Bratislava

Dobrý deň!

From Vienna we took a one-day trip to Bratislava in Slovakia. It's only an hour away by train. In the summer you can do a boat trip down the Danube instead if you want.

On the way to Bratislava

But taking the train was easy and cheap. A return ticket that's also valid for public transport in Bratislava is only €16. And they have trams as part of the public transport network in Bratislava! Trams always make me feel at home.

Bratislava is the largest city in Slovakia but still quite small for a capital city. It has a long and complicated history. In fact the name Bratislava is only a hundred years old. Before that it was called Pressburg and the majority of the population were Germans and Hungarians. For a couple of hundred years it was the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary. After the first world war it became the capital of Slovakia within the newly founded Republic of Czechoslovakia.

“An der schönen, blauen grünen Donau”

Until the second world war it was a multicultural city of Slovaks, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians and Jews. But in various stages during and immediately after the second world war all the minorities were expelled (even the Czechs) so that it's now very much just a Slovak city despite being within walking distance of both Austria and Hungary. Talking of that, did you know that it's the only national capital in the world that borders two other countries?

View from the castle

Most of the city is fairly uninteresting but the old town in the city centre is nice with its winding streets, cafés and restaurants.And of course Bratislava has a castle. It located in the city centre on a hill above the Danube. So you get a pretty good view of the city from there. The castle itself is very... uhm... square... and white.

On the way from castle down to the old town we met this lady. I'm not sure who she was but she seemed nice.

When we got to the old town I needed a rest. Luckily there was a pink bench there waiting for me. I think I need one of these for my home.

They had even equipped the bench with a matching tree with pink paper flowers. I also need one of those.

I'll leave you with that.

Čau!

Museums of Vienna

Hallo Leute!

As promised, here's a post about the museums we visited in Vienna. You already know that we went to see the imperial palaces, but there are many other interesting museums in Vienna.

First we went to the Albertina artmuseum which houses the Batliner collection, a private collection of impressionist and early 20th-century art.

Julius went straight for the Monets.

I'm not interested in blurry old paintings so I had a look around the rest of the museum. They had an exhibition of Niko Pirosmani paintings. If you—like me—have never heard of him he was a Georgian naïve painter. I liked his giraffe. He had apparently heard of giraffes but never actually seen one, so this was the result:

In the basement of the museum I found this guy.

My new goal in life is to eat as many hamburgers as he must have eaten.

From Albertina we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. It's an impressive building. This is just a tiny part of the interior decorations.

In 1871 Emperor Franz Joseph I decided to build two museums, the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Natural History Museum, so that the Habsburgs would have somewhere to put all the stuff they had collected over the years.

And my oh my, they really did need the space. The museum has everything. Greek and Roman sculptures... Ancient Egyptian stuff...

Old paintings... lots and lots of old paintings...

Shiny things...

So many shiny things...

And gold, so much gold...

This guy was my favourite:

A bear with a golden rifle! I want one too. A golden rifle that is, not a bear.

Okay, that pretty much covers Vienna. Next stop Bratislava!

Castles of Vienna

Grüß Gott and welcome back!

Let's continue our exploration of Vienna.
Having been the capital of the Austrian Empire and one of the two capitals of the Austro-Hungarian empire Vienna has castles, and fancy ones at that, palaces.

On our first day in Vienna we went to see the Schönbrunn Palace.

It was the summer residence of the Habsburgs, but nowadays it's a museum of course. The palace was built in the 18th century and has 1441 rooms. I can't quite comprehend how you can utilise that many rooms...

When we got there we had to queue up to get tickets. But just because you have ticket doesn't mean you can enter the castle. The ticket has a timestamp on it and you can only enter the castle at that time. In our case we had to wait an hour and forty minutes. In the summer that wouldn't be a problem because you could spend time walking around the extensive gardens. But we were there on Christmas day and the weather was miserable to say the least. It was windy, rainy and almost freezing. So walking around the gardens wasn't an appealing idea. Luckily there was a Christmas market in the court yard, but even generous amounts of glühwein couldn't keep me warm.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I can't show you what it looks like on the inside, but I did get a picture of this sculpture by the entrance.

The other imperial palace in Vienna is the Hofburg. It was the winter residence of the Habsburgs, but unlike Schönbrunn it is not just a museum, it's also the official residence and workplace of the President of Austria.

