First Impressions of Vienna.

It was my first overnight train in Europe and it is probably because I’m American but it felt like such an adventure. I shared cabin with a Swiss girl on her way back to school at the university of Vienna, and three French backpackers. It was a fairly uneventful train ride, but for some reason I loved it. The three Frenchmen spoke varying degrees of English and I lost count how many times they apologized that there English was better. I kept insetting that it was ok seeing as I speak little to no French.  We get into Vienna at 7:35 in the Morning and it was snowing out. I walked the kilometer from the Westbahnhof to my hostel and there was no one around. It was Easter Monday and the city was deserted. I have been a lot of places and always find myself comparing places to other places I have been; how they look, whats the culture like, how are the people. Walking out of the Bahnhof Vienna didn’t look like any city I had ever been to. The Post Modern train station seamed to fit in so well with the baroque and classical buildings that surrounded it. In my opinion modern architecture often ruins the aesthetics of an area of older more classical architecture, but that didn’t strike me as the case here. As I walked around that morning I was stuck by how varying the buildings were, but how well the city seamed to “flow.” The architecture wasn't one imposing building after another rather it all seamed to make up this patchwork landscape. In the subsequent days it was the people that really impressed me. Everyone I came into contact with was friendly and almost seamed to enjoy and indulge my attempts to communicate in broken German. I like to think of myself as an explorer rather than a tourist. I’m a list maker and even back home in New Hampshire and in Seattle I have list of things to do and places to go.  I made a list of places in Vienna and have been adding more places faster than I have been checking ones off.  One afternoon Monica and Stacie I were in the Inner Stadt going to Shakespeare and Co. and came across this church Maria am Gestade. We went in to look around found that we could climb up to the top of the steeple. It was something out of a movie, a narrow spiral staircase up an old stone tower. It was incredibly cool, and we got to see the rafters and the vise that holds up the roof. It is the discoveries like this one, that I am most look forward to in Vienna.