7th Day: Vienna (5/29)

  We departed Budapest on our third day there and headed for the train station to take us into Vienna. Arriving at rush hour, we noticed first how clean Vienna was and later how expensive things were, considering that the dollar was well below the Euro. First familiar sight was the Vienna State Opera--which we unfortunately didn't go into.  We did learn that the architect of the building committed suicide, after learning that Franz Joseph likened it to a "train station."
 Without a map or plan, we made our way to the city centre, where we saw (and entered) the St. Stephen Church or Stephansdom, which has stood for 800 years, even though it was, of course, damaged, like many buildings on our Eastern European tour, from WWII bombings. Leaving the church, we braved our way through aggressive Korean tourists to Cafe Central, where Lenin, Trotsky, Freud, and other movers & shakers of the 20th century got caffeinated and made plans/schemes. Wandering again, we stumbled upon the Hofburg Palace, the seat of Austrian power for over 6 centuries. With only so much light in the day, though, we headed for the metro--one of the easiest to manage in our travels--to go north to see the famous Prater or ferris wheel used in the film "The Third Man." Lifted and rotating above the city, we got some nice panoramic photos of Vienna and saw parts of it that we would not be able to see later because of the rainy weather and our brief stay in Vienna.