We are over halfway through our trip, which is really hard to believe!
But back to Vienna - after visiting the palace we walked back past our hostel and into the old city again. We went to the only synagogue in Prague that wasn't destroyed during Kristallnacht. Unfortunately there wasn't all that much to see, so we continued on to the Belvedere Gardens so that Maggie could see them too. I should mention that at this point, two weeks into our trip, the only public transportation we have taken was one metro ride in Budapest and the bus ride in Salzburg. Other than that we have walked EVERYWHERE. We really wish we had a pedometer to see how many miles we have walked. On this day especially we must have covered at least 10-15 miles, possibly more. After the gardens we came across a large outdoor market, which is always fun, and then headed back to the hostel to sit for a while, do laundry finally, and make dinner. Our big plan for the night was to go see Ghosts of Girlfriends Past at a nearby English language theater. It was pretty bad but still entertaining, and it was nice to just sit there and relax for a couple of hours. That evening we also met one of the other guys in our room, who happened to have just graduated from Illinois! Once again it was amazing the coincidences that come up. I knew he was a good guy when after only just meeting him he said to me, “Tell Maggie to pick up her shit!”
Wednesday we managed to get up and go for a run, back to the Shonbrunn palace and through the gardens there a bit. We then walked down to the Museum District, where we passed the National Parliament, the Rathaus (which we think might mean City Hall?), a very impressive building regardless, a beautiful rose garden, and another church. We then went to the Freud Museum, located in the house where he lived for 35 years and from which he had to flee when the Nazis invaded. It was a small museum, and unfortunately only one room had been kept intact with the original furniture, but there was a ton of information and it was interesting to read about his life and family and to be standing in the place where he had studied and received patients.
At this point we were pretty fried, so after finding lunch we camped out at a coffee shop and each had a torte. I'm not even entirely sure what mine was (there were about 20 choices so I just picked one that looked good) but it definitely had hazelnut and raspberry and it was amazing. Maggie got a caramel tort. We felt very European just lingering there - we stayed almost two hours.
After dinner at the hostel we went down to the hostel bar and hung out with Patrick, the guy from Illinois, and another Brazilian guy. We stayed up until 2 AM, until we were literally sitting in the dark because everyone else had gone to bed, just talking and drinking wine. We got into some intense conversations too about the environment, politics, and about facebook.
Unfortunately we had to wake up early this morning to pack our bags and catch our train, so needless to say we were a bit tired, but we made it there with time to spare. Our train was already running a bit late when it stopped for quite awhile at one station and then they came on the intercom to say that they were having engine problems and would be stopped for at least an hour, but that people going to Prague could switch to another train that was coming into the station and heading to Prague. So we gathered all of our stuff and switched trains, realizing then that it was local train that made frequent stops and was of course now extremely full because of all the extra people, but we got seats together and ended up in Prague at about 4, about an hour and a half after we were supposed to. We were a little confused when we got to the train station because the name of the station didn't match the name on our ticket, and it took us a few minutes to remember that we had switched trains so this train had come into a different station! It actually worked out great though because we came into the main train station that was only a five minute walk from the hostel, whereas we would have had to take the metro from the other station.
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