to have something DIFFFERENT to eat. Bread, pasta, and wiener schnitzel get old after a while.

Nathan and I caught up later (he’d been to the Eagle’s Nest for the day) and I spent my evening watching The Sound of Music (the whole thing this time) with about 25 other people in the common room. I hadn’t seen the whole thing in agessss and it was actually pretty cool to watch it in the city in which it was filmed having just seen most of the locations!

The next morning Nathan and I were headed to Vienna. I was sad to leave Salzburg, but there’s really not all that much to do as a tourist, so it was time. I’d love to go back there during the Christmas season though. It seems like the perfect place to spend the holiday!