Vienna and Bratislava

Grüß Gott and Dobrý den!

Hi everyone! I am back in Bologna after one of my most travel-intensive weekends yet, which I spent in VIENNA, AUSTRIA and BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA. I traveled with two friends from my program: Alex James (a fellow Cornellian) and Teresa Guerriero. Getting there was half the fun: we took a train to Milan, a bus to Bergamo, a plane to Bratislava from Bergamo's Orio al Serio airport, a cab to the Bratislava train station, a train to Vienna, and finally a tram to arrive at our hostel in VIENNA on Thursday night. Whew!

On Friday we were up bright and early to see the sights in VIENNA: we started off at Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral), the highest point in Vienna's skyline. We then spent the afternoon at The Belvedere Palace, a baroque palace complex built by Prince Eugene of Savoy in the early 1700s.

Teresa and I in front of the Belvedere Palace

The palace was beautiful, but I would have to say that the galleries inside the palace are what impressed me most: they housed an incredible collection of great art, including Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, which I had never seen before. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside but I enjoyed the work so much that I pulled this picture off the web to share it with you anyway:

Gustav Klimt's The Kiss

After leaving The Belvedere, Alex, Teresa, and I decided to indulge in a time-honored Viennese tradition and pastime: the café. We headed to the Hotel Sacher, home of the famous Sachertorte, a chocolate cake and one of the most famous Viennese culinary specialties, whose recipe is an extremely well-kept secret. We paired it with some Viennese Apfelstrudel (apple strudel) and the Hotel Sacher's signature coffee, complete with shots of chocolate liqueur. How do you say "YUM!" in German??

The famous Sachertorte! Fun fact: on "Sesame Street," the Count calls the Countess "my little Sachertorte!"

On Saturday we headed to Schönbrunn Palace, the summer palace of the Hapsburg monarchs. The palace and the grounds were absolutely stunning - the gardens and arboretum were amazing even now, in early spring, and the grounds are home to an imperial zoo, Tiergarten Schönbrunn, the oldest zoo in the world! Inside the palace we got to tour the over-the-top imperial apartments and learned about the extravagant tastes, marriages, and of course, gossip of the Habsburg monarchy!

Sunday we packed up and headed to BRATISLAVA for a day-trip. Now during our train ride to Milan on Thursday, a woman had overheard us taking about doing a day trip to Bratislava and came over and introduced herself to us. She explained that she was from BRATISLAVA, but was currently in Italy teaching at a language school in Forlì, a small city southeast of Bologna. She said that a one-day trip to BRATISLAVA would be a perfect amount of time, and that she had many recommendations in order for us to make the most of our day. She was even kind enough to write everything down, effectively making a complete one-day itinerary for us!

We wound up following her itinerary turn-by-turn, and she never steered us wrong. We had a Slovak delicacy, steak tartare, at the Café Roland she recommended, and followed her bus directions to Slavín, a war memorial in the hills of the city, which she had underlined as a MUST.

Me at Slavín, a memorial monument and cemetery for Soviet Army soldiers who fell during WW II while liberating the city of Bratislava from Nazi German troops

It was awesome to get to see BRATISLAVA through a local guide, and it definitely made our time there much more enjoyable!

To see more pictures from my weekend in VIENNA and BRATISLAVA, check out the webalbums:

Wien, Austria

Bratislava, Slovakia