Vienna part II, Prague, and missing trains

Hi everyone!
Let me just mention that the reason I am able to write this post at this time is due the ridiculous timeliness (not quite sure if this is a real word) of German trains. We were supposed to leave to Munich at 4:36am this morning, but due to our own poor time management skills (and a lot of bad luck) we managed to miss our Munich train by about 2 minutes. That being said, this might actually have been for the better because this means that I actually got to sleep tonight in my own bed (versus trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep , sitting up, on moving trains). Of course by the time I actually got home and fell asleep it was 7:15am, so I now have a severely shifted sleeping schedule. All the better for skyping with people from back home :) Anyway, I figured I would finish my story of last weekend, and also upload some more pictures. I know I am uploading them in a sort of strange order (Prague first, even though I haven't written about it yet) but I promise all the pictures will be up at some point soon (including ones from Dresden from 2 weeks ago...)

On the second day in Vienna we explored the old city centre.  We climbed 385 or so stairs up to the top of St. Stephen's cathedral and also went inside it to look at the church (I will make sure to label these pictures so you know which ones are from St. Stephen's. Climbing the stairs was an adventure in itself because the staircase was ridiculously narrow, went up in a spiral, and was the method by which you both climbed up and came back down. So we spent a lot of time being glued to the walls of this particular staircase. We then had really good Gelatto (of the calibre of Il Gelatiere back home- a place at Mt. Pleasant and Eglinton), and walked around some more in search of Motzart's house. There are lots of pictures of other beautiful churches and buildings we encountered on the way some of whose names I don't remember. We went into St. Peter's church, which was actually very different from St. Stephen's...a true experience of church variety (Quick German lesson- the word for church in German is Kirche, pronounced "kirsha"...I managed to mess up this pronunciation about 15 times since I learned this word. In fact the way I learned this word is probably the funniest- on my way to and from work, I bike past a large glass building with a huge sign that says "Scientology Kirche" on it...so I asked my somewhat German speaking friends and then confirmed my suspicion...and laughed at my pronunciation for half an hour :)) .

We finally ended up in the museum district. The museums themselves look like castles from the outside. We wandered around some more (the weather was amazing!) and finally ended up in what turned out to be my favourite thing in Vienna- the Freud museum. Located in his old apartment (where he lived for 47 years before fleeing to England in 1938 to avoid the Nazis). The best part about the visit to his apartment was that we managed to stumble on a lady giving a tour of it in English and so we tagged along. I was way too excited about being there, probably because I learned about Freud in so many different classes. I felt like my education hasn't completely gone to waste :)...I think that the pictures I will post will do much more justice telling his story than me. I do want to say how much I loved seeing the waiting room where his patients sat, the couch where he had his famous Wednesday night meetings, and some of his other possessions. There was even a room dedicated to the concept of Freud's couch in this museum. It had pictures of how far this couch concept has infiltrated (including Andy Warhol's work).

After this, we went to the market, which is ...well a market. It has lots of stands selling food (the funniest part is that most of them sell the same sort of food...not quite sure how they compete with each other). The best part was that we had lunch at this place called Tewa (means Nature in Hebrew), and after seeing the menu I got a feeling that the food was very Israeli. Sure enough, after asking, I got introduced to the owner and we talked a bit in Hebrew about Vienna...It was a lot of fun (I really miss speaking in Hebrew to people...). After the market it started raining quite a bit, and we somehow miraculously found a subway station, grabbed our backpacks from the hostel and left to Prague.

I think I will write a separate post about Prague because there is quite a bit to say...for now you can look at my second album of Prague pictures :)

Feel free to leave lots of comments!

Cheers :)
Alina