My Italian Summer - Vienna, the city of kings and queens

Due to some big changes in my life, I am going to try to finish the European posts ASAP! Just in case you are curious, yes, if everything goes well I will be a mom in July :P


When I arrived in Vienna, it was raining pretty hard. My friends met me at the airport. It was just the greatest to see them.

To be close to my friends, I stayed in a small B&B in the 10th district, which happened to be in the middle of a Turkish neighborhood. The B&B was located on a busy pedestrian street. Suffering from the jetlag I woke up everyday around 5am. I picked a different café every morning for some pastries and a cup of cappuccino (I wasn't ready for the espresso shot yet at that point :P). Venetians love their pastries. There are usually more than 50 different kind including more than 10 different type of croissants. The cappuccino cup is a bit bigger than the cup for coffee, but it is still miniature comparing to the coffee cups used in North America. This reminds me of a Chinese saying. Chinese tea cups are usually small, kind of like the Italian espresso size. For Chinese tea lovers, drinking one cup is for enjoyment, 2 cups is for thirst, and drinking 3 cups is called watering the donkey. The whole time I was in Europe I didn't see once, not even once, that someone was drinking coffee out of a paper cup and walking around. They somehow always manage to find the 5 minutes to enjoy a small cup of good coffee.

One morning I was sitting in a patio of a café across the street from a very modest looking community church. I saw people coming and going, lighting up candles and having their little chat with their God. I stepped in for a second. No matter how 'community' and modest it looked, like all old churches in Europe, it still gave me the feeling of well aged beauty, the heaviness of history or just time. According to the old folks sitting on the bench outside (another interesting thing is all the benches are always occupied in Vienna and in Italy. People enjoy sitting down in the sun and relax.), the church was more than 200 years old. See, this is the thing about Europe. They can casually kick some dirt off their shoes and tell you it is more than couple hundred years old. It isn't unlike China.

I didn't do much tourist things in Vienna because I wanted to spent as much time as possible with my friends. Vienna would not even be on my list if not for that. We still went to the 1st district though. That's where most of the historical sites are. I had to admit that I was severely over dosed on European churches on this trip, but if I had to make a pick, it would be the Gothic ones. They certainly captures the soul of religion. It definitely evoke the emotion of fear, respect and passion that sits heavily on your chest and takes your breath away no matter you are religious or not.

I managed to find couple of hours to go to a concert by the Mozart Orchestra in the Great Hall. I accidentally walked in the a Sand in the City party, drinking spritzer in the sunset. I heard beautiful music. I had great food. My eyes were getting blind for seeing so many splendid things. Still, something was missing. Don't get me wrong. Vienna is breathtakingly beautiful, elegant, and grandeur. I couldn't figure it out until I was in Italy. It went, 'ah, this is home...'.