eiskaffee??

i slept so deeply last night that when i woke up this morning, i literally had no idea where i was. i had been having this dream about selling a huge house, and when i woke up in was in vienna. i got up kinda early, and decided that today was my day to go exploring....

the weather has been very pleasant, cool and breezy, so i headed up to mariahilferstrasse, where i found my towel yesterday. it's a bit of a walk to take before one has had their traditional morning overload of coffee, but it was really, really nice. i stopped and bought the herald tribune so i could do my crossword (of course. don't roll your eyes at me, momma), then stopped at cafe for breakfast. i hadn't almost anything since i was at dulles, so i was starving. luckily, the menu had pictures, so i pointed to something, managed to get it across that the ham was not necessary, and sat outside and devoured everything in sight. even the orange juice. blech. (ps. speaking of crosswords....will, you know exactly who fuzzbutt is. don't even bother asking or pretending. hmph). 

so then i just....wandered. i strolled around, passed the MuseumsQuartier, and then stumbled my way into the Burggarten, which, if none of you knew, has this mozart monument....i came across it completely by accident, just walking in the park. yes, i took pictures of myself in front of it. yes, i felt like a complete idiot doing that. 

then i wandered past the staatsoper and discovered that they were doing a concert tonight, despite the fact that it's their summer break, so i bought a student standing-room ticket on impulse, and now i have something to do tonight! i passed karlskirche, stefansdom, some huge edifice with franz joseph's name on it, the albertina museum (it had a really huge, angry statue of zeus in front of it. i took pictures), a bookstore where i bought postcards, a store with more huge, amazingly awesome rings than you could possibly imagine (i showed some restraint), meandered past the haus der musik, and lots and lots and lots of cafes, including the Cafe Central. 

i eventually went back to the cafe central, which is really really famous because it's really really old and some really really famous dead people used to go there. and there i discovered that i really don't like viennese "eiskaffe", which, i assumed, was MY version of iced coffee...namely, black coffee, poured over ice (or, as one pleasantly inept barista in wadsworth called it, "coffee on the rocks"). greg, you would LOVE eiskaffee. i, however, couldn't help pouting at it and wanting to demand help getting all that STUFF out of my coffee. i know, i'm a philistine, but really. it's chilled coffee?? or espresso?? that's sweetened, and it's had this semi-sweet cream dolloped over it, complete with caramel crunchy things and i'm sure it's traditional and i'm sure it's got history, but it tasted like melted coffee ice cream and i'm a bit of a purist, i afraid. 

oh and by the way, i've reconciled my differences with mineral water, too. blech. but...."mineral" is easier to say than whatever the word for "plain, flat, wonderful tapwater" is. also, once i got my check, i discovered that the water was more expensive than my coffee. so i think i will remember to lug around my own water next time. :)

then i kept wandering, and it started raining, and like the stalwart discoverer that i am, i kept going and going and going....i found stamps, then realized that i actually had no idea how to get back to the hostel....then kept walking and walking and decided to take the u-bahn back, which is retardedly easy to use. 

and you know, the thing i kept thinking as i was wandering the streets of vienna is just that i feel so damned lucky to be able to be here. it's a little confusing, slightly intimidating, absolutely wonderful, and totally worth it. 

but i really do hate eiskaffee.