Day-trip to Vienna

Top: Jack, Cindy, Scott, Glorietta at Schonnbrun Castle
Middle: Radhaus Vienna, Christmas Market
Bottom: Schonnbrun Castle. Left to right, Cindy, Jack, Scott, Arjun, Zoli.


Last Saturday we had an opportunity to join a bus full of students and go to Vienna for the day. Our host was Zoli Kleckner, a colleague of Jack's at Trefort. His girl-friend is a German teacher at another high school, and she was taking her class on the outing. We met the bus at 5:45 A.M. and left soon after. Zoli suggested we warm ourselves a little after we had traveled for twenty minutes, so he gave each of us some palinka (plum brandy). Yes, it DID warm us up. Our first stop was the Schonbrun Castle which we had visited with Orsi and Zoli Halmi during the summer of 2007. It is quite impressive, even in the cold of the morning. Actually the sun peeked through the clouds occasionally. At nine-thirty we had our second alcoholic drink of the morning: mulled wine. Now that was good! We walked through the grounds until around eleven, when we found the metro to take us into the city center. We spent the next three hours walking through the streets with millions of other tourists, checking out the shops and the Christmas markets. The large Christmas market was at the Radhaus, the city hall. We're guessing between two to three hundred separate booths selling chocolates, roasted nuts, other food, hats, scarves, homemade toys, mulled wine, candies, spices, candles, you name it! If it came be created and sold, it was there. Around two o'clock we made our way to the "restaurant district", checking out some stores along the way. Cindy was able to find some last Christmas gifts before our relaxing dinner at the Hoofbrau Restaurant. After eating and drinking we meandered back to where the bus was waiting, with a departure scheduled for 5:30. Our last stop was an architectural wonder, a one-block street/village designed by someone named Hundertwasser. (Maybe a web search will show you what we saw. The apartment building looks like it was pieced together, large sections of bright colors, with trees growing out of the walls. OK, do the web search!)The bus got us back to Buda at 9:00, so we still had a one hour commute across town via tram, metro, and tram again.

We had been looking forward to the day, especially having the opportunity to interact with Jack's colleagues Zoli, Arjun, and Scott.