My second full day in Vienna was great, as was the first... it was snowing the entire day, which limited my ability to take pictures and see everything I had wanted to, but I was able to do a two-hour bus tour all over Vienna which was a nice way to see things that were beyond walking distance... the bus took me to the Schloss Schonbrunn, a massive 1400+ room 1696-built Hapsburg Palace on the outskirts of the city that is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From there we headed to the Schloss Belvedere, a baroque-influenced 18th and 19th-century palace built to celebrate the military expansionism of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Next we went to the Prater, site of the 1873 Vienna World Exhibition. Now it is an amusement park (one of the oldest in the world), with a massive ferris wheel and some other attractions. We continued out of town towards the Danube River, the second-longest river in Europe and certainly one of the most important, and one of the primary reasons Vienna was settled in the first place. Across the Danube is the Danube Tower, the tallest in Austria, but because of the weather I wasn't able to go to the observation deck. We drove passed the United Nations complex which houses the International Atomic Energy Agency and other major UN offices, and back into the city center!
For the rest of Tuesday afternoon I walked around downtown Vienna, and did a nice tour of the Austrian Parliament... 1 hour, English-speaking guide, walking tour for 2 Euros! Finally I wrapped up my Vienna trip with an excursion to the Hotel Sacher, home of the world-famous sachertorte! Click on the website and you will understand... basically one of the best chocolates in the world. Europe really has their chocolate figured out... I have had two types of Belgian chocolates - one from Brussels (I actually got to go to a chocolate factory in 2004), and another they sell here in London, and both are fantastic. I got Swiss chocolate from Geneva in 2008, and now I have had sacher chocolates from Vienna. All of it is simply incredible.
I ended up having another nice dinner with Poppy, said goodbye, and Wednesday morning flew back to London... I flew into Gatwick (as opposed to out of Luton), which was a nice change. Gatwick is the second-biggest airport in the UK after Heathrow, and the public transportation options are plenty... within 60 minutes of my wheels touching down on the runway I was sitting in my bedroom eating lunch, at a cost of 8 pounds. You can't really beat that, honestly. Beyond that, two realizations:
1) The weather in London is extremely moderate. It is almost mid-November and the concept of "temperature swings" does not exist here. It is still in the low-50s every day, and it never varies. Some days there is sun, some days clouds, some days rain, but it is always in the low-50s. Vienna never got out of the mid-30s. Thank you North Atlantic Ocean currents!
2) I am editing a post I made a few weeks ago outlining the criteria for "living" somewhere. You need to take a trip somewhere else, and come back. London feels infinitely more like home after spending only 3 days in Austria. Part of it is the English, but much more of it was simply walking to LSE and recognizing all of the shops, knowing my way around so well, seeing friends, and so on. So to have officially lived somewhere, you need to: get mail, order a pizza/food, do laundry, and take a trip somewhere and come back.
The rest of this week has been rather uneventful. Class went well on Thursday, and since then I did some grocery shopping and have been catching up on emails and readings, and posted a ton of pictures online. Two albums you can see if you are not on facebook:
London/UK pictures September 23-November:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2643261&id=8623973&l=8f881bd62d
This week should be rather busy from an LSE perspective... my class that was supposed to be this past Friday was rescheduled for tomorrow night (my prof was in Indonesia as the keynote speaker at a major conference on deforestation), and there is a public lecture tomorrow in between my two normal classes, so I'll be on campus and super-busy all day tomorrow. Wednesday a friend of mine from the States arrives in London for the year, which is awesome! Thursday and Friday tickets are released for two LSE lectures next week... the Prime Minister of Norway and Queen Noor of Jordan, hopefully I am able to go to both!
Sports update: Chelsea has a HUGE match later today against Manchester United, and they are on fire right now... they're something like 6-0-1 in their last 7 games. A win today would give them a lot of room on top of the table. The Blackhawks need to get healthy. UW football has won two in a row, and find themselves BCS-ranked at 4-2 Big Ten, 7-2 overall (and bowl-eligible). UW mens hockey destroyed Minnesota Friday night, but then failed miserably last night going for the sweep, so they split on the weekend. They are currently 18 in the nation. Also, I got tickets to the ATP World Tour Finals at the O2 Arena for the November 25 afternoon session... more on that as we get closer. Looking for New England to win today and as always, DA BEARS!
Have a great week!
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