Sunday, March 20, 2022
Most of my trips are for the purpose of visiting family and friends in other countries. Traveling in the winter is definitely cheaper than in the summer, which is when I usually go. This year my round trip ticket was around $700 which included the meals and one carry on bag. In the summer I would usually be spending at least $300 more. I did have to add on money for baggage since I took an additional bag to check in, which was $70 more each way. I flew with Austrian Airlines since I could fly directly from Chicago to Vienna. Still, it was worth it. I knew I would be bringing some of my daughter’s things back.
I am currently in Vienna, Austria. I left the US on Friday and arrived yesterday. I came to visit my daughter and to bring her some things she will need since she has decided to stay here about a month and a half longer than originally planned. At the airport in Chicago there was a group of high school students from St. Louis, MO, who were in their school orchestra. They are juniors just like her. They are going to be playing in three cities in six days: Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Romania; Prague, Czech Republic. That seems like an exciting trip. I wonder how they are adjusting to the time change. Fortunately it is six hours ahead right now instead of seven, since Chicago sprang forward a week earlier. I had already adjusted to that, and midweek I started getting up at 4:30 am then 3:30 am, then 2:30 am, so today, after a night on a plane and then a nap yesterday afternoon, I am okay with about 8 hours of sleep. I got up today around 9:30 Austrian time. I am staying in a nice little one bedroom apartment. It was sunnier earlier but now the sky is somewhat overcast. I don’t imagine I will see my daughter until later, because she and her friend had stayed out all night the night before on their first night at a dance club. They were at the club until 4:30 she told me and got home around 6 am. Then, they had to be at the airport at 8:30 am to pick me up, so that did not leave them much time for sleep. Still, that is fine. I will have a coffee later on today at the Kaffeehaus down the block.
My Austrian Airlines flight was uneventful. My luggage was there when I arrived. It came out fairly quickly. My daughter, her exchange partner Alida, and her partner’s mother Nina were there to pick me up. Then we were off into the city, on a sunny but chill March day. It was good to see my now 17-year old daughter after not seeing her for over 2 and a half months. I was not able to make it here for her birthday. She was fine with that. After driving to her exchange partner’s house, where we had lunch and hung out for most of the day, we went on the street car (Strassenbahn) to the Westbahnhof area. We walked from there to the apartment I am renting during my stay, dropped off my luggage and went shopping at BILLA (a grocery store chain) in the Westbahnhof (a large train station mall). After that I went back to my place, unpacked, ate some dinner and went to bed.
Saturday, April 2, 2022
I am now at the end of two weeks of visiting my daughter in Vienna. I will leave the lovely apartment I have been staying in early tomorrow morning, catch the airport bus at the Westbahnhof which costs 8 Euros, and departs every hour on the half hour, and fly back home to the States.
While here I have been to several museum exhibits, been out and about around town, and I visited the Rudolf Steiner Waldorf Schule Wien an der Mauer where my daughter is an exchange student a couple of times. Last Saturday I attended a Family Festival and last night I went to see the play her exchange partner’s younger brother was in. Both times were very nice experiences. The school seems to have a close-knit community, where people are happy and eager to support their children. Each time I saw presentations from students, so that was great! My daughter feels like the students in the class are her friends, and she has developed a closeness to her host family, just as her partner is like a family member to us.
Today we are going to meet at the Easter Market at Schönbrunn Palace. It is the largest Easter Market in the city although I saw three other Easter markets advertised, but this one opens today, so it is the last thing I am getting in before I leave. A chance to get some good chocolate. We will meet there. I am going to take the number 52 streetcar from the Westbahnhof stop 7 stops to the Penzingergasse (Penzinger alley) and then walk the remaining distance to the palace. It is chilly out today. In fact, it is supposed to rain/snow later on. So, I am dressing warmly. This will be the last time I see my daughter for the next 6 weeks, until she returns home. At that point she will be home for less than a week before she goes on a two week class trip.
I have loved being in Vienna. I do not want to go home. Fortunately it has been cold and gray these last few days, so it is easier to leave when the weather is not nice. Still, I did not get to see my friend’s sister because she and her parents have had covid the entire time I was here. My landlord also got covid while I was here. It has been blowing through the city. In fact, while I was here, two to three weeks into their opening up the mask rules they reinstated them indoors everywhere but in schools, so the numbers have been going down.
