Perhaps the biggest talking point about this trip is that the trip was cut short by a week from 10 days to 4 days. What can I say? As this is a public blog, I will not go into details the reasons for shortening the trip, but let's just say that I am happy to get an extra week to study for my exams.
So it is four days in Vienna. We stayed in a Youth Hostel in the centre of the city, surrounded by buildings of old style architecture. Unlike the capital cities in many other parts of the world, Vienna has managed to retain the look and feel of its heritage. If you imagine the buildings in the whole of CBD area all look like National Museum, Raffles Hotel or the MITA building (but in pastel colours), that is how Vienna feels like. In the city centre, there are no modern buildings that look out of place with the historical buildings.
Weather wise, it was probably below zero most of the time. Even though it didn't snow during the time we were there, we can see snow on roof tops, grass lawns and back of lorries. So at least we know the temperature weren't warm enough to melt any snow that fell before we arrived.
The people of Vienna are cold and not very polite. Perhaps it is because they are a proud people with a very rich and glorious past. Austria produced many musicians (Schubert, Mozart), and scientists, among them numerous Nobel prize winners. The royal family of Austria was arguably the most powerful royal family Europe has ever seen, ruling from Spain to Serbia, and even briefly in Mexico. Having mentioned that though, we have a fellow Austrian student(Lea, she is actually of Brazilian origin) who invited us to stay at her Austrian boyfriend's(Reinhard) house. They were most hospitable and Reinhard also came to welcome us at the airport(with beer!) and showed us around the city.
Reinhard's apartment is in the city centre in a traditional Viennese building. The layout is very similar to what I saw in Vietnam last year, when a student in the MFA-IAI course invited me to his place. A typical apartment building consist of four blocks surrounding a court yard, with the corridor on each level facing the court yard. There are no lifts, so you climb up a spiral stairway up to the apartment. When you enter the apartment unit, you come into the kitchen first. The living room is across the kitchen directly opposite the entrance. There is another room to the left of the kitchen, and a bathroom on the right. The toilet is outside the apartment along the corridor.
Besides walking around the city with Reinhard, we also visited the Museum of Fine Arts, attended the "Nutcracker" ballet at the Vienna Opera House and visited the Schönbrunn Palace. The photos are in the photo album, so I will save the effort to describe what we saw there.Vienna definitely deserved more than the 3 full days I spent there. There are just so many churches, museums, palaces and performances to visit and attend. I probably should also join Aki on to Salsburg, but I supposed the freezing cold, the long and late nights, and the thought of the coming exams got the better of me. I flew back on the fifth day, one day after the other Singaporean traveling companion suddenly decided to go back to UK. I also got to admit that my zest for travelling has diminished a lot over the years, as those of you who know me are already aware that I don't travel often ever since I started teaching in TP.
Perhaps when the weather turns warmer and the days longer, my enthusiasm for travelling will return. But I don't think I'll travel far again before winter's over. The room in the hostel is right now too warm and cosy for me to venture out.
