Smitten

You may wish to listen to this first, just to add to the experience.

Oh Vienna. How lovely you are. So many grand buildings, all gleaming and glorious. Clean, wide streets and pretty narrow lanes. Delicious sausages, good beer and wonderful cakes. Parks, bike lanes, fantastic public transport and amazing art. A rich history (seriously rich by the looks of the buildings), multi-cultural population and helpful service. Palaces, galleries, more palaces, more parks, more cakes. Wunderbar!

Alley-ey

Lovely

 

Grand-y

 

Happy

 

 

Yup, it's a winner.

And, to top it off, it's the home of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

Seriously.

They develop protocols for meeting aliens and stuff, what to say, where to take them etc. Pretty useful stuff. Who knew the UN did that? Have a read here.

Also, the lady in charge of it went to Otago University, just like Ernest Rutherford. Their physics department must be pretty hot.

 

Bruegel-y

Skippy

We only stayed a short time (it's not the cheapest place) but I'd come back for sure. It would be super fun in summer.

We saw some great art, especially Bruegels work. And lots of stupid intricate gold shiny fancy pointless decorative things that rich folks collected back in the 16 and 1700's.

We reckon all the galleries and museums that have work made of ivory should make massive donations to save the elephant organisations, because there were clearly an awful lot of elephants killed just to make pretty things.

 

Easter-y

In general it seems that Vienna is a very good city for living. There were cool Easter markets, lots of events advertised, quite a push for 'green' products, and they say that the public transport system is the second most used per capita in the world. It certainly is efficient. Even out in the suburbs the streets were clean and well kept, and there were lots of cyclists and runners and the such. I'd live there.

.......Oh Vienna.

 

 

p.s. if you did take the time (well spent you'll agree) to listen to Ultravox's great song you would have seen a big cathedral about half way through - that's St Stephens cathedral in the heart of Vienna. We went into the underground crypts there are saw lots and lots and lots of bones. Cool.