wien

or as westerners know it: vienna. the capital of austria is quite nice. it's pretty obvious they serve a lot of tourists (even in the winter when we went). large sections of town are set up exclusively for tourists. for the non-german speakers, this is where you'd spend most of your time...although a large portion of the non-tourist catering population also speak passable english.

i felt almost completely at home there. most of this is attributable to my ability to conduct basic communication (greetings, ordering/buying things, etc.) in german. as it is a major tourist attraction as well, most things (like public transit) also have directions in the common european languages so if you happened to get lost just get the translation.

while we were there, i got to visit the christmas markt (christmas market...funny how they used the english word for christmas). as with any european style market, i enjoyed running around sampling the food. there were trinkets available as well, but i'm not much for trinket shopping. so i got to enjoy the food and practicing my german.

we also visited the schonbrunnschloss (schonbrunn palace...roughly). this was the summer residence of the habsburg dynasty. it was quite impressive, and an excellent demonstration of the power and influence of the austro-hungarian empire. the entire palace is huge! the building currently houses the museums of schonbrunn and sisi as well as provides housing for quite a number of people (or at least i assume that huge wing is housing as it would be rather large for a museum). in it's glory days when it was still functioning as a true palace, the royal court included over 1,000 attendants that were also housed in the building.

all in all, i loved the short trip. this is rather funny as my hosts (the long family) were not at all impressed, and prefer the 'comforts' of budapest. i suppose this is a good thing as they are missionaries to hungary; not austria. i hope they'll forgive me for not sharing their sentiments though. the next blog will include my experience(s) on their home turf.