The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 14: The Capital of Music (Austria--Vienna)

I don't think I'll fit everything for Vienna in one post. I'll try.

Vienna, also known as the City of Music (thanks to many talented musicians,) the City of Dream (thanks to Sigmund Freud,) the Station of United Nation (thanks to, well, UN,) and many other names for its stories. Vienna is the capital of Austria, and it has the largest population by city in this nation. It is also the economical, political, and cultural center.

Being the center of everything, it has to have its unique things to brag. Well, yes, this city does offer a lot of things to see, so many that I had to go through my pictures and wikipedia to remember what I've learned. Here it is:

The front of Schonbrunn Palace

Our first stop was the Schönbrunn Palace, the home of Maria Theresa and many kings/royals. As I said before, the name Maria Theresa came up again and again when we visited Austria, or even Europe. Many of you know that the royal families in European countries always marry each other to keep the blood line "pure." Many argue that this causes genetic diseases while others claim that it might also cause the good traits to pass down to offspring. Take your side, but I root for genetic disease > good traits anytime (so should you.) The point here is, she reigned for a long time (~40 years) and had a lot of kids (16 or 17, I forgot.) That being said, imagine each kid marries another kid from another family......you can see how the bond between royal families was formed.

The back of the palace. It's huge......really huge......

Back to the palace. This palace has over 1000 rooms, but only about 20 were open for visitors. Also, photography is prohibited in the palace, so there's no photo for the rooms. The tour guide did give us a good history lesson. If I remembered correctly, when Napoleon was still allied with Austria, he visited this place as well and somehow had a kid here. This kid was so lonely and only had a bird as friend (too bad there was no internet, right?) The kid somehow got into gardening so that the royal family made him a huge garden in the backyard (more like a back plaza......) Napoleon went back to France, and this kid stayed. The kid's room was one of the rooms displayed, and there was a small bed. The tour guide mistakenly said it was Napoleon's bed, which everyone believed since it's a common knowledge that Napoleon was short. Still, it was way too small of a bed even for a midget (the bed was 3 ft at most.)

The Gloriette on top of the hill.

There were also tons of paintings in the palace portraying the Theresa family. Each kid has his or her own individual portrait everywhere. The king also had some, and this guy really liked legging apparently. We also saw dining rooms, ballrooms, and the offices. It was kinda sad that there were repairing going on when we visited, so it was hard to capture the beauty of the palace without seeing the modern stuff (I've seen the word "Alpine" several times. I guess that's a company's name?) We spent around an hour inside, and we've got another half an hour or so for the gardens outside.

A Neptune fountain located at the bottom of the Gloriette hill.

About the garden.....It's huge. Since it's flat (except the hill you see in the picture,) everything seems to be in walking distance. Well, if you spent like 25 minutes walking, then yes, it's in walking distance. Going from the palace to the Gloriette takes FOREVER!!! I didn't even make it to the top since I ran out of time. Oh, about the Gloriette, it serves as a monument for the soldiers who died in wars. It also symbolizes peace. According to Wiki, there's a replica in Shanghai. I can't seem to find a picture for that. Can someone confirm this? OP cannot deliver this time. This place also has tons of sculptures in the garden. I'm not gonna post photos of those. You can find them online.

After this palace, we went on a really rushed city tour. We tried to cover as many places as possible, but we never really had enough time at each place to let it sink into us. Well, the cons of rushed trips......

Hofburg Palace.

The first one was the Hofburg Palace. Schönbrunn Palace is referred as the Summer Palace while Hofburg is referred as Winter Palace. Apparently it gets too hot or too cold based on seasons, so they used to switch to another palace to avoid the severe temperature (does it really make a difference?) There are two statues in front of Hofburg for celebrating the victories of some important wars. I think one was this general who defeated Napoleon later when Napoleon tried to conquer Austria. I forgot the other one. Sadly we didn't get to go in (again, very rushed.) Right now this place is also the residence of the governor. Maybe that's another reason why we couldn't go in. The plaza in front of Hofburg is called Heldenplatz, where the two statues are located.

