The second day in Vienna started off with a visit to the City Hall! It's a beautiful building on the inside and outside.... We snuck through a ribboned off area and came upon a private performance of classical music for a group of school children. After listening for a little while, we continued exploring and found a huge, ornate ballroom.
After visiting the cathedral, we stopped for coffee... Had my first expresso... It was... STRONG... Not sure I'll ever have one of those again...
After coffee, we walked to the Freud museum. The Freud museum is his apartment in Vienna where he first began practicing psychoanalytic therapy. Having studied so much of Freud's work, it was incredible to see where he practiced. Unfortunately only the waiting room has the original furniture... His therapy room has been re-created in the London Freud museum, so in Vienna the room was empty with pictures showing you how it was decorated.
Stairway in Vienna City Hall
Ballroom in Vienna City Hall
After the City Hall, we walked to an open air marketplace where many vendors have permanent shops. I was hoping to find some authentic sausages, but unfortunately all the vendors were selling mediterranean or arabic foods. We then walked further and found a sausage vendor. We got a spicy sausage and a bratwurst... Here I am with the sausages!
After eating the sausages, we made a pit stop for a bottle of water and I found pre-mixed drinks in the can. Pretty crazy, u can buy a can of Jim Bean and Cola in Vienna (and I'm sure in other European Cities)...
After the pit stop we walked over to Stephanplatz (spelling?) and checked out the huge cathedral. We took an elevator to the top of the tower, but I didn't enjoy it much... Vienna is a beautiful city with HUGE, impressive buildings, but from the sky it doesn't look nearly as cool. For some reason I also felt scared of heights up on top of the cathedral so we came down pretty quickly.
After visiting the cathedral, we stopped for coffee... Had my first expresso... It was... STRONG... Not sure I'll ever have one of those again...
After coffee, we walked to the Freud museum. The Freud museum is his apartment in Vienna where he first began practicing psychoanalytic therapy. Having studied so much of Freud's work, it was incredible to see where he practiced. Unfortunately only the waiting room has the original furniture... His therapy room has been re-created in the London Freud museum, so in Vienna the room was empty with pictures showing you how it was decorated.
Freud's Waiting Room
One of many Freud books on display in his study
At night, we went to the Vienna State Opera House. It was HUGE and ornately decorated on the inside. It was definitely larger than the Prague Opera House, but I don't think it was as beautifully decorated on the inside. We saw The Barber of Seville... It was really cool to see an opera in such a beautiful place, but to be honest it wasn't quite as entertaining as I thought it would be.... Maybe that's a result of being a part of the digital generation....
The next morning we woke up at 5:30am to head to Auschwitz... We took a train to Brno, then a bus from Brno to Auschwitz. The total travel time was 7 hours from Vienna to Auschwitz. We arrived at Auschwitz at 1pm. Auschwitz was really powerful. As a kid, I was fascinated by the holocaust and read a lot of books detailing everything that occurred. Walking around the place that such horrific events occurred is really hard to describe. A lot of times I felt nauseas. You can still see finger nail scratches in the concrete walls of the gas chamber... Auschwitz is actually pretty small when compared with Birkenau (built just a mile or so away from Auschwitz)... After we toured Auschwitz, we went to Birkenau... Driving to the parking lot, we could see just how huge that camp is... It is 7 times the size of Auschwitz... There were 4 gas chambers (there were 2 in Auschwitz) and an organization of barracks/restrooms/workrooms that was far more streamlined than that in Auschwitz...
Empty cannisters of Zyklon-B, the gas used in the gas chamber
What Zyklon-B looked like
Famous sign at entrance to Auschwitz
Baggage left at the railway by prisoners of the camps
Some of the 80,000 pairs of shoes on display
The Birkenau Concentration Camp
Electric Fences at Auschwitz
After leaving Auschwitz, Magda got off the bus earlier than me closer to her hometown, and I rode another 5 hours to Prague. I arrived in Prague at 12:30 where Klara was waiting for me! We took a tram, then missed a connection and ended up taking a cab back to her apartment where I finally got to pass out after a LONG day of travel...
Today I am just hanging out in Prague before taking off at 11:30pm tonight for Moscow, where I'll have an 8 hour layover before my flight to Washington D.C.!
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