Happy New Year!
The day after our quiet Christmas in Nuremberg, we boarded a train to Salzburg, Austria. Unfortunately, we did not have long there as we were meeting Nathan the next day in Vienna so we didn’t get to see the sights or do The Sound of Music tour! We did have a few hours of light left so we wandered around and enjoyed a few of the sights.
Nathan’s flight was supposed to get in around 1:10pm, and we wanted to meet him at the airport so we took the train that arrived in Vienna a little after 11am. We checked into our hotel, grabbed some lunch and headed to the airport. As we were heading to the airport we got a text from Nathan saying his flight from Frankfurt was delayed for an hour while the plane waited to get de-iced. Well, at least we will be early we thought. By another unfortunate stroke of luck, we had planned on the train ride taking 45 minutes, and it only took about 15 minutes (to be fair, it was an educated guess as the lady at our hotels reception told us it would take 45 minutes). So we ended up at the airport a little afternoon, with nothing to do but wait. Unfortunately, the weather kept deteriorating in Frankfurt and Nathan’s plane kept getting delayed. He would text us a guesstimate- they said we’ll take off in 20 more minutes- and after the allotted time, we would text him, hoping he wouldn’t answer, hoping his plane was in the air. But, he kept answering. Then, we got a text saying they were actually going to take off! And finally, his plane arrived around 4pm! So, we spent most of our first day in the airport in Vienna. While it was nice, it is not a place I would recommend for that long.
Nathan said he had napped on the flight from Frankfurt and insisted that he was doing ok, so after dropping our bags at the hotel we went out to explore Vienna. Our hotel was a short (but very cold) walk to the city center. We walked around the city center, warmed up with a glass of gluhwein and walked through the incredibly beautiful St Stephen’s Cathedral. With its intricate details throughout and its imposing facade, the church was definitely one of the more beautiful churches we have seen on this trip. However, it was not much warmer in the church than it was outside the church and we couldn’t walk for long before we were completely frozen solid. We were also quite hungry and decided it was probably a good time to stop for dinner. We looked at several menus before deciding on a Mexican Restaurant to help ease Nathan’s transition from Dallas to Austria. You just can’t get Mexican food in the US like you can in Austria (the difference, of course, being one is delicious and authentic, the other is a bit lackluster and not super authentic). Since Nathan fell asleep in the restaurant (not sure if it was a testament to the boring food or the long flight. One thing it was not was boring company… I hope) we decided it was probably about time to head back to the hotel. We went back and had a beer in the hotel bar while watching coverage of the large storm that had hit the alps, delayed Nathan’s flight and was now wreaking havoc throughout the region. Nathan performed admirably and didn’t fall asleep again!
The next day we woke up to our first snow of the season! The storm that had hit the alps made it down to Vienna where it manifested itself into large, fluffy flakes falling peacefully on the snow covered streets. It was beautiful! But still very cold. In the wan winter light, we set off to see the city of Vienna during the day. We walked around in the blowing snow and visited the museum quarter and marveled at the sheer size of the parks and the buildings surrounding it. We walked all over the city center in the cold, warming up with a cup of coffee and visiting the WC in Starbucks. It was a beautiful city center but it was unbelievably cold the whole time we were out. Vienna is a cool city, but because it is so spread out and there are so many parks, it would be a much better place to visit in warmer weather. We found a tiny traditional Austrian restaurant just down the street from our hotel where we had a fabulous dinner of schnitzel, pork chops that made me swoon and a ham and cheese stuffed chicken with vegetable dumplings. It was amazing! Our next indoor stop that evening was the Irish pub nearby. We tried to play pool, but couldn’t figure out how, since the table had no pockets. It was a good, slightly smoky time anyway.
