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Vienna and Rome

Vienna – When we got to Vienna, trouble struck again. First we couldn’t find the bus station (which didn’t make sense, since we were supposed to be dropped off at the bus station), and we wandered around a tube stop for about a half hour looking for it. There were signs all over directing us to it, but they all pointed in different directions, so we had no idea where to go. We found a set of free bathrooms during our search, and Alex and I both brushed our teeth and freshened up after the long bus ride. Alex even took a “Mexican shower,” his expression for washing up your entire body using a sink in a public bathroom.
After cleaning up, we finally ran into some people that spoke a little English besides their native German, and they pointed us in the right direction of the bus stop. When we got there to buy our tickets to Rome, we found out that there was no bus to Rome whatsoever until that Sunday. If we took the bus on Sunday, we would get in just in time to make our flight out of Rome to Athens. We wouldn’t get to see Rome at all, and we would have to forfeit the money we paid for the hostel there, plus pay for a hotel in Vienna. It was an absolute disaster. The lockers at the bus stop didn’t work either, so we had nowhere to put our luggage.
We decided to go to an internet café to see if we could figure something out. Since it was still really early in the morning, no cafes were open, so we stopped in at a grocery store to buy some food for breakfast. The food was so cheap there, the cheapest of anywhere we had been except for maybe Milan. We got yogurt, bread, rice pudding, and apples, and I felt again like I had a feast for breakfast. There was one minor glitch at the store though – neither of us had cash, and our credit cards wouldn’t work because they don’t have “chips” in them, which is some sort of technology that makes the card safer. They have them all over Europe, and we couldn’t use our cards at a lot of places because we had no chips. Visa needs to work on bringing those to the US.
But anyway, since our cards wouldn’t work, I had to sit there with all of our luggage and food while Alex ran around looking for an ATM. There wasn’t any one that was really close, so I waited a long time before he came back with the money, which was pretty embarrassing.
After we were done eating, we found a café that was due to open soon, and we waited around until the guy came and opened it up. We looked at every option possible with Eurolines, but there was no way that we could get to Rome within the next two days. We had no other option but to take a train or plane. The train ended up being the cheaper option, and we booked two tickets for an overnight train, 75 euro apiece. It was a major blow, but at least we would be able to get to Rome.
Just for a little comic relief, something pretty funny happened while we were at the Internet café. I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to pee. There was no bathroom at the café, so I brought a couple coins and ran outside to see if there was a bathroom anywhere. There weren’t bathrooms anywhere in the vicinity, so I speed-walked for over a mile searching for a public bathroom. Finally, I was about to pee myself, so I ran into a café and asked where the toilets were. I dashed up the stairs and just made it before my bladder exploded. I felt like I should buy something from the café because I used their bathroom, and I had to pay 2 euro 10 for a Pepsi. Then I had to walk all the way back to the café, to find that Alex hadn’t turned my Internet off, so we had to pay for the half hour I was gone!
Things started looking up after that. We went back to the same grocery store (which earned us a laugh from the cashier who checked us out before) and bought stuff to make sandwiches and more apples for lunch. We ate at a nearby park.
We then went to the train station to store our luggage and find out when we had to check in for our train that evening. After that was all taken care of, we set out to explore the city. The outskirts of town, where the bus stop was, were a bit run-down, but the city center turned out to be beautiful.
The first place we stopped was the Schonbrunn Palace, which was the home of the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, Maria Theresa, who is better known as the mother of Marie Antoinette. Her summer home, the Gloriette, was also located there. Alex and I decided not to go inside the palace and just walk around the grounds, which were free. It was a really beautiful day, so it was nice to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air.
The grounds of the palace were beautiful. The palace was a yellow color, and they had a lot of yellow flowers around the grounds to match with the palace. They also had a really cool wall made of trees. It’s hard to explain this, so you’ll have to look at my pictures. In general, it was like a big park, with lots of trees and fountains and flowers.
