Vienna, wow. And Rosenmontag.

Sadly, and thankfully, Karneval is over. Monday was Rosenmontag, the most celebrated day of Karneval, and it was quite an experience! My group arrived to Cologne pretty late, so we missed most of the huge parade but from what I heard it was an extravagant affair with more than fifty two floats. After watching the parade for a little, our group went to a brewery to dance to some traditional Karneval songs with some crazy Germans! I ended the night a little early that night, as I was still worn out from the dusseldorf excursion and I just was running on empty, so sleep was very welcome. Next up, Vienna.

As the romans said: I just got my mind blown. Ok, so that was a dumb joke, but I really like Vienna, and like is an understatement. Vienna is a beautiful city with masterful architecture. It seems like some city you would see in a really classy Humphrey Bogart film, I guess that is why the city chose George Clooney to advertise in all of the shops.




We arrived Wednesday, dropped off our luggage at our hotel and set off to explore the city! We saw various sites: an old medical school, the house of Leibniz, the creator of calculus and the bane of many high school and college students' existence, the statue of Gutenberg, the creator of the movable type printer, St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna's statue of limitations, a tribute to the suffering of the jewish community during the Nazi control of Austria, and, in general, an address to the anti-semitism within Austria, the Spanish Riding School, Demel, the old royal bakery, the catacombs of St. Stephen's and finally, a restaurant with wonderful food. Needless to say, that was a loooooong day. There were many curious oddities within Vienna that were fostered within the city, such as a painting of a cow, hand with a fly swatter, a fly, and a wolf, that represented the conflict between catholics and protestants within Vienna, and I loved it. I think the combination of blue skies, beautiful architecture, delicious coffee houses, and curious monuments all helped to create the allure of Vienna, it is truly beautiful.

The rest of my trip to Vienna will detailed in part 2 of this lecture.

To be continued....