Our last day in Vienna we planned to go visit Brno so Nathan could see the city where Nick spent all of his study abroad time. We showed up to the bus station to buy tickets and we were told there was only one seat available. We thought about rock-paper-scissoring for the seat but ultimately decided against it. So, the Czech Republic was out but we still wanted an indoor activity for the day. We settled on heading back to the museum district and visiting the museum of modern art. Six floors of stuffed animals, concrete blocks, spray painted cardboard, videos of old naked people jumping up and down, trains and movie clips, and abstract art we didn’t “get” we exited the museum, sure that we were more cultured than we were when we started. We found another Austrian restaurant near our hotel for dinner. It was good, but not nearly as good as the one the night before. The other problem that we had with it was the smokiness. To get to the non-smoking section we had to walk through the smoking section. Then we went through the sliding glass door to the non smoking section. We were originally seated at the table nearest the sliding glass door, but the door didn’t always get closed all the way and rarely stayed closed for long, so we asked to switch tables pretty quickly which made it a little better. We headed back to the hotel to watch the Texas A&M/ West Virginia bowl game and Nathan broke the window.
“Art”
While we had been in Vienna we saw signs advertising what we assumed to be New Years Eve parties- the pictures of fireworks and champagne were the giveaways- but they all said “Silvester”. At first, I thought it could just be the name of a place, but we saw it all over the city and decided it must mean New Years Eve. When we checked out of our hotel in Vienna, the lady at reception asked if we were heading home and we said no, we are headed to Budapest. She said there seemed to be lots of people heading to Budapest for Silvester and asked us if there was something special going on- we took this as confirmation that Silvester was New Years Eve. We eventually looked it up and discovered that this was in honor of Pope Silvester I, whose feast day was Dec. 31st. On our trip to Budapest we stopped in Bratislava for lunch and to see a few of the sights in the tiny old city center there. We had lunch at a traditional Slovakian restaurant and then walked up to the castle before heading back to the train station. Now, it seems every time we have taken a train to Budapest (this was the third time) they are super crowded. This one was no exception. Especially, it seems, since so many people were headed to Budapest for Silvester. We boarded our train and walked through one car- full. We headed to the next car- full. And so it went through numerous cars. All full. It was a little over 2 hours to Budapest and we desperately did not want to have to stand the entire trip. Just when all hope seemed lost, Nick recalled some seats being open in the cafe car of the train. So we made a beeline back to the cafe car, wrangled our bags into and under the seats and sat down. The waiter came by and told us no food, only drinks. So we asked for a drink menu so we could order drinks. He told us no and reiterated that it was only drinks. So, we looked around and ordered drinks based on what we saw other people drinking. We had just eaten a large meal of potato dumplings swimming in sheep’s cheese anyway, so the no food thing was a non issue- except that it wasn’t. We were not the only ones with the brilliant idea of spending the trip in the cafe car, several other people staggered in where they received menus and were allowed to order food. We were thoroughly confused! It was, however, a very pleasant way to spend the train ride to Budapest.
Because of our lunch in Bratislava, we got into Budapest pretty late. After finding an ATM, purchasing metro tickets and finding our way sort of close to where we were staying we met up with the lady whose apartment we were renting through in Budapest. We had not heard from her, despite several attempts to contact her, since we had booked until the night before we arrived when she had informed us that the apartment we had booked was not available due to a problem with the heating. Instead, she stuck us in another apartment, smaller and not in the area we had wanted to stay. I guess the good thing is that we still had a place to stay. When we voiced our concerns about staying so far from the center we were told to buy a map and we would see we were not far at all, only a 20 minute walk. Grrr. So after getting settled we walked the 20 minutes down to the area we wanted to be in- the Jewish quarter. We found a pretty good size, fairly rowdy place to have dinner. We tried to find a table but couldn’t- the only thing we found was sharing a table with a group of guys. They said they didn’t mind and so we sat at one end of their table while they sat at the other. We ordered burgers and sat back to enjoy the atmosphere. Finally, a server walked over with a burger- she asked the guys at the other end of the table about it and plopped it down in front of them. She then brought a burger for Nick and a quesadilla for me and nothing for Nathan. We waited for a few minutes. Then a few more. We were vaguely suspicious that the burger the guy at the other end of the table was eating belonged to Nathan, but were not quite sure. Finally, Nathan asked the waiter about his burger and was told two more minutes. The burger he got looked very different from the one the other guy had so he probably had not stolen Nathan’s burger, but we will never know for sure what happened with the mystery of the missing burger! (although, in all likelihood, his burger just took longer to cook).
