Lapping up the culture in Vienna

After leaving behind Prague we arrived in Vienna in Austria, back into German speaking territory. Knowing we were heading to Munich the following week to meet our friend James and spend four nights camping at Oktoberfest while consuming copious amounts of German beer, we decided to take it easy in Vienna and relax and enjoy a bit of the culture.

On our first night we did a tour with our fellow Busabout-ers throughout the city. After seeing all of the sights, including the cathedral, town centre, Hapsburg palace and the museum precinct, we headed to eat our first schnitzel and strudel. As you can see from our photos below, the schnitzels were absolutely massive, but we managed to get through them and enjoy apple strudel for dessert. Dan also enjoyed his first one litre stein of beer, which he was really excited about.

Giant schnitzel and salad

We were really excited to find out that our wombats hostel was directly opposite the main food market in Vienna, the Naschmarkt. We spent a few days in Vienna relaxing around the hostel and wandering across the road intermittently to devour falafel, hommus, fruit and veges. Due to the awesome kitchen in the hostel, we also made some really cheap home cooked meals - with the markets across the road, all of the ingredients only cost us about five euro - bargain!

There were two highlights of our time in Venice - an awesome wine-tasting tour we did to the Wachau Valley and our trip to the opera.

The weather on our tour to the Wachau Valley was absolutely perfect. We headed on a bus out of Vienna to the valley and enjoyed hours of chatting with our fellow tour mates while drinking white wine in picturesque vineyards. Wine from the Wachau Valley can only be bought locally in the region, with specialties including varieties of white wines, especially Riesling.

The guys at wombats hostel reception insisted that the number one thing to do in Vienna was visit the opera - and with standing tickets only costing four euro, there was no excuse not to head along. We pulled out our best looking clothes (nice to get out of our dingy backpacker clothes for a while!) and headed to the opera house two hours before the show to line up for standing tickets. While it was a long wait, it was definitely worth it, as we enjoyed a 90 minute opera for only 4 euros each. We were also excited to find we had picked a lighter, more romantic-comedy style opera, rather than the dramatic and tragic style that I was expecting. The standing stalls also had small screens translating the opera into English, so we could understand the whole show. We had an absolutely fantastic night, and topped it off by visiting an Australian bar where I enjoyed some Vegemite toast and Dan had Australian beers. It's really funny to notice the little things you miss when you are away from home - the vegemite toast tasted like the best I had ever had!

Inside the beautiful opera house

Vegemite toast at the Aussie pub!

After four days in Vienna, we were keen to jump back on the bus and meet James in Munich ready for beer-drinking, pretzel eating and beer halls - you'll have to wait until my next blog to read about this!