Museum of Princess Sissi

Okay, we passed by the museum of Princess Sissi. Someone educate me please. Before this trip, I really had no idea who this person is, but the old folks god excited when the tour guide introduced them about this place. I took a quick shot of this place only. I did a little research about this woman after coming back home (again, thanks to wikipedia,) and, dude, this woman is kinda messed up. Take a look of the wiki page. She has an interesting life. She was obsessed with her fashion and had to take care of her look everyday (including the long-hour hair brushing session everyday. her hair was really long apparently.) She would go on fasting and over-exercising just so she can stay skinny (pioneer of those young girls who care too much about the bodies and body builders.) She was disgusted by meat and would only eat egg and milk (or squeeze meat juice into soup, pioneer of....vegetarian? In a way, I guess.) Her son died, and she developed depression and melancholy. She was eventually assassinated. Poor woman. Apparently there were some TV shows and movies about her as well.

Roman ruins

On the other side of Hofburg, you get to see a Roman ruin. There are a lot of these in Rome (duh!) and they caused a lot of trouble for underground construction. Why? Say they want to dig a tunnel for subway. The route is already planned and they already dug half way. Boom! They dig into some ruins covered underground. Alright, now they have to change route and all the work they have done is wasted. It happens a lot in China as well, so I heard. However the Chinese sometimes hide the information and just keep digging. They apparently have too many of these ancient cites. Destroying one of them wouldn't matter.

Maria Theresa statue, with some others.

The next stop was the Maria Theresa Plaza. This place has a giant Maria Theresa statue along with her generals (those on horses) and other famous people (those directly under her throne. I think Mozart is one of them as well.) Too bad a construction was going on, so there's no way to avoid showing some of the bars and nets. On the side, there are two identical buildings. One is the natural history museum, and the other is art history museum. There's no way you can tell by the building. The only way you can tell is by the banners they hang. Okay, not much to talk about here. We really only stayed for around 5 minutes. Once again, rushed trip. Well, at least I didn't get lost and had to take cab to a city 3 hours away, right? (I did get lost several times during this trip, though.)

Art Museum

Natural History Museum. Look at the front doors to tell the difference.

Johann Strauss statue.

On the way to the downtown, we passed by the park that has a golden statue of Johann Strauss. He's also a famous musician who composed a lot of famous pieces. I think one of his most famous piece is the Blue Danube (An der schönen blauen Donau.) The river is not really blue. Apparently it's "blue" only for the rhyme. Feel free to let the music play while you read the rest of the post, if you haven't got tired of it.

This guy had an interesting life as well. He was born in a family where his dad abandoned him from practicing music. His dad was a somewhat famous musician, but he thought the life of a musician was too hard to handle. Therefore, he wants little Johann to be an accountant or a banker or whatever, as long as it's not a musician. Too bad, little Johann liked music so much that he secretly practiced violin. One day, his dad found out about this and whipped the hell out of little Johann to "beat the music out of his body." Little Johann didn't stop, though. He became famous as he composed more and more pieces. His dad finally realized that his son is more famous than him and was like "fuck this shit!" and left for a mistress (okay, the dad might not be a bad guy. Maybe he really wanted Strauss Jr. to have a good life and nothing is about family feud of competition. Sr. did leave for another woman, though.)

Here are some pictures of stuff I saw:

Denube River, and it's not blue (more green-ish).

Temple of Athena.

Interesting building.

HQ of United Nation.

Wiener Musikverein, one of the most famous concert halls in the entire world.

Then we got to downtown. Downtown is a beautiful place where cars are not allowed to get in. It's pretty much one main street with some smaller streets branching out. You can see many restaurants setting tables at the middle of the streets. It's quite a nice view. I really enjoyed the atmosphere here. I also had one of the best meals on this trip here and had a really good conversation with two old ladies.

The main street.

