Vienna

Something I noticed in Salzburg seems to be true here as well: Austrians take their weekends very seriously. When I got into town last night, at 5:30 on a Saturday, the grocery stores were all closed. Today (Sunday) the hot dog stands are shuttered up.

Vienna is huge. Just the downtown area has a radius of something like 6 km. Despite the length of the walk from the hostel, which is near the train station and therefore, I assume, in a touristy area, to the city center, though, every other person I passed was American. Literally half the population of Vienna, or at least half of the population that’s out and walking around on a Sunday, is a tourist.

Some more relevant observations, then: there’s a lot of old stuff here. I realize that’s a sort of European non sequitur, but in Vienna even the fast food joints are in 200-year old buildings, or at least buildings that were designed to look 200 years old. The effect is really pleasant, and makes it a nice city just to walk around, which is nice, because the other things for which Vienna is famous (opera and theater, e.g.) are sort of out of the reach of a backpacker’s budget. In sort of a nod to culture, I am going to a screening of The Third Man this afternoon.

Vienna also has a fantastically wide (50 to 100 m), tree-shaded ring road from tearing down the old city walls. This is obviously good for navigation and for providing a way to get out of the sun, but also seems to function as a sort of bike/jogging trail/park.