Viena, baby

Hi everyone! I am back after a week of exhaustive and unforgettable travelling.

My European tour consisted on a crazy roadtrip, including: Budapest-Vienna-Prague-Dresden-Karlovy Vary-Konopiste-Brno-Bratislava-Budapest, so as you can figure out I am less than a shadow of myself at the moment. Nevertheless, it was TOTALLY worthy, and I can´t see the moment of travelling abroad again!


 

 I thought you would like me to share some impressions about all these beautiful places with you. 

Let me start by introducing you the fairiest of them all.

This is the magnificent city of Vienna. 

I wish I could make you feel the same deep mark the city left on me since the very first moment.

I had read a bit about the place, but most of my readings were about politcs and history, so I had a vague idea about the arquitectonic specifics around beyond Schönbrunn and Hofburg palaces, which basically meant I had a huge shock when we first saw the Austrian Parlament.

 I mean, seriously, how many buildings do you know holding a giant Palas Atenea?

I think I stood in front of the sculpture for fifteen minutes repeating "no way" to myself.

The next station on my allucinatory dream was the Hofburg palace itself.

As a teenager, I was even more interested on history than nowadays, and the Habsburg dinasty was one of my big passions, so this was a mandatory visit for me.
It is funny how much you can expect about a place and how, far from being disappointed, the place can actually overtake all your hopes. ♥

I had the greatest of the times by admiring the private apartments of Elizabeth Wittelsbach (a.k.a. Sissi), as her melancholic figure seems to impregnate every object, from her collection of poet Heine´s letters, to her mourning wardrobe. I found truly interesting the exposition at the palace. The main subject was deconstructing the Hollywood myth to make an approach to the real woman: an unusual empress interested on Greek poetry and culture, German romanticism, Elizabethan poets, politics, and languages, as well as an independent but depressive person who never identified herself on the roles of queen, wife and mother.
 Apart from that, I went nuts by watching all the wonderful teaware and glassware sets, lovely ballgowns and fancy rooms (and even considered to hide beneath the curtains and stay in there forever, maybe pretending to be the palace ghost. But all my plans went frustrated when The Gentle One played the sane and rational role and convinced me I would survive too much without tea, cake and books around).

I´ll manage to plan my invasion next time, though!

After that we had a lovely walk around the Ringstraße area and had some traditional sausages and beer (yes, I like to behave like a total typical tourist sometimes, that´s part of the fun too).

Our Vienna visit finished early that evening, as we had to take a bus to Prague, but I am totally decided to go back to Austria soon. ♥

So tell me darlings, what was the last place you visited that really shocked you?