brief report from Vienna
Jul. 15th, 2008 11:42 pmWe are in Wien, Austria, at the Hotel Rathaus Park - City Hall Park Hotel. The keyboard on the hotel´s computer is again not an English one, so the Z and the Y are switched and there are vowels with umlauts where I expect punctuation to be, and the @ sign requires special tricks.
This evening we had dinner in a place that does it up brown for the tourists of all nationalities - a show of music and dancing while people eat, lots of wine and more wine and more wine (and one of the 19-year old members of our group had a tad too much wine and was VERY sick on the bus on the way back to the hotel) and apfelstrudel for dessert. Toby the bus driver managed a very neat, if somewhat less than legal, U-turn on the way back to the hotel.
Today we did a walking tour of this district of Wien, which includes most of the museums, the Opera House, and St. Stephen´s Cathedral. Then a trip over to Schönbrunn Palace. Then said supper.
Tomorrow we have a free day. I plan to sleep till noon, then we will go eat pastry at a sidewalk cafe, and try going to a museum or two. We are noting that our 40-years-ago courses in German still allow us to read most signs, if slowly, and we have been roped into a bit of freelance translating for others of our group.
Thursday we aim for home again! I will be glad to get out of the same few changes of clothes and the same pair of shoes, that´s for sure.
ä is where I expect the ´to be, and the ´is up past the zero, and there are other odd things here such as ß and § is what´s above the 3.
Anyway, other people waiting to use hotel computer, even though it´s onlz minutes to midnight and many of those people are probablz a bit drunker than thez should be while using dangerous machinerz.
Whee!
This evening we had dinner in a place that does it up brown for the tourists of all nationalities - a show of music and dancing while people eat, lots of wine and more wine and more wine (and one of the 19-year old members of our group had a tad too much wine and was VERY sick on the bus on the way back to the hotel) and apfelstrudel for dessert. Toby the bus driver managed a very neat, if somewhat less than legal, U-turn on the way back to the hotel.
Today we did a walking tour of this district of Wien, which includes most of the museums, the Opera House, and St. Stephen´s Cathedral. Then a trip over to Schönbrunn Palace. Then said supper.
Tomorrow we have a free day. I plan to sleep till noon, then we will go eat pastry at a sidewalk cafe, and try going to a museum or two. We are noting that our 40-years-ago courses in German still allow us to read most signs, if slowly, and we have been roped into a bit of freelance translating for others of our group.
Thursday we aim for home again! I will be glad to get out of the same few changes of clothes and the same pair of shoes, that´s for sure.
ä is where I expect the ´to be, and the ´is up past the zero, and there are other odd things here such as ß and § is what´s above the 3.
Anyway, other people waiting to use hotel computer, even though it´s onlz minutes to midnight and many of those people are probablz a bit drunker than thez should be while using dangerous machinerz.
Whee!