After a very long drive to Austria, we eventually arrived to the hotel in the evening. We had about 45 minutes to get ready before it was time to go back out for dinner in the basement of the town hall. It was elaborately painted on the ceiling and there were long tables inside. It looked a bit like a secret society basement in a few ways. Because we were in Vienna we were treated to schnitzel. Mmmm. I wish I knew how they cooked it. Theris is golden and crispy. Mine is soggy and half the bread crumbs are burnt off and the other half are burnt on.
After dinner we headed off to the opera house to listen to Mozart and Strauss. We weren't quite sure what to expect but I thought it would be a huge auditorium. It was better. It was a personal little room with maybe one hundred seats. It reminded me of Pride and Prejudice where they go along and sit on velvet seats and listen to music and have a ball. There was music and opera singing and ballet all in the hour and half long performance. As part of our music experience we got to go back stage during intermission and have photos with the players and singers, as well as a glass of champagne.
At the end of the performance it was raining and no one was keen to go out, so we all headed back to the hotel.
The next morning we headed out into the city for some shopping. We went to Swarkovski flagship store and surprise, surprise, I bought more stuff. We walked around the palaces and learnt about the history of the city, as well as what happened to it during WWII. There was some great art work about the hardships that the Jews faced. It was quite upsetting to see some of the others on the tour making light of what they were looking at when looking at the statures. Tomorrow, we are going to Mathausen, one of the first concentration camps and the last one to be liberated at the end of the war. Hopefully, then they will have a better idea.
Austria is also the home of Mozart's Balls, a chocolate treat that is very famous there. I wasn't sure quite what to make of the one I had. It has about four layers inside with different flavours.
As a surprise treat Rich and Jen decided that anyone who wanted to, could go with them for a sneaky excursion to Brotslava in Slovakia. It was just a chance to say that we had lunch in Vienna, dinner in Slovakia, and slept in Vienna again. We drove out there, went into the city and all split up to find dinner. Jodie and I found a great little restaurant. We were the only ones there and the food was cheap. Our wines cost 2 Euro for a huge glass. Roast beef, rice and chips only cost 10 Euro. The meal was massive.
As we were walking around trying to find dinner, we did find some very cool art statues. This one you can see is called 'Man at Work', and yes, he actually is crawling out of a manhole. It took us and hour and a half to get to Brotslava and the same in return. We got back to the hotel in Vienna at about 11pm. I had a bit of a headache but couldn't sleep so I put on the telly and the programme that was on was a documentary on porn stars. Europeans are so much more open about sex. The whole documentary was in german, but you get the basic idea about what they are talking about. It was certainly eye-opening.
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