Days 33-38: Sausage Fest and More

Day 33:
The night that I got back from the Vienna trip was a party and pig slaughter. Apparently one of the BME dorms has a pig slaughter every semester, I don't know why. Apparently other Hungarians also don't know why. I wanted to go, but no one else wanted to come with me. I did, however go to the party the next day which involved eating the slaughtered pig in the form of really fresh sausages.
It was a pretty nice time. I had some normal sausage and hurka sausage which was really good. I don't know anything about sausages and the making thereof, but the hurka was really good. It had rice in it and it kind of reminded me of bratwursts. Though that comparison should be taken with a grain (or like, a gram) of salt since the last time I had bratwurst was probably at least five years ago.

There was also this gypsy band playing music. Apparently they were a little drunk and the things they were singing reflected it. Also! They were playing a cimbalom, which I recently learned about in my Hungarian Music class.

Day 34:
I went to a play! It was in Hungarian but there were English subtitles. My favorite way to describe it is "very modern" and so it was. It was supposed to be based off of The Trial by Kafka. I don't know anything about The Trial, but that did not stop me from thinking "well that explains it."
I think it was called "LEDARÁLNAKELTŰNTEM" though I don't know what that means. It dark in that recalling communism way, but also funny and self-referential and absurd. By the end the play was mostly a collection of disparate scenes that may or may not have had anything to do with the play as it began. Highlights included one scene where the power went out and they had electricians come up on stage grumbling about the actors knocking out the power with all their jumping around. Another was a guy in an alien suit or something who never spoke but managed to get the audience to clap in unison to a particular rhythm.
It was on this day that I decided that I really do like modern theater.

Day 38:
I played League of Legends at AIT. Then we went to get food and alcohol at the supermarket, ate, drank, and played more League. This is not especially interesting, but I learned that they sell tiny bottles of alcohol by the cash registers next to the gum and candy.

A Qian-sized Jagermeister.

Day 33: Vienna Museums

This was a museum day. Supposedly the first Sunday of the month means that a lot of museums have free entrance. None of the museums we visited had free entrance. #bitter

Anyway, the museums were pretty cool.

Here is the Museum Quarter. According to reviews, it is "objectively hip."

Basically the Louvre

We went to the art history museum, another thing that I did with Cwod and co. But ti was still really cool. There was a special (and free!) exhibit about stuff the Hapsburgs had and they had some pretty neat stuff. 

Apparently the three-ladies theme is just a thing that happens everywhere and isn't a specific thing?

This was my favorite thing in the museum. They used it to do science! Apparently you fill it up with water, stick in the fire, and it steams out of its mouth. You can guess how it got that hole in its stomach. 

A mechanical calculator! I can't even handle how cool this is. 

Watch out. The unofficial title to this piece is "The Right to Bear Arms"

This was a poster I saw. Bad. Ass.

 Somewhere around here is the real Hapsburg Palace. I'm really not sure where it starts or where it ends.

The eye of Sauron is watching over this gate.

St. Charles

 Inside St. Charles:

We got to got up the elevator this time, so we got a good look at the ceiling. This was another one of my favorite bits. The following is my interpretation of the ceiling art:

When life gives you ceilings, paint that shit gold.

Here's that salt you wanted.

Is is not ceiling art, rather it's money. Apparently fountains are not the only things to throw coins into.

Book burning! Rargh.

Why do you need an anchor in the sky? That's silly.

It's-a me! Jesus!

This was at the top, I thought we should have been able to go up there, but alas my companions didn't agree.

This is when I tried to make a panorama.

Where did you get that silly hat?

We also went to the science museum but we didn't have much time before we had to leave, sajnos. Some of us did try to do a speed run in the time we had. Like me. 

The least ergonomic keyboard

This place had a lot of trains. Like, a lot of trains.

There was a robots exhibit. This guy is really scary.

Day 32: Bitches Love Bécs

You guys, that was a really funny bilingual joke.

For those of you who do not speak Hungarian, I went to Vienna last weekend! Last Friday my friend was all "Hey, you want to go to Vienna this weekend?" and I was all "yeah, okay." Turns out like 12 of us were going to Vienna that weekend in three different groups.

We got a train ticket that included a 3-day pass for Vienna's public transport. Guess how many times they checked us for a ticket. ZERO TIMES. Either everyone gets a free go on the weekends or public transportation is entirely on the honor system. Either way, I feel gypped.