Like any good castle it's been extended and remodelled over the years but the core of the castle is from the 13th century. Personally I think it looks more impressive in the dark. Notice the stalls in front of the castle? That's another Christmas market. There were Christmas markets everywhere in Vienna.

Alright, that'll do for today. The next post will be about the museums of Vienna.

Wiederschauen!

Vienna

Servus grüß Sie hallo hi!

(That's a real greeting, or at least that's how I was greeted by one Austrian shop owner. It was pronounced in a single breath and with no hint of irony...)

As I told you Julius and I spent Christmas in Vienna. Vienna is such a fascinating place that I don't think I can fit everything into one blog post, so I'll split it up into several posts.

• Vienna in general (That's what you're reading right now)
• Castles of Vienna
• Museums of Vienna
• Bratislava (Yes yes, I know, Bratislava is not even in Austria, but we went there on a day-trip from Vienna)

Okay, let's get started. There's really only one thing you have to do in Vienna. What's that, you ask? Apfelstrudel, of course! Or well, to experience the Viennese café culture, if you want to put it more generally.

 

So we did that.  Many times. For some reason Julius insisted that we go to this place...

It's not just the cafés that are worth visiting. Restaurants and street food alike, it turns out that Vienna is a great place to find good food. Who knew?

In between coffee breaks we went to see the Hundertwasserhaus. It's an apartment building designed by Austrian artist Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser. (Yes, I know, what a name.) It's a fascinating buildning, it looks like something out of a cartoon. It probably looks even better in the summer when all the ivy and the trees on the roof are green. I pity the people who live there, though. While it looks like a fun house to live in it can't be fun to live in a house that's permanently surrounded by tourists.

Like most imperial capitals Vienna is full of beautiful architecture. There are fancy buildings everywhere.

Here's Julius enjoying running up and down an arcade in the town hall. Judging by the Gothic architecture you might think that it's an old building but it isn't really. It's from the late 19th century.

The picture below was taken in the same place, but I accidentally picked the wrong setting on the camera and turned him into a ghost... Don't worry, he eventually recovered.

It's not just the architecture that's interesting. Outside the opera house we ran into this guy. It's giant pink rabbit! I want one of those at home.

In fact, we made quite a few new friends in Vienna. Like this guy. He said he was from Croatia originally. I think we met his cousin when we were in Rijeka.

Here's Julius making friends in a souvenir shop.

Okay folks, that's all for today. I'll be back soon with more about the castles of Vienna.

Bis bald!

Snow

Heipparalla!

As you know from my previous post it's been snowing here, and it's keeps snowing! It looks like it's going to be a proper winter for once ❄
So we ventured outside again. Julius really wanted to build an igloo.

Here we are putting the final touches on our creation.

See how happy he is in his little igloo.

I wanted to try too, but I got stuck in the door... Julius said I have been eating too much Christmas food but I think he deliberately designed it to be too small for me.

He was nice enough to come and pull me out, though.

Then we decided that we had had enough of the snow and cold and went inside to have a nice cup of tea.

Brrr, I hope summer comes early this year.

Christmas

Hello again!

You're probably wondering how we celebrated Christmas. Well, the thing is we don't really celebrate Christmas. It's my fault, really. What happened was, that the first Christmas after I adopted Julius I had forgotten to buy Christmas presents for him, so I told him that monkeys don't celebrate Christmas and that's why I didn't have any presents for him. And he believed me, haha! So that's why we don't celebrate Christmas. But we still have a nice Christmas dinner of course, you've got to have that.

But this year we spent Christmas in Vienna. Come back soon and I'll tell you more about that. But for now here's a preview:

Auf Wiedersehen and a belated Frohe Weihnachten!

I'm back, baby!

Hello people!

Have you missed me? I've sure missed you. You're probably wondering where I've been. Well it's been a rough couple of months. As you know I had some problems with Julius and in the end it got so bad that I had to send him to rehab. But he's back now and he's doing well. Here are some pictures to prove it.

It's been snowing here lately so we went out for a walk in the snow. At first Julius was a little confused by all the white powder but he soon got over it and started throwing snow around.

Some of it landed on me and it was really wet and cold... ugh. But I soon got my revenge.

There we go. Now he knows not to throw snow at me again.

Anyway, folks, that's all for today. I'll be back soon to tell you about our Christmas.

Cheerio!