I was searching for restaurants on this street because I do not want to go to Rosenburger (fuck Rosenburger......I had this shit every time we were on road.) For those who don't know, Rosenburger is a cafeteria that serves all different kinds of food. Sounds good? These are always next to highway exits, people would only go there when they don't have other choices. I had this for at least 4 to 5 meals on this trips (since we're on road a lot.) There's another one called Autogrill, mainly in Italy and France. Since I was in the city, I refused to eat at Rosenburger. I found this restaurant called Wienerwald. It's one of the famous local restaurants. Although it's still a chain, the food is just so much better. This place mainly serves poultry, so I got this chicken breasts with grilled tomatoes paired with mushroom sauce and cheese. It was amazing! They are best known for the fried chicken, or Schnitzel, but I didn't get that as I wanted something not fried (too much fried food on the previous day.)

When I was eating, two old ladies came next to me (I was sitting outside) and asked (in German) if there was anyone sitting next to me. Being a stupid American, of course I didn't understand what they said, so I told them I don't speak your language and showed them my camera (universal sign of "I'm a tourist.") They quickly changed to English and asked again. Their English wasn't good, but good enough to communicate with simple terms. They sat down and started talking. I wouldn't give up this chance to talk to locals (I thought they were local people,) so I asked if they were from around here.

It turned out that they were travelling, too (both look like they were 70+ years old. So brave. You go, old ladies!) One was from Berlin and the other from Amsterdam. I told them I went to Amsterdam several days ago and really liked it. The other lady asked if I visited Berlin already, I told her that it was too far east (yet I was in Vienna, haha) so I couldn't go, but I said I went to Cologne and Frankfurt and loved everything I saw there. She seemed happy. Good. I then went on and asked how they communicate to each other (Netherlands people mainly speak Dutch while Germans speak, well, German.) They said the Europeans have to learn at least 3 languages in schools. They both learned German, Dutch, and French. They were saying all these in English, so they actually know 3.5 languages, so pro. They said sometimes they can just change language at the middle of a conversation with no problem. Both can pick up really quickly. I kind of envy them because I had experienced language problem when I was travelling. Knowing one of the European languages (other than English) would definitely help.

We went on and talked about my trip and where I was from. I told them that San Diego is very beautiful and relaxing. One of them had gone to New York for 1 month, but she didn't like it. She thought everything was all crowded together, so she felt a little claustrophobic, even when she was outside.

It was a very nice meal and I had fun time talking to these two ladies. I wish all meals were like this. It would have been so much fun. Too bad I forgot to take a picture with these two. It would be very nice to leave some visual memory of this amazing time.

After lunch, I went to find the famous Sachertorte, a chocolate cake that's famous is Austria. It's pretty much everywhere, so I just found a table at the middle of the street to sit down.

The half-finished cake, cafe latte, and a glass of water.

The cake was meh. It was kinda dry, but surprisingly it was too sweet. It also had a little tangerine flavor in it, not sure if it's ordinary or not for a cake like this. I sat there for about 20 minutes just eating and watching people passing by. The city was very lively but didn't seem busy. Everyone seemed very chill and happy. Maybe it's because half of them were tourists? I don't know.

The day ended at St. Steven's Church, another big church that's famous in Vienna. I also saw a parade for......something. Just check the photos.

The cake place.

St. Steven's Church.

The church and the streets.

Part of the parade.

Managed to finish Vienna in one post. This concludes Austria. Two more countries to go!!! Well, technically four, but 2 are really small. Sounds like I'm almost done, but these 2 countries are Italy and France.....so yea......

Next stop: Venice, Italy (woo hoo!)

The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 13: The Wolfgang's (Austria--Salzburg, Wolfgang Lake)

Okay, this one will be fast......hopefully.

Remember this? It's the Hohensalzburg Castle. In that afternoon when we visited, there was an optional tour to go to the castle for like 18 euros. Again, I was already out of money by then (still had a week to go) so I chose not to go with the group. I walked around the city and found a way up to the mountain. Of course, I went up to discover what's up there.

A small alley that leads up to the hill.

The roads weren't windy or narrow. It's the slope that killed me. Gosh I really need to get back in shape. This road forks out into two parts. One goes to the castle (the group took trolley up to the castle. It turns out that you can actually walk up to save the trolley fee. You still need to pay for entrance, though.) while the other leads to another hill with a watch tower.