None of the experts interviewed on the news have agreed with the politicians, and they have been making it clear that the decisions have been political ones not health, when they stopped having people wear masks right as the numbers were really high. Fortunately they have a wonderful testing program which I got to participate in called Alles Gurgelt, which means Everyone Gargles. I figured out how to test myself in front of my cell phone, doing a PCR test, and then dropping the box into one of the many places where one could turn it in, by 9 am, and then getting my results online later in the day. Vienna can test 800,000 of their 1.9 mil+ residents and visitors as well in a day, which means that they have very accurate data on what is going on with covid in their city. The tests also tell the type of virus and how infectious it is.
Saturday April16, 2022
I have been back home for 2 weeks now. I have readjusted to my regular time schedule. I still keep up with the news in Vienna, and Germany each evening. It is nice to see the Easter Market at Schönbrunn on a sunny day with people looking relaxed as they are walking around. I still get to see places on the news that I did not get to try, but will perhaps get to on my next visit. My daughter is enjoying her stay in Vienna, and is now on a 2 week Spring break. They will take the train to Burgenland, the easternmost state of Austria, to stay in a family house there. It is on the border to Hungary and the least populated state, known for nature and the castle Esterhazy.
Tuesday, April 21, 2022
One of the advantages to this trip was that I went at a cheaper time of the year. I also booked my flight before Putin’s troops that were just having drills around Ukraine and in Belarus decided to go into a full scale war in the entire country. So, my airfare probably reflected that. It also reflected that many people were not flying then because of covid. Though, by the time I got to the airport the plane was fully booked. We were packed in and that was true on the way back even though Austria had rising covid cases the entire time. I really lucked out on finding such a charming place to stay. The apartment was a clean, attractive, spacious one bedroom on the second floor of a quiet old building in a great location for $37.14 a night for 15 nights. There was a 3% weekly discount, but then a cleaning fee of $44.25 and a service fee of $82.54 and still, my 2 weeks there in a place which could also have accommodated my husband was $667.22. I mainly used the kitchen, although I had some dinners out and one or 2 breakfasts out, which kept my food costs down. While I am not used to grocery shopping in Vienna, and I am used to shopping in Germany, I felt that the groceries seemed somewhat more expensive then I was used to. That was the effect of the inflation from the war.
To get around I got a weekly ticket out of the automat at the Westbahnhof. It worked for all transportation, not that anyone ever checked. It was €17.10 a week, so I got one for each Monday to Sunday. I was near so many things, and had the time to walk around, but when I went far, it was so practical to have. I could walk a couple of blocks to the number 3 U-Bahn (subway) and this would take me from the Westbahnhof stop to the Stephanshof stop a stations away and then I could walk up the Kärntner Ring to the Albertina Modern where I saw an exhibit by Ai Weiwei, or up the Spieglergasse to the Albertina, where I had seen Albrecht Dürers famous Feldhase (Field Rabbit) picture several years ago, when it was on display, which I think is the most valuable piece of art in their collection. This year we saw the Beitler collection, which I believe has been donated recently. Beitler was 90 when he died and seems to have been a prolific collector filling many rooms. He collected an amazing number of important and talented 20th century artists, and the pieces reminded me of how pleasurable it is to see art in person. There was also an exhibit of Edvard Munch with work by other artists who were inspired by him referred to as “In Dialogue.” It deepened both my knowledge of Munch and Andy Warhol who was the main other artist featured.
I paid full price of EUR 17.90 at the Albertina, and EUR 14.90 at the Albertina Modern. Both museums let my daughter in free since she is under 19. I think this is because children are in school through 13th grade which would make them 19 when they are done, not 18. In the Museum Quarter, on the other end of the Mariahilferplatz, I went to the Leopold to see Egon Schiele, a treasure of Vienna, and a few other of his contemporaries, as well as an exhibit of photography influenced and about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and his family. The admission there is EUR 15.00 although over 7 to 19 you pay EUR 2.50. Still, a good price. All of the art I saw was wonderful. When with my daughter I did buy some gifts for family and friends at the museum gift shops, but other than that, I was not really in Vienna to shop on this trip. It was more to just enjoy being there, experience the city, and mostly to see my daughter and her partner Alida and meet her family in person.
