Day 3 - 30 February 2019 Vienna

Part of the deal at the hotel I am staying at is a free two hour walking tour of inner Vienna.  This started at 10.00am and included the older parts of the city including the Jewish area.  Vienna still has a Jewish population and my hotel is close to a synagogue.  There is a continual police presence at all of the Jewish buildings in the city.  The guide also told us about an area near my hotel that is known as Bermuda.  It is called this as it is full of nightclubs and bars and once people go into this area they tend to disappear and are never seen again.

Laneway in Vienna

Baroque Catholic Church
(obviously it wasn't only the aristocracy that was ripping off the peasants)

I had lunch in one of the older traditional cafes in the city.  Bratwurst sausage, fried potatoes and sauerkraut (no scurvy for me) and beer.  

After lunch I decided I would visit the Prater amusement park and take a ride on the big ferris wheel.  This ferris wheel featured in the movie the Third Man and has been a feature of the amusement park for many years.  I went on this ride in 1986 when i was last in Vienna.  The carriages are like an old fashioned railway carriage and take about 15 - 20 people.  The rest of the amusement park is a bit old fashioned with dodgem cars and ghost trains plus some very very scary rides involving heights and sudden drops.

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Dinner tonight was at a nearby bistro/restaurant and being Saturday night was crowded and busy.  I was lucky to get a seat as usually they don't like single diners on busy nights.  I don't know why they don't introduce the American idea of seating single diners at the bar, I think that is a great idea. 

Anyway, I was sitting there eating my dinner and having a drink when two well dressed young women sat next to me and with the tables being close I could hear a bit of what they were talking about.  They obviously knew each other well and were chatting away in accented English indicating that they weren't Austrian and weren't from the same foreign country.  I ordered a strudel for my dessert and it came in the form of a large pizza, and although delicious it was far too much food so there was a little left on the serving plank when the waitress took it away.  When the waitress took it away one young lady said to her friend (in English) , 'that man didn't eat all of his food, think of all the hungry children in Africa'.  I assumed that she was having a go at me and didn't realise that I spoke English.  Anyway as I stood up to leave I had to squeeze past their table, so I said to them 'I apologise for not eating all of my dinner but there was too much'.  With that they looked at each other and started laughing.  It turns out one of them is Tunisian and works for a NGO an the other is a diplomat from Lebanon.  They speak about a dozen languages each and speak to each other in English, French, Italian, Arabic, whatever.  The lady who made the comment explained that this was what her mother used to  say when she didn't eat all of her dinner, and they weren't being rude to me.  (A bit like when I was young my mother saying any food not eaten would be given to the starving children in China). 

Step count for the day 10,009.

Observation; Electric scooters everywhere.  Particularly the public share ones that are currently being introduced to some cities in Australia.  I wonder if people are throwing them in the Danube.