Wien ist fantastisch, ya?

In the end of February, I found myself with only a few weeks left of work and about 7 vacation days to burn. (Side note: I loooove the 6 weeks per year UN vacation system.) So, with my last remaining days as a European, I decided to take myself to Vienna and for one last adventure. Here are some pictures from my trip:

Vienna was completely and unequivocally built to be an imperial power. I've never come across a city with so many castles, palaces, grandiose churches, war monuments and other imposing buildings before. It also has a huge number of museums. In fact, there is a whole museums quarter downtown.

Here is the museum of modern art (MUMOK Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien), which has a full-sized upside down house balanced precariously on the top. The permanent collection of the museum itself is......interesting. It's definitely important to keep in mind the distinction between "modern" and "contemporary" art. I enjoyed some of what I saw, but other exhibits were definitely more disturbing than I was prepared for.

Here is a big Ferris wheel which sits in the huge Prater park near the Danube river. Apparently it's over 100 years old, and is one of the modern landmarks of Vienna. It was interesting making the trek to the Prater, since the Danube is actually nowhere near the centre of the city. It's actually quite incidental to the downtown core.

Another highlight of my adventuring included getting up really early on Sunday morning to go see the Vienna Boys' Choir at the Hofburg chapel. They've been singing mass there every Sunday since 1498 and, even though I accidentally went to the wrong mass first and didn't notice for about half an hour (so much Latin!), once I finally found the right church it was completely worthwhile.

I also got to spend some time with really wonderful people who happened to be in town at the same time.

My friend Sandi, who's studying in a small town about an hour outside of Vienna, was in town with friends to celebrate her birthday. Here's Sandi's Argentinian friend Lola, me, and the birthday girl herself partying it up at a club called the Volksgarten.

My friend Angeline, another IISD intern who spent her six months in Hungary, had the brilliant idea to buy tickets to go see the Decemberists', who performed on our last day in Vienna.

Angeline brought along her Hungarian friends, Avi and Roly, who gave me a firsthand taste of why Hungarian is one of the world's most difficult languages to learn. In 3 days together, I think I managed to learn about 2 words. Thank god they spoke English!

And then we went to see the Decemberists, which was a really great (if super short) show, followed by an excellent dub show which lasted until the wee hours. Since I, of course, am someone who is somewhat lacking in restraint and temperance when there's fun to be had, I elected to stay out dancing with Angeline until oh, about 4am, and then drag my tired, pounding-head self onto a bus back to Geneva at 5:30am. It was, all in all, a very appropriate end to the weekend.