Danke shoen is German for "Thank You So Much". Everytime I said it, I thought of the song. Wayne Newton. Classy. A song reference that didn't involve 90s pop or gangsta rap. Although the song did make an appearance in Ferris Buller's Day Off. Culture nonetheless.
Back to the day. I woke up and had some fruit for breakfast while chatting with Alyssa and Claire. Alyssa had class during the day so she gave us an idea of where to go, and we headed out on our way to meet the rest of the group. Alyssa took us to the metro station where we met Stacy and Laura and headed to Stephansplatz, the city centre of Vienna. Surprisingly, we didn't have many must dos for Vienna. It was a nice and welcomed change of pace from the usually go-go-go. We wandered around Stephansplatz, window shopping, enjoying the Vienna day. We stopped at the camera store to get Stacy a new camera. On top of her sickness and hospital visit, she had broken her camera. Not a easy trip to say the least. We admired the Stratsdom Church. Places of worship in Europe are so beautiful. They kind of remind you of the good and the beauty in the world, perhaps a good reminder to have in mind while praying and praising the Lord. 
We wandered in and out of shoe stores and found a jewelry/accessory heaven. The place had every type of jewelry, arranged by color. I wanted it all. It was the type of place you wanted to just have in your closet, to have at your disposal to dress up in every type of coordinated sparkle. The urge was to buy was too big, so we left before it sucked us in. The best compliment to jewelry shopping? A bakery.
We decided to go in and get some german torts. We all had had a small breakfast, and cake for breakfast seem appropriate. We are on vacation after all. Not that I ever need an excuse for that. Sugared up and happy as clams we wandered through the museum sector, surrounded by beautiful buildings.
Claire "the guidebook" Fisher had not purchased a Vienna Guidebook so we just wandered and took pictures of things that we really didn't know what they were. You don't need to know what they are to appreciate some things. We made a loop around the square, and then there it was. Standing in the middle of the road. The most ridiculous looking mini-horse any of us had ever seen. A little man and his little horse. Ofcourse the sign was in German so we weren't sure if he was offering rides or asking for money or just telling us to avoid him because the horse was a biter. Either way, Stacy preemptively peaked the little horse as her favorite part of Vienna.
I think Laura's favorite part were all the "There are No Kangaroos in Austria" memorabilia.
We headed to the Schobrunn Palace, a little outside of the city center but accessible by metro. We planned on meeting Jen and Stevie there so we headed there and wasted time in the gift shop, using the bathroom, and sitting in a little cafe warming up from the harsh Vienna winds. Now, if you haven't been to Europe, the bathroom experience is always a treat. There are a series of questions that you go through. Do you have to pay or not? Is there going to be a toilet or just a flushing hole (experienced that one in Turkey)? Where do I flush...a button, a string from the ceiling? Etc. It just happened that we had to pay to use this toilet. So we paid the bathroom attendant our 50 cents. Now I personally believe that if you didn't have to pay you wouldn't need a bathroom attendant and thus the profits of the bathroom fee and the cost of the attendant would cancel each other out, but what do I know. Now, this bathroom attendant was a particularly interesting man. In the words of little miss Claire Fisher, he was certified "Euro-trash". He was smoking his cigarette, watching some type of weird anime television, at his little table with his picture of a scandalous woman and a tiger, and blasting his boombox. After we paid our money, he seemed to turn up the music louder. So maybe we were paying for the tunes, like a jukebox. And what song was he blasting you ask? None other than "Clint Eastwood" by the Gorillaz. If you are unsure of that song, youtube it, you'll remember it as a one time wonder hit that became popular for unknown reasons. If I was choosing a song from a jukebox, not at the top of my list, but to each his own.
We decided to walk around the Palace while we waited for Jen. It was another beautiful castle, done in this yellow color that we learned is symbolic of the Hamberg empire that used to rule parts of Eastern Europe.
The palace and surrounding gardens were amazing, even in their frozen state. I can only imagine how magnificent it all is in the spring, when the flowers are blooming, the grass is green, and the color of nature juxtaposes against the yellow colors of the buildings. The best part of the day, hands down, was Laura's encounters with all things new and foreign. For one, SQUIRRELS. You would think she was that dog in UP!, so excited to see her first squirrel. It was an odd looking squirrel but a squirrel nonetheless. She got a few photos, to show the folks at home. Next was ICE. The little pond/fountain was frozen. So she sat on the edge and stomped on the ice with her feet, claiming it "wasn't natural". It was like watching a child in a toystore. Next was SNOW. Now she had seen a little snow in our travels (and had asked us to explain Slush to her), but not enough to make snowballs. So snowball time, which led to a little snowball fight. Fantastic. You forget how much the world is amazing and full of simple miracles, like snow.
Squirrels
Snowballs
I left the girls at the back of the palace to go get Jen who was waiting for me in the front of the palace, just arrived from lunch with Cynthia. When I saw her, we waved, which turned into her running towards me, so I ran to her, which turned to the type of embrace you see at airports in really cheesy movies. Unfortunately, we did not have luggage to drop, and she didn't have a toberlone bar for me.
We wandered for a bit with the gang but the wind was horrible so we decided to head back into town for lunch. We rode the metro, made some transfers, and ended up in the Museum Quarter. Cynthia had once run a restaurant here so Jen wanted to take us to it. It was a freezing walk from the metro through the art museum courtyard (which had some modern art of a lady in a bikini with no limbs and another of a "rectum bar"...ah modern art). We settled into Cafe Milo and I enjoyed a sandwich and some of Claire's potato salad. Sharing is caring after all.
We decided to change locations for dessert (a favorite tradition of ours) so we bid farewell to Jen who was heading back to Cythnias for a bit and we headed back to Stephansplatz. By this time it was snowing and windy and miserable. We had little luck finding a bakery and by the time we did, it was time to meet up with Alyssa at the metro station. Alyssa and her friend Jill met us and we headed to the State Opera House. Yes, Opera. They say that you can't come to Vienna without going to the Opera and standing room tickets were only 3 euro. Now Opera is not something I would say is an event I would normally go to, but all in the name of culture and openmindedness. We got our tickets and founding space on the balcony that wasn't being held by a scarf (so cultured) to claim. I felt very Pretty Woman-esque and was temped to buy some of those sweet binoculars that Richard Gere shows Julia Roberts to use.
Now the opera itself. Medea. I was sort of hoping the opera would move me like it did Julia, but I can't say it did. It may have been a number of factors. One, we were standing, and my feet had not had a rest in 7 days. Two, we had bad views of the stage, which isn't a big deal since its more audio than visual but body language helps you understand. Which leads me to my third point, it was in German. Granted we had english subtitles, but even so, it was like trying to depicher a poem one line at a time, very very slowly. The voices were beautiful, but it made me sleepy. I took a bathroom break after much pointing in the right direction (the woman pointed us in the direction of the men's room) I decided that the male workers were much friendlier than the men. We had to wait the 5 minutes until intermission to go back in, and at the point, everyone was ready to leave. No one was sure what was going on, and from the mass of people leaving, we felt the general consensus was that it wasn't an all star opera. It was like warfare mixed with fantasy mixed with love story. Strange.
We took the U-Bahn and trolley to Centimeter, a Vienna chain of local type restaurants, recommended by some friends who had previously studied in Vienna. Supposedly you can order sausage by the meter. Appetizing. It was a smokey local place, and the 10 of us sat down. It was the 6 of us, plus Alyssa, Diana, Jill, and Sabrina (an Austrian local and classmate of Diana's). We ordered our food, and I ended up splitting a sampler platter with Laura and Claire. Basically a big platter of fried food. The portions were huge and everyone just shard with one another. Stevie had ordered dessert for dinner (a girl after my own heart) and when it arrived we could do nothing but laugh. She had order some type of like apple fritter and the waiter brought her a huge plate of them. Literally a baker's dozen of fritters. We cheersed to old friends and new and everyone chatted happily. We decided it was a good time to do peaks and pits with the whole group. Like family dinner. We discussed the mini-horse sighting and Sabrina explained the sign was to get people to donate to the starving circus animals. Well that's just plain sad.
Stuffed with fried food, we headed home. I took a nice hot shower, and fell asleep quickly.
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