Vienna

Tressa and I arrived in Vienna from Berlin around Midnight on Monday, July 27th. As we prepared to get off the train Tressa thought it would be a good time to document how much junk we had to haul all over Europe for three months. I am much indebted to my wonderful wife for carrying various pieces of equipment across the continent, day after day, with nary a complaint...I don't know how I would have done it without her.




















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After spending the night in a hotel by the train station, Tressa helped me carry the equipment to the Natural History Museum. Having spent 5 weeks there in 2005, arriving at the museum felt almost like returning home, some where comfortable with people that you know. Another great benefit of arriving in Vienna was that my parents, my sister Caroline, and my aunt Sandy had arrived from Moscow to spend a week in Vienna. Getting to spend a week in Vienna with family was a lot of fun, and Tressa really appreciated the help hauling all our dirty laundry to the laundromat (by this point we were pretty tired of hand washing everything in hotel sinks). The museum staff had set Tressa and I up in the museum dormitories, which, in addition to being really inexpensive, was conveniently located just across the street from the museum. The dorm was really set up to be shared by two single people, a twin bed on each wall (think college dorms) but after we adjusted the furniture (and bought a fan) we had a pretty comfortable home for three weeks.


Since we were spending so little on housing (10 euros a night), Tressa and I were able to splurge a little on the some of Vienna's wide array of culinary delights. There was the classics, Sacher Torte and Melanges (Austrian version of a cappuccino), Lentils with bacon and bread dumplings, and there was the ethntic food; great Indian food (I can still smell the lamb korma) and then there was the sushi...

On our first Sunday we went to church and met up with Bob and Raija Lojek, who were friends of our Iowa City friends Sara and Jerry Steele when they all lived in the UK. They took us to lunch at a local Turkish restaurant and we began what would become a weekly ritual of spending the entire day together wandering around Vienna stopping here and there for something to drink or eat while enjoying some great conversation on virtually every topic under the sun.


The next Sunday Bob and Raija (who once lived in Japan) took us to a little Sushi restaurant. The sushi was great, but even better, the restaurant had a summer 1/2 off special on mixed sushi sets (10 pieces of nigiri and a maki roll for about $7). Thus, unbelievably, the cheapest food in Vienna was Sushi, and from that day on Tressa and I felt almost obligated to eat there...daily.

There is of course, no shortage of fun things to do in Vienna. In addition to being where I worked, the Natural History Museum in Vienna is one of our favorite museums. Opened in the late 1800's, the museum exhibits a huge collection of virtually everything found in nature.































































































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We're also big fans of the two Habsburg palaces: Schoenbrunn (summer palace) and the Hofburg (Winter palace). One of my favorite things about the Hofburg is that they've excavated part of one of the nearby squares to show the 5th century roman ruins that most of Vienna is built right on top of.