2010 Trip: Vienna Day 2

22nd May 2010

Today everything was all go at some ungodly hour in the morning. Maria headed off to spend the day filming knights in front of green screens, it sounds exciting!

I headed off in the other direction, firstly through town to try and find (for about the fifth time) a particular book - still no luck! Then I headed out to Schonbrunn Park to find the zoo. If you ask any locals about it, the first thing they will tell you is that it is the oldest zoo in the world. That may be a little tentative, but it is 258 years old.

I was not actually expecting it to be particularly impressive, but it was well worth the trip. It would be classed under the ‘suitably extensive’ classification of menageries. One might imagine a little kid (or whom many frequented the zoo) telling their grandparents the next day… “And there were lions, and tigers, and sea lions, and penguins, and bison, and flamingos, and crocodiles, and wolves, and rhinos, and giant pandas, and hippo-a-um-potamuses, and orang-utans, and elephants, and reindeer, and, and, and…”

I will identify a few things that were beyond cool. One was an unmarked blackened room, in which when you entered you found bats flitting everywhere. In the very low light in was cool to see shadows here and there and then a buzzing as one passes mere millimetres from ones head. It was even more amusing to see, well hear, people’s reactions. Women tended to scream and flee - all very stereotypical.

I spent about ten minutes watching a huge anaconda making its ponderous way up a branch, the bunching and stretching of muscles and scales was very cool. For the most part the enclosures were of a decent size and the animals looked pretty happy. It is also the first time I have actually been to a real zoo in around 5 years. I visited the palm house and the desert house, after the zoo, both were rather passé.

In the evening, I made dinner for Maria and her two flatmates, a rather nice creamy mushroom pasta dish with capers. This was rounded off with good crusty bread and yummy salad. Later in the evening, we were picked up by Maria’s friend Katharina, who had borrowed a friend’s car for the evening. She very kindly took us up into the hills behind Vienna, the start of the alps. We looked down over the city, drank beer, and admired the very impressive view. Katharina pointed out the different sights around the city and was an excellent guide.

We were going to go to a wine bar just out of town, but by the time we got here it was already closed (it was almost midnight). Beethoven lived there for a while, and the picturesque streets were almost Spanish in style. Grape vines shaded the rough tables. White washed walls and cobble stones.

After this we headed into town for a drink and after a few hours of chatting, we headed off to a local institution, a 24hr restaurant (unheard of in Vienna) run by the Russian Mafia. It serves traditional Austrian fare (dumplings, omelets, strudel etc.), fantastic hot chocolates, and freshly baked bread from the adjoining bakery. Yummy! We finally made it home to sleep by 4am.