While Justine isn’t one for ferris wheels, she was brave enough to join me and ride the Riesenrad, a 100+ year-old example in the heart of Vienna.

Each gondola had a lot of movement and I enjoyed trying to rock ours, much to Justine’s dissatisfaction.

The picturesque Schloß Schönbrunn in Vienna.

At this point in our trip, I was beginning to make good use of foreground objects to hide people. There are still some people visible in this shot, but I think the low angle coupled with the flowers — and then the out-of-focus flowers — really works well.

The colours — the reds and purples of the flowers, and the blue of the sky — contrast well with the yellow of the building. I think it might be a little overprocessed and the conversion from Adobe RGB to sRGB made it look a little sick (i.e. green) which I possibly overcompensated by using Lightroom’s “tint” feature, as well as the sky changing colour a bit much. Very annoying and I still haven’t got the process down pat.

As we walked through Schloß Schönbrunn towards the exit, there was a small chapel within the building. Inside the chapel was a man playing an acoustic guitar, with classical music. We stepped inside for a moment to listen to the man play; without amplification, the music filled the entire room. Most certainly a magical moment.

Quite possibly the busiest ride in all of Vienna.

Taken from the famous 110-year-old ferris wheel at the Wurstelprater amusement park.

Justine and I both enjoyed riding the Riesenrad; me more though, as I was able to shift the weight of the car in such a way that it wobbled quite a lot. At least I appreciated it.

Taken near an hour or two before sunset, the park was not busy at all despite it being the end of summer. I think the school holidays still had another few days in them yet.

Candles at the entrance of Karlskirche (St Charles Borromeo church) in Vienna.

I took four of this shot — two in portrait and two in landscape. Both were taken with the candles in focus and the background instead in focus. This was the last of the four, and I knew as soon as I pressed the shutter that I didn’t need to take any more as I found the shot and composition I’d been hunting for the whole time.

The candles are right at the entrance to the church, below the pipe organ and the background is right down at the far end of the church. It doesn’t look that far but it’s a reasonably large church.

The roof of the church is domed and has a large mural painted all over. We were lucky enough to ascend the slightly wobbly scaffolding right at the top where you could almost touch the roof (complete with soaring dove).

Day Twenty-Two
Linz Train Station
29 August 2007 - 22:49

This morning we slept in rather than eating breakfast. The place we stayed in Vienna is a dorm — or at least seems be to — and we were right next to the kitchen for that floor… that they used at 2am.

Justine had a dull ache in her bottom teeth which had not subsided since the night before so we hunted via Google for a laser dentist in the suburb near us. We found a few so after checking out and putting our bags in a locker at the train station we went out in search of the first on the list.

Doctor “Toth” was the first on the list. We found what seemed to be the right building so entered. From the inside we had no idea what sort of building we were in or whether it was even one we were supposed to be in. There were no markings anywhere. We ascended two flights of stairs and at the top found an optometrist. They pointed us in the direction of the dentist. Once we found the office we entered after some initial confusion over having to buzz ourselves in.

After a bit more confusion over what we actually wanted we were asked to present an “E-card”, whatever that is. We explained our situation and were advised we would have to pay up front (at least after seeing the doctor) and follow up with our insurance later.

A long wait, followed by a short consultation where the dentist flicked a small store (or seed) out of Justine’s mouth. He told us to “have a good holiday” and we went out to pay. As I got my credit card out of my wallet the receptionist didn’t want us to pay! Obviously we lucked out and must have saved a few hundred euro in consulting fees.

Feeling somehow richer we returned to the centre of town and as we strolled around found a cake shop which has been in Vienna since 1786, “Demel”. We grabbed some of their cheapest stuff and went to a cheaper (and much crappier) place for lunch. We returned to Demel so Justine could have an apple strudel with cream. I had a little but don’t care for it that much. Justine loved it, though.

Since we had some time to kill before our train to Venice we strolled through the park; we bought Justine a gerbera, which was huge compared to the ones back home.

Our train to Venice is again two bunk beds in a private room. It’s a bit older than the last one but also a little quieter.

Tomorrow, Italy and Venice!

Day Twenty-One
Vienna
28 August 2007 22:06

This morning we took an underground train, with most of our souvenirs in tow, to the central Vienna post office. We spent the next hour and a half there. After packing our souvenirs tighthly into a box we approached the desk to find the clerk didn’t speak any English.

We filled out part of a customs form but couldn’t understand much of it. The man pointed to another clerk and told us he spoke English. As we approached his desk he walked off. It took him 15 minutes to return and when he did he was rather grumpy. Eventually we were able to fill out the forms and send our packages back home (hopefully!).

Since we had all day public transport tickets we took a train to Schloß Schönbrunn where we checked out the outside of the castle and it’s expansive grounds. There is a large fountain with a large column filled with heiroglyphs but apparently they are meaningless. Not wanting to tour the innards of yet another castle we left and took more trains to what seem to be persistent fairgrounds.

There is a ferris wheel which was created in 1897 so we rode the very large wheel. Each large cabin rocks back and forth when people move to one side or another and feels quite unstable which is rather a funny feeling.

It took three trains to get back to our hotel, we went out and got some Chinese take away — chicken, vegetables and rice — which had heaps of chicken and tasted like it also had a large dose of MSG.

Day Twenty
Vienna
27 August 2007 22:47

Since our hotel serves the breakfast earlier than our last two (they serve it 7:30 to 9:30) we got up a bit earlier than we have recently. Pretty standard continental breakfast.

Vienna does not seem to be as easy to get around as Prague, though the public transport system seems fine enough. The outer suburbs (compare to say, St Kilda) are not very picturesque and didn’t provide a great first impression. The inner city is quite nice though.

Today we saw many of Vienna’s most impressive buildings in the inner ring; many old museum buildings, universities, churches. One church we entered — the church of St Charles Borromeo — has a massive and very nice mural on the roof. Unfortunately (for us) the entire place is being restored which means there is a large scaffold in the centre of the church. However, there is an elevator you can catch to see the roof close up. At the top there was also a scaffold leading right up to the top. We both ascended but Justine went back quickly as it didn’t feel too stable.

As we decided to head back I turned and saw the Sacher Hotel. A famous cake (Sacher Torte) was invented by the owner so it’s a touristy thing to do to eat the cake there. So we did. We ordered one to share (a slice, not a cake!) and were given two. To be honest, I didn’t think it was that good, and Justine said it was “disgusting”. Justine made a Sacher Torte at school but says hers was different (more layers of cream and instead of apricot it had strawberry). Luckily for us they had only charged us for one slice so it sort of evened out.

While walking back to our hotel, we decided to try and rent bikes since they are free for the first hour after paying a registration fee. Unfortunately, my credit card wouldn’t work at all and though Justine’s worked at the final payment stage we got an “External Payment Refused” message. Weird.

Walking further we tried another bike rental machine (same company/service, but different location) with the same results. We also read just after you can only rent one bike per credit card.

It’s been really hot the past few days and today was no exception. You’d think this might mean things would be open late but supermarkets all over the city close at 7:00pm. In fact, most shops close at 7 sharp. Justine was even refused entry into one at 5 minutes to 7.

Most places in Europe run on 24-hour time also, which is different.