After enjoying the Schonbrunn, we decided to go to the commercial district of Vienna, which has lots of little shops and cafes along the street, to buy Alex some Viennese coffee and some Viennese chocolate cake for me. We got a huge shock at the first café we stopped in. We went up to the bar to order a coffee. Alex made his request to the bartender, and this is the response we got back (in English): “I don’t know what you want, but in this country, you don’t just ask for a drink, you sit down and wait just like everyone else. I don’t know where you come from, but you should go back and stay there.” All of this was in a terribly rude tone of voice. Alex and I were so dumbfounded, we just turned around and left. In all the other countries we had been to, you sat down if you wanted to order food, but if you just wanted a drink, you went to the bar. In fact, at some places, you even went to the bar to order food! So this system of in Vienna was completely out of the ordinary, but even if it was ordinary, that man had no right to treat us the way he did. We both felt really terrible; it feels awful to be hated just for being foreign. But we tried to just let it roll off, and we found a street café with much nicer people. I enjoyed a mug of Viennese hot chocolate (not very sweet, but very creamy since they use real, unsweetened whipped cream), Alex had his Viennese coffee (the best coffee he’s ever had, so he claims), and we split a piece of the famous Viennese chocolate cake. It was very different than any other cake I’ve ever had; it almost tasted like it had orange marmalade in it. We asked our waitress what was in it, but she couldn’t tell us because it was a secret recipe.
We walked along the main shopping street for a bit after that, admiring the expensive designer things that we could never buy, and then went back to the train station, stopping along the way at a different grocery store for some sustenance for the trip. One of the best buys from this visit to the grocery store was three mini jars of jam, which we used later to store our shampoo and stuff, since the airlines don’t allow you to take bottles over 150 mL in carry-on luggage.
The train was a bit of an adventure at first, since we didn’t know which cars we were allowed to sit in, and we ended up sitting in someone’s reserved compartment. With the help of a porter, we found the right compartment. Some natives laughed us at on the platform, because the doors automatically closed for some reason before we got into our carriage, and we freaked out because we thought the train was leaving without us. Turns out that all we had to do was just pull the door open again.
The overnight train was amazing, almost worth paying the extra 75 euro for it. We got a compartment all to ourselves, with three seats on each side, air-conditioning, a glass door, and overhead racks for luggage. The seats even folded down to make beds! Alex and I spread out over the three seats and slept straight through until we got to Rome at 10 the next morning.

Rome – The very first thing we did in Rome was check in to our hostel. It felt so nice to arrive at a place later than 6 AM – places were actually open! Our hostel, although open, turned out to be the biggest dump. It was absolutely filthy. Everything was covered with hair and dirt, especially the bathroom floor. Thank God for flip-flops, that’s all I can say. The guy who checked us in was very smelly but also very nice, and he gave us a map and showed us the best places worth seeing in Rome. He also let us take a shower, even though we couldn’t enter our room yet because it hadn’t been cleaned (I wonder if they ever actually cleaned it…). At least the hostel was in a nice location, close to many of the interesting sites in Rome.
The weather that day was beautiful, so I wore a tank top, although I did have to bring a shirt with sleeves with me so that I would be allowed to enter churches. After checking out the monument Vittoria Emanuel, which was right next to our hostel, we went to San Giovanni, which is the church that, according to our hostel owner, housed the cross on which Jesus was crucified. The church was beautiful, and we spent a while there, even though there was a convention of Mexican nuns taking place at the church. But after all our searching, we couldn’t find the cross. We asked a man outside the church, and he pointed us toward a smaller, nearby church, the Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem. The church itself was dark and rather dingy, but the room that held the relics was amazing.
When the hostel owner told us that we would find the cross at the church, I thought he meant the entire cross, which I found hard to believe. It was actually just three pieces of it. There were other relics too: two thorns from the crown of thorns, a nail that pierced Jesus’ hand, one of St. Thomas of Aquinas’s fingers (eww), a piece of the cross of the Good Thief that hung next to Jesus, and a piece of the headboard that hung over Jesus’s cross. The words aren’t all there, but historians think it read, from right to left, “This is Jesus, your King,” in three languages. The replics were all encased in beautiful gold containers (one shaped like a cross) from Russia. There was also a photographic replica of the Shroud of Turin, which is the piece of fabric that one of the maidens pressed onto Jesus’ front and back while he hung from the cross, to clean him. Using the details from this shroud, an artist created a carving of what Jesus looked like as he hung from the cross. This carving was on display next to the shroud.
After seeing the relics at the church, we hopped on the tube again and went to see “The Bone Church,” which is a church whose entire crypt is decorated with human bones. This church is located near the Fountain of Barberini, which is a fountain made as a monument to a really old, rich, Roman family. We took some pictures there and then walked over to the church. There was a big line since the crypt had just opened for the afternoon, so we walked around the area looking for a gelato place, since it was really hot outside. I got a chocolate chip cone, and we enjoyed those as we walked back toward the church.
