Day Two, Vienna

Ok, so we want to get a head start on the next day since it is our only full day in vienna. we arise at 6:45 to hustle down to the Hofburg to see the Vienna Boys Choir. But ok, we were totally deceived by the coolness of seeing this famous choir at a relatively famous chapel. First off, "standing room only" means that after everyone who paid to go to church and see the choir, then you shuffle down the center aisle with all the other backpacking looking people who look way out of place in a normal chapel. Second, the choir actually onstage only has two actual boys, and the rest are more like early 30 something men. So we didn't really understand what was going on. But the German mass was interesting, and since i'm not Catholic it was really completely foreign and a pretty cool experience. I don't understand Catholicism and German Catholicism even less. But whatever. So all us backpacker kids are wondering where the hell the boys are, when halfway through the mass the sound of angels rings from somewhere up above. I think everyone was as confused as we were, and then we all figured out that oh, that's the boys, we just can't see them because they're hidden away on the third balcony. So it turned out to be not what we expected at all, but a really interesting experience and we were both glad we went.

Ok, onward. We metro it out to Schonbrunn, which was the summer home of the Habsburg monarchy, the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire. On the sheer scale of impressiveness alone, this pretty much dominates anything i've ever seen. The grounds were incredible, with a big green hill you can climb and look out over vienna. they have a labyrinth and the world's oldest zoo, with pandas. everything is cultivated so it's all very garden-y and on-purpose kind of beautiful, but the scale is just so impressive. we didn't go inside, mostly because it was getting late and it was really nice outside. So we climbed the big hill and appreciated the view and then climbed down and got stuck in the labyrinth for an hour or so.

There was a medieval kind of market area with lots of Easter paraphernalia, and lots of people standing around drinking hot wine and beer and ordering marzipan and chocolate and Easter eggs from the merchant's tents. Colleen orders a crepe and then we took a tram back, because the tram would take us directly back to the Westbahnhof train station, which was like 3 blocks from our hostel. Perfect.

Except, I didn't pay attention to when to get off, and neither did Colleen. I mean, it looked like a long ways on the map, but i just totally zoned out. The line actually ended, and everyone disembarked. Oh, shit. Colleen and I looked at each other and realized the error of our ways. We have no idea where we are, and are v.v.v. lost. We can't find ourselves anywhere on the map that the hostel gave us, which covers the city center and the surrounding area. we trace our tram line and it basically just disappears off the map. uh oh. it's around 5 at this point and we're meeting up with some Austrians for dinner [more on that later].So we decide to find a U-bahn [metro] because that will have a big map and it will be clearer. the maps at tram stops suck and we can't figure out where we are. colleen gets directions from a nice lady who notices how lost we are, but they're all kinds of messed up and i think some integral parts got lost in the language barrier. after a lot of walking and some mild panicking, we still haven't found a U-Bahn despite being on a fairly decent thorough fair street. Every shop is closed because it's a sunday evening, and no one really is around except a few non-friendly looking people. uh-oh.

so finally we find an open establishment, yay! it's a chinese restaraunt that no one is in. no one except an old chinese man who looks absolutely thrilled to have customers. I felt really bad breaking it to him that we would just really appreciate some help. He doesn't really speak english, but ok he's going to help us! He takes the map and examines it. he furrows his brow and flips it over. his brow gets more furrowed. yep, just as we suspected, we are off the map. So in exactly zero english, this wonderful man communicates to us that we need to go back to the last tram stop, take the tram 5 more stops in the opposite direction, and there will be a Ubahn there that we can get on and it will take us to westbahnhof. WHEW. sweet relief, i want to hug and kiss this wonderful old man. faith in humanity [after bout with the kebap man] restored!

Ok, so we aren't late for our dinner date with Simon and Lisa. Long story short, my friend Paul met Simon randomly in Austria when he was here a few weeks ago, retrieving lost snowboarding equipment. So anyways, I had been emailing Simon a bit to see if he would want to meet up with us. And he did, so he brought his sister Lisa and they met up with us at our hostel and took us out for a delicious bite to eat at a really pretty cafe/restaurant that was on top of one of the big museums downtown. The beer was really good, I had a SchneiderWeisse and it tasted like a dark wheat beer from the Dane. One of his friends met us out too, so the five of us ate and had a drink or two. They were really fun to talk to and so so so nice, and since we hadn't really talked to anyone our age from Vienna, it was interesting. Their English was amazing, it made me feel really guilty for only being able to stammer out a few sentences in Italian and Spanish. I asked Simon how he got so good at speaking English, and he said "well, we have to learn it in school...but i think i improved very much because i watch so many movies!". Like, simon even swore properly. that's when you know someone really has a handle on the english language...when they correctly place and use curse words the way we use them. We stopped by an Irish pub [theme?] and then they had to leave to catch their metro. Coll and I walked back to the hostel and we were both pretty awake we stopped into the Wombat's bar, but it was full of really rowdy Americans and neither one of us were really into that, so we had a beer and then called it a night.