Silvester had finally arrived and we were pumped to be in Budapest. We spent the day seeing the sights- the parliament building on the Pest side, and the castle district on the Buda side. It was another frigid day, but walking up and down the hills and stairs helped to keep us warm. Interestingly, Budapest is very pet friendly, we saw tons of people walking around with their dogs and even a few with their falcons. The falcons were all wearing sleep masks/helmets, of course. After an afternoon of walking all over Budapest in the cold, we were ready to go home and warm up before heading out for Silvester festivities.
We had no real plans for the night, but there were several outdoor parties which we thought would be our best bet as we figured most places were full. In anticipation of being at an outdoor party we all put on a ton of layers so we wouldn’t be miserable in the cold Silvester evening- I had on a minimum of two of everything, from pants to socks to coats in an effort to stay relatively wam. So dressed in everything we owned and quite warm we set out for the Jewish quarter (see why we wanted to stay there?) to find a place for dinner. At first, we were selective. We only stopped in if the menu looked good or if we had a recommendation for the place. However after being told by every restaurant they were full or we needed a reservation we stopped being so selective and just went into every place we saw. We finally got to a wine bar where they said they might be able to squeeze us in if we were willing to wait about 20 minutes or half an hour. That sounded better than a flat out no, so we took them up on it. Luckily, we were still in the process of removing our coats when they told us they had a table for us. It actually ended up being a great restaurant, they had over 120 different kinds of wines (we enjoyed some excellent Hungarian wines- our waiter asked us some questions about what we liked and then brought us wine based on our answers) and the food was excellent as well. While we were in Budapest we had several experiences of waiters trying to talk us out of ordering somethings (something that we had never seen in the US)- at this particular wine bar, we ordered a cheese plate and were told that it would be a 30 minute wait, were we sure we still wanted it? At another place, I was talked out of getting the whole wheat crust on my pizza because they would have to get it delivered from somewhere else and it would take at least 30 minutes (at least, I think that was what the waiter said. And anyway, that time it still took forever to get our food). And then, of course, there was the dining car on the train to Budapest where we were told at least 3 times we could only order drinks, no food, meanwhile, everyone around us was ordering food!
After our delicious dinner we had about an hour to figure out where we would be for midnight, so we headed to the nearest outdoor party. Having never been to an outdoor party in Budapest, we had no idea what to expect, but it was definitely far crazier than anything we were expecting. Actually, every where that night was pretty crazy- people were lighting firecrackers and small fireworks on just about every street corner. As we reached the square where the party was we realized that at least some of the fireworks we had been hearing and seeing all night were coming from the square although not in any official kind of a capacity- as far as we could tell, anyone could light off their fireworks in the middle of the square. No roped off area or platform or anything. We gave that area a wide berth as we headed up the stands selling any manner of food or drink. We found a place and awaited the countdown. Unfortunately, none came. Nick and I hunched over his phone at11:59, waiting for a countdown, and then starting our own. The only appreciable signal was a slight increase in the number of fireworks being shot off. After midnight the party started to wind down, so we headed back in the direction of the apartment, only to get waylaid by another party… we eventually made it back in one piece, keeping our New Years Tradition alive!
The fireworks aftermath
Our final day in Budapest was spent at the bathhouses. We were so excited to go back to the bath houses and show Nathan. We were clearly not the only ones with that idea, we showed up at Lukacs to find a line almost out the door. The line was long and barely moved, I have no idea why, it didn’t take that long to purchase tickets, but it was a very inefficient system of guessing where the line was and which line would move faster. Eventually, we all got in, but it was a very frustrating and exhaustingly long process. The thermal baths themselves were also incredibly crowded, there was barely enough room to sit comfortably. Not quite the relaxing experience we were hoping for. The outdoor pool was much better, not even close to as crowded, it was very relaxing to float in the little lazy river and watch the steam rise in the cold night air. It ended up being a pretty nice way to spend our first day of 2015. After a late dinner at Okay Italian we headed back to watch bowl games while Nathan packed. We said goodbye to him at 4 am the next day and he headed back to Dallas.
A few more pics of Salzburg:
More pics of Vienna:
More pics of Budapest:
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