Good-bye Vienna

It is time to say good-bye to Vienna. It has been a wonderful four month experience. We have walked miles exploring every corner of this beautiful city. We have been able to share experiences with our students and with family and friends that have come to visit. We have been able to also venture outside the city and into neighboring countries and what an experience that has been. It is now time to say good-bye to Spittelauer Platz and head on to new adventures.

Good-bye little kitchen. It wasn't often that Tom and I shared you alone, but this is proof that it did happen!

Good-bye Happy Noodles...we shared you with our family....

...and we enjoyed you when we were alone. You were a temptation on Sunday since you are where we met the street car to go to church!

Good-bye ornate buildings that almost became 'common' because they are on every steet.

Good-bye to all the fun little side streets and 'passages' we discovered.

Good-bye St. Peters Kirche...you provided some beautiful musical concerts for us.

Good-bye Schoenbrunn Palace...my favorite place to take visitors and to just hang out. This picture was taken from.... ...the Gloriette, which was built on a hill behind the palace so Maria Theresia had something more interesting than a hill to look at!

Good-bye Wurst Stand...you weren't my favorite place but Tom and Matt's family loved you!

Good-bye Belevedere...your art gallery was my favorite.

Good-bye to the LDS Institute and Brother and Sister Wade. Thank you for being a fun place to meet and eat. Good-bye to more fountains and statues than I could possibly count or keep track of. Good-bye Austro-American Institute of Education where we attended classes. (Someday the face-lift will be done and the construction materials removed from in front of you)

Good-bye St. Stephens...I have studied the inside and outside of you and you are inspiring!

Good-bye Mozart...I loved your candies, where you lived, where you performed and everything you touched in Vienna and surrounding areas! Good-bye bakeries that are on almost every corner, you will miss us!

Good -bye McDonalds that I said I would never eat at even if it was right by my apartment! (I had to 'eat' those words!)

Good-bye Franz Joseph Bahnhof that was right by our apartment and contained our favorite grocery store, the Billa, and McDonalds.

Good-bye State Opera House that I walked by everyday I was in Vienna!

Good-bye Central Cemetary with this amazing chapel.

Good-bye to fixing Sunday dinner for 18 very hungry people!

Good-bye fun students.

Good-bye Sacher Torte and hot chocolate. Good-bye Japanese tourist....They know a couple of cuties when they see them!

Good-bye funnest ever Christmasmarkts.

Good-bye beautiful Christmas lights and snow storms.

Good-bye Vienna...but hello Munich, Paris, and London!

Today we went to...

...Bratislava, Slovakia. It is only 40 miles from Vienna, so Tom and I hopped on a train bright and early this morning. Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and Vienna the capital of Austria...they are the two closest world capitals.

This is Michael's Gate and it is how you enter into the old city.I had a hard time getting all of Michael's Gate into a picture, so this is the top of the tower. Tom and I climbed 5 flights of stairs so we could walk around the area where you see a fence, right under the clock. I huffed and puffed but the view was worth it.

Grassalkovich Palace... where the President of Slovakia lives. It was built in 1760-65, which in Europe years is fairly new! I loved the sunglasses on the guards!

This is for my brothers, Jack and Max. Sometimes you don't even need to know the language...you just need to understand 'envirnmental print'!

Bratislava has some very interesting statues all over town...these are just some of the ones we found. The story behind this first one is:' Handsome Ignatius' and dipicts a real person who was locally famous for strolling the promenade. He appears quite friendly and jolly, but his fiancee was deported to a Nazi concentration camp in WWII and died; he never recovered psychologically from the trama and spent his days wandering in a top hat and tails, smiling at everyone. Cumil, a man peering out of a manhole cover "looking up skirts"! He is just on a random corner in the city!

This is a photographer peering around the corner by the Paparazzi Resturant!

This is what we ate for lunch.........

.......and this is where we ate our lunch! Yeah!....another Christmasmarkt!

The building you see up on the hill in the background is Bratislava hrad (castle). It has been dubbed the "upside-down bedstead". We read that it's worth the hike up to it to get the best view of the city....so we did.

After all the climbing we did to get up to the castle to get a good view of the city, this is what we saw! Absolutly nothing....the fog came in...that white you see is the "view" of Bratislava!

Time to go home....the Bratislava train station

Enough said!