People tend to consider round anniversaries more significant. I thought of my 30th birthday as a milestone in my life. The birthday present from Balázs was spending two days in Vienna. I love this city. A few years ago I spent a month here to learn German. I visited many places but there were some that I missed out and others where I wanted to return to. As the trip was a surprise, he only told me that morning what our destination would be. I had no time to prepare so it was a spontaneous city tour. We slept in an elegant hotel called The Hotel. It could really be a benchmark:
It was close enough to the city center, we could walk along the Mariahilferstrasse, there was no need for any vehicle. Our first stop was the Stephansdom because I didn't remember being inside it before. Maybe I've just forgotten, it's not that attractive... Anyway, I checked whether my language school is still there and I was happy to see that it is, even its sign could be the same.
After that we bought tickets for the evening concert at the Hofburg, then headed for the Museumsquartier (MQ) where we took our time to attend the exhibition about urban gardening. I'm deeply interested in this topic. I wanted to move from Budapest because I was missing nature and I'm always glad to hear about initiatives that promote green in big cities. In Vienna there is a small district called Spittelberg. For me, it was love at first site. Only a few streets behind the MQ, small town feeling near the emperor's palace. That is where we had dinner.
Luckily there was no dress code for the concert so we didn't have to go back to the hotel to change our clothes. We just walked back to the Hofburg.
Since it was my birthday, the Wiener Hofburg Orchester played in a larger, richer decorated room with red carpet to make the experience more memorable. :)
They played classical music but not severely. There were some jokes, just like at the traditional New Year's Concert. Opera arias were sung by foreign soloists. They all had the same casual and friendly attitude. It would be difficult, of course, to take the Papageno and Papagena duet too seriously.
The next day was extremely hot, none of us wanted to stay outdoors. We went to the Natural History Museum. Being a bird-maniac, I decided to spend most of the time in the rooms where we could see everything from hummingbird to ostrich. As a future interpreter, I tried to memorize some of the species in German but I didn't want to work on my holiday so I haven't prepared a glossary yet. :)
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