Elegant Vienna

The best word I can think of for Vienna is "elegant" - where else would you find chandeliers used as the street lights at Christmas? Here are a few others...





On December 28 we left Budapest and took a short (3 hour) train ride to Vienna. Though farther east than Prague, one seldom thinks of Vienna as being part of "eastern" Europe because Austria was not part of the Eastern Block countries after WWII. And it did have a very different feeling to it than most of the cities we have visited on this trip. It's also on the Euro and quite a bit more expensive - equivalent of any large, modern metropolitan city. We stayed in a pension with rooms on the 3rd and 4th floor of an old building right in the middle of the Old City area, close to the magnificent St. Stephen's Cathedral, the Graben (and other shopping streets), and the Hofburg Palace (with its Treasury and a magnificent collection of crown jewels, robes and other valuables...considered to be the best on the Continent).


Just a few of the crown jewels....

It was very cold, so we spent one morning touring Vienna from the tram that goes around the Old City on the "Ringstrasse." It's lined with many of the city's top sites...the Opera, Austrian Ministry of War (decorated with heads wearing different military helments), the Observatory, Votive Church, City Hall, Austrian Parliament....all very impressive buildings, though we didn't take very good pictures from the tram. We would love to visit Vienna again in warmer weather....though if it was this crowded in the winter, I can't imagine what it would be like in the summer!

Detail of the Austrian Ministry of War building


The Hofburg Palace (or, rather, one section of it)



Close-up of the Austrian 2-headed eagle. (The heads represent the dual sovereignty of the Emperor (secular and religious) and/or dominance of the Emperor over both East and West. Several Eastern European nations adopted it from the Byzantines and continue to use it as their national symbol to this day.)



This time in gold...



A strange contrast to the elegance of Vienna were these little kiosks all over the city selling cheap little pigs of all shapes and sizes. The receptionist at our pension explained that they are good luck charms people give to others on New Year's Eve to wish them luck for the new year.


Even the bakeries got into the pig thing...