Vienna, Austria Part. 1
Vienna, Austria. Part 1.
Christmas out of Malaysia isn't something I experience very often, believe it or not. I didn't know I'd be going to Vienna for Christmas until about a week before the actual trip itself. I remember that getting over the fact that PMR was over was a hard thing to do seeing that all my work had led up to that point and that point was now in the past. I had nothing to do. I was free. I want to tell you guys about the actual trip itself, therefore I shall skip the minor details leading up to the trip.
Firstly, I'd like to warn you that the trip to Austria can be a bitch. Since there aren't any direct flights from Malaysia, you'll have to take several transits before getting on the plane that does take you to Austria. The way I had it was, Penang to KL, KL to Dubai and Dubai to Vienna. We were stuck in KLIA for close to 10 hours and we were stuck in Dubai IA for close to 12 hours. That's one day gone right there. Trust me, staying in Dubai IA for 12 hours is a grooling task mainly because the place stinks. Literally. Dubai hosts many transit flights and this means that you'll get loads of different people from different countries sleeping on the floors of the airport with their shoes off and such. Disgusting really.
I remember being awoken by the voice of the captain saying that we were approaching Vienna Airport. I remember it snowing partially. That was the first time I saw snow fall for real. But it was just a momentary thing for as soon as we landed, the snow subsided. Vienna Airport is ancient. When I first got off I was like umm wtf. It looked like it was stuck in the 90s. It sort of reminded me of the Penang IA before it was renovated. We were met there by Atam., our host living in the heart of Vienna. Temperatures were close to 4C when we got out. It was only 4PM! To get into the town of Vienna we had to take a bus. Gosh I remember that bus. Windows were open and that gush of wind that constantly blew in offered that sense of lasciviousness. The bus dropped us off near town square, which was walking distance from Atam's place.
In fact, one of the many beauties of Vienna was that everything is walking distance from each other. Fitted with wide sidewalks and WORKING lamp posts, many of Vienna's residents opt to use their feet to travel around instead of cars and buses.
It is this lack of vehicles on the road that makes Vienna such a pleasant place to live in. The pollution rate is at a level so low that even I didn't deem it possible (since I'm Malaysian, right?). When I was there, there was nothing much to look at in terms of greenery apart from underbrush. A majority of the trees and bushes were dead and packed with snow all set for winter.
On the other hand, an obvious hobby for many of Vienna's teenagers (presumably) is graffiti making, not to be mistaken with vandalism. You don't find spoiled phone booths and bathrooms in Vienna lol. But I don't know... I guess it's still kinda like vandalism but not really ah whatever you get the picture. Almost every other back road in Vienna had at least one form of graffiti. Took some pictures :
So that was a little introduction of Vienna. I haven't even told you about the places I visited yet. So getting back to my story... Atam's place is amazingzing! He lives in a penthouse perched on top of a building which offered a view of pretty much all of Vienna's town. Once settled in, we visited loads of places.
I'll cover one of them in this post and some more in tomorrow's post.
1. Vienna Night Markets
For Christmas, many areas around Vienna town open up night markets that sell various handmade and manufactured items at discounted prices. Items sold range from dolls, Pinocchio-like toys, sock puppets, drawings, mugs and tapestries. The dolls sold aren't your average dolls. They are the most messed up creepy dolls you'll ever see. I don't know what kind of imagination these doll makers have but yeah. I don't have any pictures of my own so I found some online:
yeah very 'wtf' right?
There were a number of stalls that sold stuff like hot dogs, burgers and pastries which were absolutely scrumptious. Also, specially for Christmas, stalls sell hot wine (red/white). It's actually pretty tasty ( I thought it'd suck because I'm used to chilled wine ). You can't really feel the heat because of the coolness around you. Here are a couple of pictures:
The central night market (the one we visited)
Happy people. (Ignore the three individuals in the center of the picture).JPG)
Another pic at the market.So that's it for part one. My fingers hurt from typing this much. If you've read all of this then thanks for sticking with me lol. Come back tomorrow for part two. I'll be covering the Vienna Woods ( you don't want to miss this ), Driesden Castle and the Austrian Alps.
Seacrest out.
Labels: reminiscences
This entry was posted by T. Hang, on
Monday, October 6, 2008.
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