When I last left off, we had just driven from Berlin to Nuremberg making a few little stops along the way. The next morning, we rose and continued driving into Austria, and clear across the county until we reached Vienna.
After a comfortable night in the Hilton Nuremberg, we got on the road relatively early. We spent over 4 hours on the road driving which isn't quite as much as the day before, but still a lot of driving for two days in a row. But rather than drive 4 hours straight and get to Vienna right away, we made (in my humble opinion) a very important pit stop on the way there.
About 2.5 hours into the drive to Vienna, we stopped at the former Mauthausen Concentration Camp. We had no trouble getting across the Austrian border after stopping for over priced gas and sandwiches. Crossing countries in the EU is very similar to crossing state boarders in the USA. There may be a sign, "Thanks for visiting" or "Welcome to..." but other than there, there is no border control. Same thing with Germany and Austria. I think there was a sign denoting the change in countries, but it was in German and not very significant. Note: make sure your car has the Austrian toll sticker, otherwise you will have problems driving through the country. We got ours at the gas station right before crossing the border.
We arrived at the former KZ camp about 30 mins early for the English tour and spent time at the camp until about 12:30. The tour was very well done, and it was a very moving experience to see how much of the camp is still in tact. Visitors have the option of walking the "stairs of death" from the former quarry, but due to our time constraints we skipped that.
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| Entrance to the former Mauthausen KZ camp |
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| "Stairs of Death" at the Mauthausen KZ camp |
From Mauthausen, we drove just another 90 minutes to Vienna, stopping first at Schonnbrun Palace, the summer residence of the Hapsburgs just outside of Vienna proper. The hubs and I got the Sisi ticket (29 Euros) which included both the Schonnbrun Palace and the Hofborg Palace which we were planning to visit tomorrow. The Schonnbrun Palace is very large (think the Versailles of Austria) and opulent. We walked around the gardens for about an hour before going through the palace. The grounds are very extensive, and you can walk up a ways and get an awesome view of the palace with the city of Vienna behind hit (see my picture below). It was a great introduction to Vienna and to the historic Hapsburg empire.
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| Schonnbrun Palace from the entrance |
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| Schonnbrun Palace from the gardens |
On our way out, we met up with my in-laws who went through the palace at a different pace than us. We went back to our car which we parked on a nearby street and headed right to the center of Vienna. It took us about another 30 mins to drive to the Hotel Trend Europa Vienna (read my trip advisor review). As I stated in my review, we had a little bit of difficulty with this hotel all due to factors out of our control. Europe was going through a heatwave that summer, so Vienna which is usually more temperate was very hot. We chose this hotel for 2 reasons: location and a/c. When our a/c wasn't working, it caused some problems. The a/c for my in-laws worked just fine, and I certainly don't hold our experience against this hotel. We were right in downtown Vienna and paid only $180/night including parking.
We got cleaned up and headed over to the town hall for an Austrian Dinner show. The show started at 8pm with musicians and salad. After clearing the salads, the singers and dancers came out. They performed selections from Austrian operas for about 20 mins before they brought us the second course of stuffed beef and pasta. Dessert was a buttermilk soufflé but it tasted more like chopped up pancakes…equally as delicious.
When we got back to our hotel around 10:30-11PM we realized that our a/c still wasn’t working. After some arguing with the maintenance staff, they gave us a different and much smaller (if that was even possible) but cooler room. It was a rather unpleasant end to our evening, but the next day we had nearly a full day to spend in Vienna, and I was already enchanted by this amazing European city. Unlike Berlin who modernized their city after it was leveled by allied bombings, Vienna didn't near suffer the same devastation and amazingly held onto their historic architecture. You truly feel like you're walking in an old city free from the cosmopolitan hubbub that I don't like in US cities. We only had 2 problems in Vienna...we were there on a Sunday...and it was a Sunday in August. If you read one of my older posts about our trip to Italy, you'll that we encountered a very similar phenomenon when we visited Milan.
To continue reading about Vienna, click HERE.
Thanks for reading!
- Foxy the Traveler
