(September 10th-15th) Here I am, finally, after seventeen hours of airports and planes....too much travel this summer. Vienna, city of the Hapsburgs. Paris, this is not. The streets are lined by a parcade of stout, five story tall buildings, but outside of Schonbrunn Palace, there just isn't the same majesty or romance. Don't get me wrong, Vienna is built atop a mass of history (e.g. the Holy Roman Empire) as is evident in the hundreds of sculptures, columned buildings with steeples, gardens, etc., but it's not monumental.
Over my trip, I amassed a good hundred photos, so hopefully what follows will give you a taste of what it felt like to be there. Per my usual habit, one of the first things I did after settling in was going for a run to get to know the area a bit better.
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| Running/biking path by my hotel. I became good friends with that stretch of pavement... |
After four or five miles along the bike path above, you empty out onto the Danube. I have to give it to Vienna, it was one of the most pleasant and easiest cities to run in that I visited all summer. Chicago was quite good, but it really just had the shore front trail that I knew of. Vienna, though, had the equivalent of five or six shore front trails to explore. Trails along both sides of this branch of the river. Trails along both the north and south side of the Danube, and trails along the north, middle, and south side of the island in the middle of the river (and being about 8 miles long, that was a lot of running to get in). And that doesn't even begin to count the number of bike routes.
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| Bike lanes everywhere. Everywhere? Everywhere. |
Vienna is definitely a city rebuilt for the bicyclist. Everywhere you go: bike lanes. On a major road, such as above, these are set off in tree lined avenues apart from both the traffic and the side walks. Minor roads even have bike lanes built into the extra wide sidewalks, and if a road doesn't have bike lanes, then it most likely doesn't have traffic either. If I were to visit again, biking is definitely the way to go for getting around. And on a lazy day, the comprehensive public transportation system (such as the trolley above, the underground trams, and buses) amply cover the city - just have cash when you go to buy your week pass.
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| One of the countless statues, this one was opposite the University of Vienna where I was attending a conference. |
The reason for my trip was to attend a conference (that seems to be the main reason that I travel...). I won't bore you with details of computational mechanics, but I don't think I've ever been in a conference venue as uncomfortable as the classrooms from the University of Vienna. No individual seats, but rather wooden benches with very straight and tall backs. After a day of sitting in those things, I could hardly walk straight.
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| City Hall. |
The University of Vienna was situated next to City Hall and the Rathauspark. Both quite beautiful. The university's grounds were filled with busts of prominent professors from the university's past, while the Rathauspark was filled with statues of figures important to the history of Vienna and Austria. Some you can just barely make out in the next photo:
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| Rathauspark outside of City Hall. |
Just a short walk away from the hub of traffic that flowed past the university was an extensive network of pedestrian only streets lined with cafes and boutique shops.
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| Pedestrian streets abound! |
While some were no larger than an alley, others swelled to be large enough for an eight lane road. Grand avenues that led to the cathedral.
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| The constant of five story tall buildings, ever present. |
And, as I mentioned before, the whole of Vienna was composed of five story tall buildings (sometimes a sixth floor would be jammed in somehow, but the heights of the buildings were constant nonetheless). The few exceptions to this were the buildings such as City Hall and the Cathedral of Vienna:
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| Stephansdom, Cathedral of Vienna. Just a wee bit taller than five stories. |
The thing that continues to strike me as strange about European cities is that they're just the mass of relatively small buildings. No high density apartment towers or sky scrapers defining the city center, but rather an extension of the city as far as the eye can see and your feet can take you.
Aside from my constant walking around the pedestrian arcades and water front, I didn't make it to too many of the famous sights of Vienna, such as Schonbrunn Palace. I had to rely on my memories of my visit to those areas six years before since this time, contrary to what you might think with all of these photos, was mainly about work.
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| The ritzy pedestrian arcade. There's Gucci in front of the Hofburg Palace. |
I did manage a few nice runs in though...a twenty two miler along the Danube, and a track workout in the Augarten. That was a strange event...I had seen on Google maps that there was a track near my hotel, so I set out to find the Augarten that it was located in. Somehow, since the Augarten has high walls, I managed to do a circuit well beyond the periphery until I managed to come across a sign (after I had done almost a complete three mile loop) pointing me towards a garden entrance. The track itself belonged to a private athletics club. Upon entering, the manager walked out and gave me the look of 'what are you doing here?' I explained that I was hoping to get a work out in before the day began and he replied 'You may run your circles, hahahaha.' I've never heard someone laugh like a movie villain before in real life, but he had that laugh. The track presented another challenge: it wasn't 400 meters. I'm guessing 320 meters, but still, such an odd length. Five laps to a mile? Weird. No photos of the Augarten, but instead I give you photos of the city park:
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| The Stadtpark. |
And my favorite park photo:
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| More of the Stadtpark. |
Stay tuned, next up is Vienna at night.
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