Vienna

Our story of Vienna is the tale of dirty carpets.
I'm sorry that it's not more glamorous.  I'm sorry that it doesn't involve world-renouned musicians or trips to the theater while hob-nobbing with the sophisticated, cultured Viennese society.
It's really just about dirty carpets.
Let me explain: we have cats at our house in Obedin.  Long haired cats.  Two of them.  Inside cats.
That's the first half of the story.
The second is that our vacuum cleaner is really a shop vac that has lost its attachments.  (Notice I chose to anthropomorphize instead of blaming my father-in-law for the loss of these objects).  Using this shop vac to clean the cat hair off of the carpets requires a great deal of crawling around on our hands and knees while using the short hose to suck up a few square centimeters of carpet at a time.  Facing the prospect of a year of cleaning your floors this way (mind you we have a 300 sq meter home here) would you be willing to drive to Austria for the sole purpose of purchasing a German-made, industrial strength vacuum?  I thought so.
Yes, its true that we have family in Austria that we wanted to visit and also there was the anticipation of vacationing in the cabin in the mountains but that came after we had worn our knees raw and bloody with the cat hair business and had decided that the 850 km trip was necessary.
There were a few surprises in Vienna: one was the unexpected discovery that almost all of the shops are closed on Sunday.  The capital of a Western European country closes up for business on the "Lord's Sabbath"?  Hmm...who knew?
The next is that we discovered that there are some folks who are good tour guides and some who are not.  The former do things like accompany you as you travel around their city, pointing out nice restaurants and which train to take so that you can reach your destination in a timely manner.  The latter do not do this.  The latter say things like "oh its very easy to get from point A to B, you just take the metro which is very simple."  The latter forget that while they read and speak German fluently, you do not.
However, we are the indomitable Ionescus and we have found that, even set adrift in a brand new city in which none of the signs or directions are comprehensible, we were able to make our way around here more sucessfully than in the subway system of New York City.
Seriously.
But rather than criticize NYC, we should instead praise Vienna which is a lovely and clean city and it's really quite easy to get around even after your German speaking family abandon you in favor of staying home and playing computer games.
    Seeing as how we were there twice (on the way to and from the cabin in the mountains), we have a great many photos.  It was really, really hard to limit ourselves for this post so you must bear the brunt of Mihai's excitability with the camera and my lack of ability to effectively cull his photos down to a presentation that is at all reasonable. Sure, you think I should cut out shots of gelato and coffee cups but the food and drink is such an integral part of our experience that leaving them out entirely would be like using nothing but a faulty shop vac to clean up cat hair;  some people can do it, some people can't.

In closing..

From the sublime to the ridiculous: why is the German language so easy to mock?  I really must apologize for promoting such low humor. This means have a safe journey but you can imagine what two young boys made of this.