Whacking my head, sore feet, and pink bunnies: a weekend in Vienna

Hey everybody!!! Happy belated Thanksgiving! You'll be happy to know that I made two pumpkins pies (one for my family, and one for my class in school) from actual pumpkins last week! It took me forever, and I have discovered that peeling pumpkins is a lot of work. It tasted really good though, and my teacher even asked me for the recipe. How's life in the cold, white north? Here's some news to make you feel better, it snowed in Vienna last Thursday, and it's so cold I can see my breathe every morning. This is freakish weather for around here, it is definitely starting to look like I brought the winter along with me.

We had another Rotary trip this weekend, we went to Vienna. It all started on last Friday when, right afterschool I caught the train to Vienna, and the metro, and the bus to the stop closest to the youth hostel I needed. That's where things got kinda interesting. Me, being the genius child that I am, managed to walk about a half an hour in the wrong direction, then having to call our rotary supervisor, Walter, and telling him that I was lost. I did eventually find it however, and got all settled in. The first evening we went to the Volksoper. That's not the famous opera house, that one is the Statoper. (yes Corrine, I know I spelt that wrong). The Statoper was were the really rich nobility went, while the Volksoper was more for the middle class. It is also quite a bit smaller, but still really impressive. We saw the musical "Guys and Dolls." It was translated into German, but I could still understand enough to follow the story line though. It wasn't exactly a deep, epic storyline, but I was too excited to care! There was a life orchestra accompanying the actors, and it was all just so amazing to believe. I still want to try to see something in the Statoper though, just to be able to say I could. After that we went for Chinese food, and I discovered that Austrian Chinese food is WAY better than Canadian Chinese food, and if you didn't know Chinese food was already one of my favourites! The only downside is they don't give out fortune cookies here. That is more than made up for however by this amazing thing that is essentially a deep fried hunk of banana. It may not sound very appetizing but trust me on this, it's divine. By the time we were all done, it was pretty much time to head back to the hostel.

Saturday we were up bright and early. In the morning we walked to the Austrian Parliament and got to go on a tour. That was really neat because the building was built as a memorial to the original democracy, and therefore has the same set up as Athens! It was also kind of interesting because in every room we got a runover of the damage that was created when it was bombed during the second world war. The guide said something that I think was actually really interesting, he said, "The bombs destroyed our parliament building, but if they hadn't, we wouldn't have had any use for it anyway." I'd never really looked at it that way, but it's interesting to think about. After that we had lunch at a Greek restaurant, and then continued walking around the inner city, and made a quick stop off in Schlonburg, the summer palace. After that dinner that evening we were given free time till our midnight curfew, leaving us with 5 and a half hours to fill. Me and a few other girls decided to walk back to the inner city (the historical part, and the shopping center) and look around a little. Of course since all the shops were closed, we were just walking, but it was still amazing. We saw a few street museums, and all the famous places lit up for the night. At around 9:30 we were tired and our feet were starting to hurt, so we stopped in one of Vienna's bazillion cafes for a snack and a warm drink. It was no nice and cozy in there! After that things really got interesting though. We were just walking down the street when Svenja starting squealing and jumping up and down clapping her hands. I was about to ask her what was going in when I heard more squealing behind me. I spun around to see what it was, and there were five guys squealing, jumping and clapping just like Svenja. What was really interesting however was that they were all wearing bright pink rabbit costumes. If you've ever seen the Friends episode with the Halloween costumes you can picture them! Once the squealing/jumping/clapping subsided we took a few pictures taken with them and managed to piece together that they were actually at a bachelor party. After they left we spent about five minutes laughing hysterically at the bizarre situation that we had managed to find ourselves in, then carried along our way. At around 10:45 Bailey rather abruptly decided that we should pursue a career as street musicians. She made us all line up in front of a big statue, stole my hat to collect money, and we sang do-re-mi from the sound of music. We didn't get any money, only a lot of wierd looks, but that's probably because we were all laughing so hard we could barely get the words out. We gave up after one song, decided to take our musical talent on the road. That worked out a little bit better and we even managed to get a little applause out of it! Then we were all tired and went back to the hostel for some much needed sleep, and to give our poor aching feet a break.

Today (it's still Sunday as I'm writing this) we went on a bus tour around Vienna. That wasn't actually very much fun. We got off every now and then to look at everything, but it was all much too fast to really appreciate. It also didn't help that the bus really didn't like me. I hit my head 5 times, banged my knee, tripped in the aisle, fell into my seat, and almost fell down the stairs (it was a double decker bus!). That was the end of the rotary planned weekend, but since some of my friends had to wait for their trains, and Daniella and I had planned everything thinking I would be getting home a little later, we decided on one last stop. We went to Demel, one of the oldest "Konditories," (Cake and Sweet shop's) in Vienna. It is world renowned, and used to prepared all of the cakes for the royal family way back in the day. We all got a piece of cake (or Apfelstruedel in my case, no icing for me!) and it was really good.

That pretty much sums up the whole weekend. No wait, I almost forgot. In Vienna there are two places that are called pi-pi points. What they are, are themed toilets. No, I am not kidding. There's the Opera Toilet, and the Toilet of Modern Art. I have now officially used the toilet in both. I only have one thing to say: It's so not worth the money to get in. Barring outhouses, I think those were the two nastiest bathrooms I've ever been in. They were both really dirty, and smelly. The opera bathrooms only cool feature was that there was opera music playing, and the Modern Art one only had coolly shaped mirrors. Not worth the 60 cents you pay to get in there, that's 10 cents more than the regular toilet!

Oh, I also learnt something really interesting that I've been wondering about for a while, why Austria has two flags. Since the big bird with the sickle and hammer is the emblem of the government, only government officials are allowed to fly it. It's actually illegal for a regular citizen to fly one! The people are only allowed to use the plain striped one.

Well, I hope life is going good for everyone there, and I'll try to get you pictures really soon,

Ellyn