So anyway, while we were in Vienna I read about this bike trail nearby along the Danube River, and we decided to give it a shot. We wanted a little change from the big city sightseeing; to head into the country and get some exercise other than walking. So we headed to Krems, Austria on a morning train, found a hotel, rented bikes and headed down the Danube. It was so beautiful and we really enjoyed the ride. The trail is paved, fairly well-marked, and follows the river through little towns and countless vineyards. We only rode an out-and-back of 12 miles one way, but the entire trail is much longer and you can do multiple-day trips. Since it’s October the grapes were ripe and so we saw people picking and loading them into trucks. It also smelled like grapes… but not really in a good way, it smelled like rotten fruit. Overall the whole trip was really fun and we were glad that we went a little out of the way and spent a day on it.

Ben biking through vineyards

Danube River, Austria

Lots of grapes

View from a random old church

Danube River

Split, Austria

It took a lot of tries to get this photo

Pretty scenery along the Danube

Biking along the river

This side of the river had tons of apples

Ben biking through the apple orchard

Pretty town of Durnstein

Self portrait #1

Self portrait #2

Our base town of Krems

 

We also went with Katy to meet her friends for a birthday celebration. We all went out to eat at a traditional Austrian restaurant, and everyone made sure Ben and I ordered typical foods. I had some kind of  seasonal mushroom dish that was delicious, and Ben had schweinsbraten.   Good times.
 

A friend of a friend works in Vienna at the United Nations, so we met up with her for lunch. We took a short tour of the UN office, which was actually really interesting! There are four major headquarters of the UN: Vienna, NY, Geneva, and Nairobi. The one in Vienna mostly deals with security and protection. A part of the tour that I found really interesting was regarding the language translations for UN meetings. There are 6 official languages of the UN: English, French, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish. Whatever language is currently being spoken has to first be translated to French or English. Then it’s translated to all of the other 4 official languages. If any country needs another translation, they have to provide their own translator. You can imagine how hard of a job it would be to be a translator – they have to work fast and also be really careful not to imply the wrong message. For example, idioms like “under the table” and “bend over backwards” cannot always be translated word-for-word to different languages.  So they can only work 3 hours per day and have to take breaks every 30 minutes. And they get paid really well – it sounds like a really prestigious job.
 

We visited two museums in Vienna and both were great. One was the Kunst History Museum – a really great art museum with Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome stuff, and an impressive art collection. The art included my favorite, Raphael, and also Vermeer, Rembrandt, Rubens, and this crazy artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo who painted these weird faces with objects in the 1500’s. They had four of his paintings at this museum, including this famous one called “Summer”:
 

The other museum was the Natural History Museum, which had a huge collection of pretty much every animal, insect, rocks, and prehistoric ancient tools you could imagine. It even had a huge room of meteorites, a live working bee hive, and best of all, the “Venus of Willendorf.” This is a doll statue found near Vienna that is 25,000 years old.  Since this discovery there’s been a couple more statues found that are slightly older, but this one is close to being the very oldest existing. It looks really funny.
 

Besides that, we spent time just hanging out in Vienna, walking around and admiring buildings (our favorite version of free sightseeing!).  We loved the architecture and general feel of Vienna. Here are some various photos of the city.
 

FYI, even when I’m not posting I usually keep the “Where are we now?” box on the right side of the page up to date, and every once in a while I update the map on the “Travel Plans” page at the top menu.  And if that’s not enough, join Facebook and add Ben and I to your friend list, we add things there occasionally too.

Cesky Krumlov (Czech Republic) – 3 nights in a hostel in this small medieval town.  We had a good time wandering the streets, and also hanging out with the hostel managers and guests.

Vienna (Austria) – 4 nights with our awesome couchsurfing host, Katy.  We  loved Vienna and had so much fun hanging out with Katy and her friends. Vienna is a really beautiful city, but it still has a live-able feel to it; like a perfect mixture of Paris and Prague.

Biking the Danube (Austria) – we just spent a day biking a nice paved trail along the Danube River in northern Austria (1 hour east of Vienna).  The weather was beautiful and so was the scenery – rolling hills covered with vineyards and little towns with old castles and churches.

Next stop is Budapest, Hungary.  We’ve heard such great things about Budapest, I can’t wait to get there.  Also Ben has discovered that he loves goulash, so it’ll be fun to go there and try the ‘real’ thing.

It ended up that Ben and I spent 6 nights in Salzburg. More than we would have planned, but it’s not a bad place to spend some extra time. We had already booked 3 nights in a hostel when we heard back from a “couchsurfing” request in Salzburg.  So we added an additional 3 nights to stay with a local host, Rose, who offered us a free room in her apartment.  We’ve heard great things about couchsurfing (a world-wide network of travelers and people offering a free bed), and it’s been fun to see how it works.   Rose has been a great host, letting us use her kitchen and washing machine, and even cooking us dinner the first night (she’s a great cook!!).

It’s been nice to stay in one place for a while.  I feel like I know the city a little better than if we just stayed a couple nights and saw the main sights.  Also we’ve been able to spread out our sightseeing, and get out into the countryside too.

I like Salzburg; it’s a nice average-sized city and has a good mix of tourism and normal every-day life.  The old town and fortress are definitely impressive, and the scenery is really pretty with green hills and distant Alps. Salzburg is best known as the home of Mozart and the Sound of Music, but we mostly ignored this.

The huge Hohensalzburg fortress perched up on a steep hill can be seen from almost anywhere in Salzburg. We spent a couple hours exploring it and enjoying the views. People lived on this hill for thousands of years, and parts of the current castle were built in the 12th century. It was greatly expanded over the years, mostly by the Archbishops of Salzburg, who lived there and profited from nearby salt mines.

The old town in Salzburg is packed with churches, squares, and fountains. I especially loved the interior of the Salzburg Cathedral, so pretty!

Here’s a panoramic of Salzburg… the merging didn’t turn out great, but you get the idea.