We started the day by grabbing some breakfast at Anker,
which was a chain where you could get bakery items to take away. We sat and ate
it in front of the opera house. That morning, we also stopped at a Bipa which
is pretty much like a CVS. We couldn’t find diapers and feminine items at the
regular grocery store and the Bipa stores had really limited hours, so we had
to do this during the day.
We had tickets to go to Bratislava, Slovakia for the day, so
we chose a train time that worked for us. We headed for the train station,
thinking that we had plenty of time. However, about five minutes before the
tram was supposed to arrive at the stop, all the signs started flashing
something in German. The only word we could make out was the German word for “demonstration.”
After attempting to communicate with a few people who only spoke German, it
appeared that there was some kind of demonstration happening where the metros
and trams were coming from, which was causing backups in the transportation
system. At that point we had no idea when the tram would get there, so we
walked quickly to the metro and hopped on a train there. Of course, there was construction at the
train station and the metro didn’t drop us off exactly at the train station.
There was a bit of a walk, but thankfully there was a girl who spoke English
where we got off who was able to point us in the right direction. We literally
ran to the train station and thankfully made it before the train took off.
Needless to say it was a very stressful morning.
Once we got on the train, we were able to relax a little.
The ride was a little over an hour. Here is Anya looking at the map...
After getting off the train, we headed to
our bus stop to wait for the bus that would take us to the old town area. This
is where things got a lot worse. Eric was carrying Anya and I was pushing an
empty stroller. I was running/jogging to catch the bus and all of a sudden, my
left ankle twisted and I was on the sidewalk. It happened so fast, I wasn’t
even sure what happened. My theory is that when I went to push the stroller, I
was expecting it to weigh more (as if Anya were in it) and I walked with more
force than was necessary and tripped. I guess I will never really know, but my
ankle hurt so bad when that happened that I could hardly get up to walk onto
the bus. When we got on the bus, the bus driver started talking to us in what
we think was Czech. We think he was trying to tell us that this was only the
drop off point and we were supposed to get on the bus across the street, but he
used hand signals to tell us to stay put, seeing as I had just fallen and we
had a small child with us. I was afraid to look at my ankle, so I guess I
really didn’t even look at it at that point.
Of course, we missed the bus stop where we were supposed to
get off and had to get off at the next stop and backtrack, but that only put us
behind by a little bit. Once we found the right spot, we began walking around
in the old town area. It was beautiful. It reminded us so much of Prague, which
would make sense, seeing that Bratislava was in the other half of what used to
be Czechoslovakia. On the forums, several people had said that Bratislava was
not worth visiting, but we beg to differ. We actually wished we had had more
time there and would definitely consider returning there to explore a little more.
Here are a few pictures of the old town.
While we were walking, my ankle was still hurting quite a
bit so I decided to check it out. I lifted my pant leg and panicked. My ankle
was at least three time its normal size; I had never seen it like that before.
It freaked me out so much I couldn’t look at it or touch it. Now, I wish we had
taken a picture, but I think I was so shocked by its appearance that I didn’t
want to see it. We found the main square where we were meeting our free tour
and I sat on a bench with Anya in her stroller (she was sleeping) while Eric
ran all over the old town area getting Advil and ice (which is hard to come by
in Europe!)
I probably should not have gone on a 2 hour and 15 minute
tour after spraining my ankle that badly, but I decided that we didn’t come all
the way to Bratislava to miss out on anything, so I took the Advil, iced it,
and sucked it up for the next few hours. I was glad I did, because the tour was
very interesting and took us around various parts of the old town. After the
tour, we did a little shopping at an outdoor market area in one of the squares
and purchased a cheap ankle brace so that I would have at least some support on
my ankle. We also found some anti-inflammatory cream there. It isn’t sold in
the US, but it worked nicely. It had Ibuprofen and Heparin in it. Then, we
headed back to the train station to get back to Vienna.
Once we got back to Vienna, we ran into another problem. We
realized that we couldn’t find our metro passes. We looked everywhere before we
decided to call it a loss, which wasn’t good because our passes were expensive
and we still had 2 days left on them. We had to buy two 48-hour passes to get
us through the next couple of days. Chances are, we would not have been checked
by the police but if you do get checked, you get some really hefty fines that
cost way more than the passes. Eric had found 20 euros on the ground a few days
prior to this, so we decided that it didn’t really set us back too much.
After stopping back at the apartment, we went back out for dinner. On the way, we stopped outside the opera house. In the summers, they have a big screen outside and seating set up facing the screen. The screen shows the opera so that people can watch it on the street. It is free so we stopped for a few minutes, though we didn't understand any of it becasue the subtitles were all in German.
Then, we had dinner at
Rosenthaller Beisl. A beisl is kind of a tavern. This one was suggested in one
of our guidebooks and it did not disappoint. We had homemade sausages,
sauerkraut, fried potatoes, wiener schnitzel, salad, wine, and beer. Anya stood
up in the booth the other entire time and ate a TON of wiener schnitzel.
Remember how I said before that she wouldn’t eat meat when we were back in the
states? Well, she was shoveling in the wiener schnitzel so fast that we couldn’t
cut it up fast enough! Kids can be so weird sometimes…
We decided to stop by Café Sacher for dessert. This
particular café is known for its Sacher Torte, which is basically a really
fancy chocolate cake. We added a café latte and shared a slice of it. We were
exhausted after that, so we headed back to the apartment. This is a picture of of Anya and I getting ready to eat our cake:)
I can’t remember which night it was, but one of the nights
we spent in Vienna, we were watching the news and saw a huge protest taking
place in Madrid. It was a protest concerning their current financial problems,
though I didn’t quite understand all of it. However, the news showed probably
thousands of people gathered in Puerto del Sol, which was minutes away from
where we stayed. We were so glad we had been in Madrid the week prior to that!
There was also one night (can’t remember which it was) where
we heard lots of loud music going on outside at around 11 in the evening. (Our
windows were usually open because there was no AC in the apartment.) When we
looked out the window, the streets were all completely blocked from traffic and
there were hundreds of people riding their bikes through the streets. After a
few minutes, they were all gone. We never did find out exactly what was going
on with that. We were also never able to find out anything about the
demonstrations that caused the backup in transportation that day in Vienna.
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