Seeing the crypt was very interesting but creepy. We only had to make a donation to get in, and then we got to walk through four rooms adorned with human bones. There were a few graves of monks or priests, but mostly the full skeletons were on display in beds made of human femurs. The rooms were lit with chandeliers made of vertebrae. Pictures weren’t allowed, but I think Alex managed to get some illegal video footage.
The next place we stopped was the Spanish steps, which were a huge set of stairs up a hill that connected an old church to the street below. The reason they are famous is because the most famous fountain in the world is located at the base of the steps. In my opinion, the steps are more beautiful than the fountain. They are lined with trees that bloom with fuchsia-colored flowers. The fountain is nothing much to see; probably the coolest thing about it is all the tourists that flock around it. Alex and I both threw pennies in it to make a wish, and then climbed the Spanish steps. At the top, we ran into this Italian guy from the US who felt the need to tell us everything about Rome and tell us all the reasons why Obama would never get elected: basically, because he was black. He was such a chatterbox, and it took us like 20 minutes to get away because he wouldn’t stop talking!
When we finally got away from the Italian guy, we went to see the Piazza del Popolo. Like the fountain at the Spanish steps, it was kind of disappointing. It was pretty, with a big obelisk at the center and fountains and archways lining its perimeter; I guess I was just expecting more. The plaza is connected to the main shopping street in Rome, so we walked down that (mostly tourist junk and gelaterias), not really because we wanted to shop, but because the other three sites that we wanted to see that day were off of the main drag.
The first stop along the way was the Fontana de Treni. This was probably the biggest fountain I have ever seen – it looked more like a waterfall with statues around it. It had a huge white wall for a back with statues of Roman gods (probably Neptune?) all around it. Again, my pictures do it better justice. It had a large set of steps that went all the way around it, and every space was occupied with a camera-laden tourists. Somehow Alex and I managed to shove our way down to sit on the side of the fountain and make a penny wish.
After the Fontana de Treni, we were feeling pretty hungry, so we went to look for a place that sold pasta. Sadly, we discovered that pasta in Italy is not a main dish; it is a “first course” that is served before the main dish, which is usually some kind of meat or fish. Therefore, the pastas don’t have any meat in them except for maybe some bacon bits or bits of shrimp for flavor. We searched for a long time to find a place that served pasta with meat, and we somehow ended up in the neighborhood by the Bone Church again. Once we got there, we gave up and decided to order some pasta with a lot of cheese in it in hopes that it would fill us up. We chose a nicer-looking café with outdoor seating. It turned out to be a bad choice; the waiter was very rude and made fun of us within earshot for not ordering anything to drink (we had a lot of water in our water bottles) and for only ordering pasta for dinner. He looked absolutely incredulous when we told him what we wanted and kept asking us if we wanted any wine or any other dishes for our dinner whenever he walked by our table. Besides the rude waiter, my pasta was very good – I got spinach and feta cheese ravioli in cream sauce. Alex’s, on the other hand, was disgusting, at least in my opinion. He liked the dish (gnocchi stuffed with Gorgonzola cheese), but I just thought the cheese was way too strong.
We escaped more ridicule from the waiter by asking someone else for our bill, and then we returned to the shopping street to find the Pantheon. This ancient Roman building was spectacular, and we sat enjoying it on some steps for a while. A funny thing that happened is a group of Spanish tourists asked us to take a photo for them, and then demanded that we had to be in the photos with them!
We left when the hawkers, who were selling these stupid magnets that made obnoxious noises, got too annoying. We headed to the Piazza Navona, which is the plaza in Angels and Demons (the book by Dan Brown) with the Fountain of the Four Rivers and the giant obelisk. We didn’t stay too long though, because it was full of tourists and artists with their easels, so it wasn’t that cool.
We had planned on going running that night, but Alex wanted to use the Internet first, and by the time he got back, I had fallen asleep waiting for him. He went running alone and left me to sleep until the next morning. I’m glad I didn’t go anyway, because Alex says the streets were crowded and his run was awful.
The next morning we slept in and went to the grocery store. The hostel served “free breakfast,” but it was mostly cake and cookies (!?). We got some yogurt, apples, bread, cheese, and chicken for breakfast and lunch later. We ate our breakfast and then went over to the Vatican City.
