Our epic journey to Vienna started on Monday morning on the 5th of March. We met at the Hauptbahnhof in Bremen to make the hour and a half long trek by train to the Hamburger Airport. Flights are far cheaper from the bustling metropolis compared to our little provincial town of Bremen. The flight to Vienna was only about an hour and a half, and Air Berlin made our journey quite enjoyable feeding us delicious chocolates as we stepped down onto the welcoming soil of Vienna, Austria. It took a short ride on the city-airport train and an even shorter taxi ride to get to our perfectly located hotel. Our hotel was on a side street by the State Opera House and right at the end of the main shopping street. It was close to the Ringstrasse which is the circular street surrounding the inner city of Vienna.
Gwynnie, Steph, Jeff, Emily, John G., John P., Dr. Janine Ludwig (from left to right)
After we arrived in the late afternoon, we had a chance to settle in before we headed out for dinner at the Zwölf- Apostelkeller, a slightly kitschy, but nevertheless nice restaurant. The menu offered many different kinds of heavy meat and potatoes type meals, such as Schnitzel or Saftgulasch (chunks of meat with lots of sauce) with potatoes, just like any Heuriger (traditional Viennese restaurants) on the outskirts of Vienna would.
The restaurant was in the basement of a building (hence it being called Keller) and was very beautifully decorated. To make the evening all the more enjoyable there were musicians, a violinist and an accordion player. These two men played throughout the evening and even stopped by our table and took some requests, even humoring us by playing “Edelweiss”. I of course took the opportunity to shamelessly sing along; we were in Vienna after all, the city of music, and I just couldn’t help myself.
After dinner we all decided to stop at Zanoni and Zanoni, THE Ice cream place in Vienna. They have all kinds of ice cream, gelato, soy milk ice cream and even something called Milk Rice Ice Cream, which is actually quite delicious. It was a tad bit cold for frozen treats, but nevertheless it was incredibly delicious and that does tend to be what Germans do anyway: eat ice cream in winter. We then headed home for an early night, as we had an absurdly full week ahead of us.