Our trip to Vienna was a welcome
respite from Modra, but Amy and I soon tired of the summer holiday
crowds. We had decided to visit the Sisi Museum and the Imperial
Rooms in one of the Hapsburg museums, but had not realized that it
would be so crowded inside. At one point, we found ourselves crushed
between tourists in a narrow hallway with no ventilation, and with no
one willing to yield to let us pass by.
We had just completed walking through
the rooms that seemed to feature every dinner setting ever purchased
in Austria from time immemorial. And one lesson learned: audio
guides are a hazard to those without them. Believe you me, we found
ourselves the victim of many a protruding elbow as we made our way
through the rows and rows of collections. I think every emperor who
existed granted some sort of dinnerware to Austria, but, really, how
many sets of dinnerware can you admire? They all start to look alike
after awhile.
And, we probably would have enjoyed the
Imperial Rooms more had we not found ourselves trapped in narrow
hallways at the mercy of the speed of the tour guide in the room. We
might even have had some compassion for poor Elizabeth who was
featured as the forlorn Empress from Bavaria throughout all of the
rooms. But I'll admit that it was a bit difficult to sympathize with
someone who obviously lived in the lap of luxury and was upset that
she couldn't ride her horse alone after her marriage to Ferdinand. I
suppose that there are always two sides to a story, but one would
think that if one was going to devote an entire museum wing to an
Empress, that she would have been reflected in a more positive light,
rather than as the constant complainer.
After returning to our room on Saturday
night and thoroughly enjoying the solitude, we had decided to take
the metro to Stephanplatz and attend mass at St. Stephen's Church in
the middle of the square. We knew that we could forget a peaceful
walk to the church when we entered the plaza from the metro and
immediately spotted 4 tour guides with numbered signs in their hands.
We somehow managed to force our way
into the church, which was filled with tourists who weren't there
for the service. One apparently has to pay 4 euro to see the church
during non-service hours, but it is free for the taking during Mass
times. So, while the priest is saying mass on the altar, scores of
people are shuffling through the back of the church to take a peek at
the interior. Luckily, the church is long enough that all of this
commotion is not that noticeable during the service for those of us
in the front pews.
After Mass, Amy and I felt like we
really had had enough of the pushy crowds, so we decided to make our
way to the bus station. We easily located the tram stop for our
return trip with nearly an hour to spare, much to our relief!
After a couple of stops, it became
obvious that we were not following the route on the metro map that we
had managed to get at the hotel, and we began to worry. We weren't
sure what to do , when suddenly an older man jumped up and started
flinging his hands around. It was obvious that the tram driver had
taken some sort of detour. Apparently one of the overhead wires has
broken and he was forced to take the tram the long way around the
city. Since we didn't understand any German, you can only imagine
our concern when time kept slipping away to the scheduled departure
from Vienna to Bratislava. .
Our concern must have been obvious,
because another old man next to me began to tell me some sort of
story in German while moving his hands around. I held up the map and
showed our destination to a man sitting behind me, and he gestured
that I should not be concerned because he was also going to this bus
station. He didn't speak English, but his facial expression was
enough to ease my fears. Except that he didn't know that we had
planned to catch the 1:00 bus back to Bratislava, and the time was
getting extremely close.
We finally reached our destination with
only a couple of minutes to spare. We decided to take the elevator
to save time to the pass-through which is located underground, and we
were just hitting the down button when an Indian family decided that
they would join us. So we waited while the family, complete with
Grandma and a baby in a carriage, all tried to squeeze into the
elevator with us. Really, we could have been down the stairs by this
point, but we were squashed against the back of the elevator, so
there wasn't any escaping.
But, as luck would have us, the doors
behind us opened on the ground floor, and we dashed up several sets
of stairs, and over to the bus, just as it was arriving. I handed
the man my ticket, and he tgestured to me that it needed to be
stamped in the office. Something that was NOT mentioned to us, by
the way, when we purchased the tickets.
So, we rushed over to the little
office, where a very kind man assisted us by stamping the tickets,
then we ran back to the bus, boarded, and just about collapsed into
our seats.
We arrived in Bratislava just fine, and
managed to make our connection to Modra-Harmonia with out any
incident. We even walked into town for dinner, back to the little
restaurant that serves fabulous Bryndza halusky and pirohy.
And I didn't even complain when I
ordered the 'jeden' serving of Cervene vina and the waitress brought
the 'dva'. She must have somehow known that I needed the double
serving!
(Wine is ordered by volume here. Jeden
means 1 in Slovak, and dva means 2, so I had a double serving of Red
wine...and it was great!)