Just a word of advice: never go to the Vatican City on a Sunday! From the moment we got off the tube and all the way until we got into St. Peter’s, we were fighting the crowd, which mostly consisted of church groups. It was a really hot day, and there was no shade while waiting in line to get into the basilica. Since we were going to a church, I couldn’t wear a tank top, so I was feeling really ill from standing in the hot sun. As we got closer and closer to the basilica, people started shoving and pressing in on all sides (they keep you in corrals instead of lines while you wait, so there is no order whatsoever), and I started getting panicky. I was so happy when we got through the security check and were in the shade of the basilica.
Vatican City is surprisingly dirty. There aren’t enough garbage cans or something, because there was trash all over the square in front of the basilica. I thought it was so rude for people to throw their trash in a city built for the glory of God. The walled square would have been very beautiful otherwise, with a fountain and a huge column in the center. It was also filled with chairs that morning, although I’m not sure why; maybe some sort of prayer ceremony outside that morning.
The first thing we did once we got to the basilica was climbing the stairs all the way to the top of the cupola. This is an experience, because there are over 500 stairs to get to the top! You can take an elevator for more money, but it only allows you to skip 200 stairs, so it’s not really worth it. There are several stops along the way, such as a ledge that runs along the inside of the cupola near the ceiling. From there, you can get a better look at the ceiling, which is made completely out of tiny tiles, some of them gilded.
The stairwells start narrowing when you get near the top, and it’s really scary to be pressed in there with no way of getting out if you freak out, because there are people in front of you and behind you. I was very nervous in there, and it felt good to reach the top and be out in the open air. The Vatican City looks more beautiful from above when you can’t see all the garbage! From the cupola, you can see the wall that encloses the entire city, and all the villas of people who live inside the city (cardinals, maybe?).
We climbed back down some three hundred-odd stairs and managed to sneak on the elevator on the way down (they don’t check tickets on the way down, apparently). We then went into the crypt, which holds the bodies of all the late Popes, as well as St. Peter’s tomb. All the bodies are in sarcophagi, usually with the image of the Pope carved onto the top. The only exceptions to this were popes John Paul I and John Paul II, who were buried in the ground and had gravestones marking their places (not sure why this was different). There were many people praying to John Paul II since he is on his way to becoming a saint, so we got ushered past his tomb very quickly. St. Peter’s tomb is very beautiful, all in gold and with candles burning everywhere. It’s behind a huge gate, so I couldn’t get any good pictures. I hear this isn’t where his body is anyway, although I’m not sure that’s true. Nevertheless, it was still beautiful.
When we left St. Peter’s, we got a glimpse of the Swiss Guards who protect the Vatican City. They are some of the most highly trained soldiers in the world, but if it weren’t for the swords hanging from their belts, you would think they were clowns. They wear the most ridiculous outfits, with orange and purple and red stripes. Alex got them on videotape.
We wanted to go to the Sistine Chapel after seeing St. Peter’s, but apparently it is closed on Sundays, which was a huge disappointment. We took some pictures in the square and then went back to the hostel for lunch. It was pretty late by the time we were done eating because we spent almost three hours in Vatican City and we had gotten a late start that morning. We still wanted to see the ruins of Ancient Rome though, so we hurried over there with the hopes that they were still open to the public.
Unfortunately, the ruins, including the Coliseum, had closed fifteen minutes before we got there. This turned out to be OK though, because you can still walk around the ruins, just not through them. So we got to see everything, it was just from further away. The only thing that was disappointing was not getting to go inside the Coliseum.
It’s kind of sad to see all the ruins of what used to be one of the world’s greatest cities, because everything is destroyed. The columns are crumbling, and all that is left of the buildings are the foundations. It is still amazing to see it all though, and to imagine that a long time ago, Julius Caesar walked those cobbled streets.
We had sandwiches for dinner that night and packed up our stuff, which was an adventure since we had to try and fit everything back into one bag again (we both had been carrying around extra stuff in plastic bags). The best part was getting all of our shower stuff in one-liter bags. We cleaned out our tiny jam jars and put shampoo and conditioner and soap in them. We went to bed right after that, because we had to get up at six the next morning to catch our flight at 10.
The next morning we hurried to shower, eat, and get out of the hostel in time to catch to the train to the airport. We ended up being a little slower that we thought, and we had to wait for a later train because we missed the one we wanted to take. This meant rushing through the very disorganized airport (lines were forever at check-in and security) and just making it to the gate when it was time to board. I slept through most of the flight, and when I woke up, we were in Athens!

Posted by fraleigh on 2008-05-14 07:27:59 | Rating: