Working Overseas: Vienna

When I arrived in Vienna Sunday morning, I was pretty tired from the trip, but I really wanted to make the most of my chance to see the city.  I was able to delay picking up my rental car and foisted by bags off on the rental agency with a promise that there was nothing ticking in them.

After some checking I got a ticket for the S7 train into Wien Mitte (Vienna Center), the country coming into Vienna was picturesque.



Once into Vienna proper, I got off the train and promptly wandered into a food festival called Genuss Festival in the Stadtpark, one of the larger parks in the city. There I bought myself a traditional Viennese meal, roasted pork with potatoes, mustard & fennel sauerkraut and dark bread, and of course a beer. The food was really good and having the experience of eating it in this picturesque park was quite something.



After I finished my meal, I wandered up through the narrow streets to St. Stephen's Cathedral the main cathedral in Vienna. The square around the cathedral was quite busy and inside there was a mass going on.



Unfortunately, right as I was leaving the cathedral, it started to rain, leaving me to huddle under the awning of a closed store until it let up a bit and I set off to the Hofburg, the imperial palace of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and residence of the President of Austria.



There I walked the grounds and visited the amazing State Hall of the Austrian National Library. The sheer number of books there and their obvious age was just astounding.



After leaving the State Hall, I found a nearby cafe and got my kafee and apfelstrudel.



I walked around the Hofburg and it's grounds and was about to leave, when I stumbled onto Café Central, which I had been trying to find before. The Cafe had been a central meeting house for many notable figures of the 19th and 20th centuries and I could not give up the chance to go in, plus I really needed another cup of coffee.



After I finished the coffee, I really needed to get to Brno, the drive there was interesting to say the least as it was raining pretty heavily and the sun was starting to set. I made it safely, and pretty much promptly crashed.

You can see the rest of the photos on SmugMug.