this is how it began... with our last meal in the u.s. at a japanese restaurant in sfo, with mr. gimpy doing some face grabbing. right, so alex smashed his hand two nights before we left, and after the swelling continued at a grand rate the day before departure, our last night at home was spent getting two rounds of x-rays (revealing a fractured 5th metacarpal) and a sort of DIY cast thing made by 3M, which has to stay on for about 3 - 4 weeks. which means lovely mummy hand photos and a bit of help getting in and out of his jacket.
we arrived in vienna in the afternoon last thursday after a rather cramped early 90s style flight courtesy of united airlines. once settled in our hostel we retired at 3:30 for what we initially thought would be a pre-dinner nap, but instead turned into a good night's sleep until about oh, maybe 2:45am. luckily alex has a splendid voice for lord of the rings read-alouds, so that got us through to nearly 5am, when we decided it was time to get up, get showered, and get ready for the 7:30 hostel breakfast, a bit of shopping, and an 11am walking tour. our guide was a laid-back portuguese guy who gave us good history and stories, and hit what seemed to be all of the important sites in the older parts of the city. he also brought us to a 350 year old wine cellar, where an adorable old austrian man gave us a brief history of the place and introduced us to "sturm," a seasonal wine that's highly alcoholic for something that tastes rather like juice. quite yummy. yesterday was spent at the MAK, the museum of applied art, which i was really into. it had rooms full of furniture, textiles, and some paintings, mostly modern and contemporary. mostly furniture, really, and lots of art deco. quite nice. we also swung by the hunderwasserhaus, built by this crazy austrian architect who also designed a high school in the town where i lived in germany. his buildings are sort of like the creative musings of a child come to life.





we finished the day by wandering through the egyptian, greek, and roman rooms of the fine arts museum - formerly the private collection of the hapsburgs, and therefore housed in what can be described as nothing less than a palace.

today we got up incredibly early yet again, after having gone to sleep at a rather ridiculously early hour, and headed to the true hapsburg palace - schoenbrunn. there we wandered the impressively large grounds and watched some sort of viennese track meet meander its way all over the area. after getting our fill of palatial exorbitance we took the #6 streetcar all the way across town to the central cemetery, the final resting place of such greats as mozart, beethoven, and strauss.


right now, however, i'm running low on internet time here at the hostel and will upload some more photos and then update further next week from croatia! tomorrow we head down to graz, where we're staying with veronika, our first couchsurf buddy. hope that works out!