The last day of the program! My morning had to be occupied with business. I went to Westbahnhof to get a timetable for trains from Vienna to Olomouc, my first destination in my post-program travels. Olomouc is a university town in Moravia, that is to say the southeastern Czech Republic. It used to be the capital of Moravia, before it got swallowed up by the Habsburg empire, and after a number of different leaderships, is today joined with Bohemia as the Czech Republic.
After Westbahnhof I was walking around trying to find a suitable café. There was one that Dom Ambros told me had the best Apfelstrudel in the city, and I know it started with a G, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember where it was. I also kept an eye out for Café Hawelka, reputed to be a good one, but unfortunately I hadn’t brought my guide book and didn’t find that either. I walked by Cafés Landtmann and Griensteidl, but didn’t want to pay for their overpriced coffee. I did however find a stein I liked. It was in that little archway by of the Hofburg, across from the two symmetrical museum buildings. There was a little tourist shop with a stein that said Wien and Österreich in German. Most of the ones I found only had English on them. This one, I’ll admit, has Vienna and Austria in English on the other side, but I’ll just drink with the German side facing me. whatever, I’ve got a STEIN, bitches! Anyway, it was also about the cheapest price I’d seen for a stein of that size, which is kind of surprising considering the place’s location. Anyway on impulse I bought it, and the lady got it out of the window for me and wrapped it in bubble wrap and tissue paper. I walked around with it in my backpack. Let us hope that it survives two weeks of taking the trains around Europe. I hope the handle doesn’t break off.
So after that I got a few bread items from cheap street chain bakeries on my way to Praterstern. Our class met to take the giant Ferris wheel around and look at the city. I found out that the giant beautiful church, which I did not get to visit, what was pointed out by Dr. O on the bus tour our first week is called the Franz von Assisi Kirche, that is the St. Francis of Assisi Church. Dr. O doesn’t like it because it is not old enough (under 200 years old! It’s a baby among Viennese churches), but I thought it was big and beautiful and that it’s unfortunate I didn’t get to go inside.
After the wheel Kathy led us on the quest to find our restaurant. We didn’t exactly know where it was, and we didn’t exactly take the most direct route. However, after a few phone calls we managed to find the place. It was called Three Centimeters or something like that and is a pretty cool place. We reserved the entire basement floor, so we were kind of in a cellar place. Richard and I got to try dark wheat beers (dunkle Weißbiere), which Kathy had previously told us were really good. It took us a while to get them because the poor waitress had so many orders to fill. She was good-natured about it though. Also she’d keep bringing the drinks we ordered to the end of the table nearest the entrance, and the guys down there would be like, “Beers? Sure!” and take our drinks, so I had to go get them back a couple of times. In any case the beers were achieved. Our food were these swords with schnitzels and chicken breasts and large spicy peppers impaled upon them. And when I say swords, I mean SWORDS. Like a kind of medieval replica with a hilt and a crosspiece and a blade, with food on it. It was basically the greatest thing ever. Needless to say (keep in mind we’re all California undergraduates) we ended cleaning all the food off of the swords and fighting with them, or posing holding them and having our pictures taken.
After dinner people went off to the Ride Club, a group favorite, or the Siebenstern Brewery, also a group favorite, but I decided to just head back to the apartment since I had to get up early and pack the next day.
Also, this is kind of the end of the official graded blog, but I wanted to document my travels as much as possible, so if the blog continues it will just be brief kind of skimmings to save time. I’m not going to say thanks for reading because let’s face it, it’s not my fault if you waste hours of your life staring at a computer screen.
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