Two things were inevitable when travelling for this long, a random assortment of ailments would befall us, and the blog would get neglected, sorry!

In between broken teeth, colds and migraines we’ve also explored Vienna, made a quick day trip to Bratislava, fell in love with Budapest and most recently, landed in Croatia. Here’s a quick recap of Vienna.

Vienna is such an easy and pleasant city to walk around, and up until we hit Budapest, this was leading as one of my favourite cities in Europe.  Our apartment was also one street away from the main shopping street in Vienna!  Luckily it was also close to a very lovely dentist fluent in English (who even recommended a dentist he knew in Wellington when I get home – small world!)

As has been the theme in most cities we’ve visited, we joined a city tour, this time on 2 wheels.  Vienna is perfect for biking!

The tour started at the Austrian Art School which twice denied Adolf Hitler entry as his portfolio was not good enough.  This apparently led  to him giving up art and instead heading into politics.  As our guide dryly noted “I think the world could have better coped with another below-average artist”.

This memorial looks like a slightly strange art installation until you learn the background. While I can’t do it justice, the key things I remember are that the walls are books representing the 65,000 Austrian Jews killed in the Holocaust.  The books are placed with the spines/names on the inside so that they can’t be read, symbolizing the overwhelming  number of people killed.  The books are shut  tight, the stories of victims’ lives cut short and stories never told.  The doors are carved in the concrete but can not be opened with the emptiness inside forever. A very moving monument.

As well the usual city exploring we managed to time our visit with the Vienna Music Film Festival, so of course we had to “soak up the atmosphere” (read: eat pretzels as big as our heads, indulge in the local beer, cocktails and range of skrummy foods!).  This might have been my favourite spot in Vienna!