Speaking of gypped, I was worried that there would be more gypsies with their fake babies. I haven't seen any in Budapest, but I remember their being a lot from German trip in high school. I only saw one who was playing an accordion on a subway. It might be because it's winter-ish and not really tourist season, but there were also loads of tourists. To be fair, we did a lot of tourists things, but it was weird to hear so much English all the time. In fact, there was actually no need to make any effort to learn the most basic German. Everyone spoke English. At some places, it seemed like English was the default.

Also, speaking of the high school German trip, I didn't really remember what we did in Vienna other than that we saw the sun for the first time in a week, but some of the stuff came back to me as we did the things.

Okay, on to the stuff we did!

Two of the twelve went to Vienna Friday night and the rest of us got there on Saturday morning. The first thing we did upon arrival was visit the Schönbrunn Palace, the summer home of the Habsburgs. Who did we see on the way there but the two who came the day before! We ended up skipping visiting the inside and opted to go to the garden which was free. On seeing the garden, I recognized the vast gravel expanse from the high school trip. There was more snow this time. Either I never knew or managed to forget from the last time, but there's a zoo there. The Habsburgs had a freaking zoo at their summer home! What. I think I must have forgotten, because you could definitely smell the animals when you went up the hill.

Gravel!

The thing on the hill. There's a cafe inside.

Fountain thing. Poseidon ballin' it up as usual. 

The view from the top.

Ducks. That duck's head is remarkably blue.

Oh, and some people got married.

The various groups split up after our palace adventure. We walked around some famous market place. Naschemarkt. There were a lot of olives there. And hummus. Also we ate lunch at Café Do'an, and it was pretty good. It was a bit cold to eat outside, but that was the only place there was room for us.

On our way to check into the hostel, we found some interesting things in the subway. I don't know what they mean.

Something to do with Chernobyl? There were a bunch of these with different number things.

Also stars.

The hostel was nice and had these nice maps of the city that had a bunch of cool places to go to. the one downside being the lack of metro lines on the map. This is also where I learned that Ben and Jerry's has a Vermonster flavor in addition to the Vermonster bucket of twenty scoops of ice cream. 

Oh, and this lively chap was waiting for us outside our door:

Winking holographic man.

Then we went to look at some buildings.

I remembered this guy. I didn't think it was an actual apartment though, I thought it was like a school or something. My favorite part is the uneven ground.

St. Charles. We heard we could take the lift up to the top and look out, but the lift was closed by the time we got there. More on that in our next installment.

The inside of St. Charles. Again, more on that later.

St. Stephen's. It has some lights on it.

It's hard to see, but this church has got some mother fuckin' eagles up on its roof.

Oh, and because standing tickets were 3 Euros and there were supposed to be English subtitles, we took a trip to the Vienna Opera House. The very opera house that is supposed to be larger but less nice than the Budapest version. 

I learned that the cheap seats (or lack thereof) at Staatsoper were much less nice than those at the Palace of Arts in Budapest. For one thing, I didn't have a real spot until about halfway through the first half, so I didn't get subtitles until a group of people left and I took one of their seats. Even from an actual seat, I could only see about half of the stage. I ended up leaving at intermission with most of the rest of the people to get dinner. Even so, I will still say that I saw Don Giovanni at the Vienna Opera House, even if it was just the left half of the first half of Don Giovanni.

Opera! Sure wish I knew what was going on.

Apparently this is how you save your spot in the standing section.

The view from the balcony

Dinner was at a nice place called Salzamt. The food was good and Austrian, the waitstaff was really friendly and spoke good English. Our waitress even explained what everything on the menu was since the menu was in German. Apparently mixing beer and lemonade is a thing here and it was quite nice.

Prost!

We got ice cream afterward and went to check out the nightlife. We went to two clubs that were supposed to be really good. Both were very crowded and very smoky. Apparently smoking indoors is a thing here. And, like, while dancing. The first was quite small and curiously enough played a bunch of 90s music. And had a curious mix of young people and old dudes. The second was called Chelsea, also well rated and very crowded. This one was much bigger but was just as packed with people. We managed to get a table and just hung out and talked for a while. 

Thus concludes Vienna: Day 1.

Here are some Qian-sized things I found:

A tiny bench. We came across it while looking for the restaurant. Why is it so small? Perhaps it is to cater to elderly gnomes to stop for a rest in the night.

A tiny house. This was outside the window of our room.