There weren't many people hiking. I was by myself for a good 15 minutes (kinda scary with the thought of getting lost.) I saw only 2 couples and 1 other traveler (I think she's from Japan. She had that unique accent when I talked to her.) The entire trip took about 25 minutes uphill (15 min downhill.) I got to see the wilderness of Salzburg and a good view of the city from top.

View of the city. The Cathedral stands mightily.

I think this road was one of those old roads they used for transferring materials to the castle. Some parts of the road i walked through have walls and watch towers. These were mainly used for scouts alerting the castle if there were enemies. I believe there were also gates around there to slow down or stop the enemies from advancing.

One of those mini watch towers.

I finally got to the top of the hill. There was another watch tower there. Too bad they didn't allow me to go in. Still, I got a good view of the castle.

Probably the best view of the castle without being in the castle.

The watch tower.

Honestly I don't even know if I can call this a watch tower. It doesn't really have many windows (thus no view.) It feels more like a storage or one of those "last resort defense" where you eventually surrender or burn yourself in the building if you don't want to surrender.

Now, take a look of this picture:

Take a look at the building near the bottom middle. When I took this picture, i was only planning to capture the view of the Alpine mountains and some city scene. I didn't realize this building was in the picture until I organize the pictures after uploading into my computer. It's called Schloss Leopoldskron, a palace used in Sound of Music! Okay, actually, according to Wikipedia, this palace was never actually used for filming. They only filmed a the outside and some grounds around this place. The idea, though, is that the Von Trapp family lived in here. Well, I guess I can say I've been to this place after taking this picture, lol.

Now, crazy story time. After the free time (when some people went up to the castle,) we gathered in front of Mozart's house. Guess what? 2 people are missing, and they barely speak English. Of course they don't know any European language. We tried looking for them, but to no avail. The tour guide called the police, the local tour guides, and even the agency back in US and London to make sure if they have contacted them. Still, these two people are like evaporated from this world. After 2 hours of search, the tour guide let us go to the next destination while he stayed and continued searching for these 2 people. I'll continue the story in a bit.

Our next stop is the Wolfgang Lake, named after Mozart. This lake, like every other lake we've visited so far, is a lake...... I mean, there's only so much to say about a lake. After visiting like 3 or 4 of them, I got tired of lakes. The result is I did not join the cruise for lake tour. Instead, I walked around this little town next to the lake and took some photos.

The Wolfgang Lake

Cafe by the lake.

I'm kinda sad the person who took this did not lower the camera a little more.

The tour was relatively short (30 mins) and we met up after the tour. We then waited for the tour guide for another good hour after he said he was coming to meet up with us. Apparently the taxi driver from Salzburg didn't really know this place (this place is about 20 mins from the town.) That being said, our schedule is completely delayed, big time. We had to cancel the concert we signed up for in Vienna that night, and we had to call the restaurant that we're going to be late. We left the contact info at the police station so that they can call us if they found the missing people. Then we had to move on.

On the way to Vienna, the tour guide got a call from the office in London saying that there were two people checking into the hotel in Vienna already, and they were exactly the 2 missing people! Great, now at least we knew where they were. But then the next question is: how did they get there?

Here's google map showing the distance between Salzburg and Vienna.

Check the time and distance between these two places. It's pretty much the distance between LA and Vegas. We thought they took train, since it's probably the cheapest way to get there. No, they took a cab. They did not know how far it was from Salzburg to Vienna, so they only showed the cab driver the address of the hotel. The cab driver originally was going to charge them 700 euros ( more than 1000 dollars,) but they bargained down to 500 euros. Still, that's a lot of money.

We eventually arrived in Vienna that night, had the best Chinese meal ever in my life (I was starving, otherwise it was a poorly made meal.) Then we headed to the hotel and got ready to go to bed. This concludes the Salzburg trip (finally!)

Before I end this post, I gotta say something. Some of our group members don't speak good English. It's fine. With some key words and some gestures, you can still survive in Europe. However, some DON'T speak English at all! To these people: you really have some guts to travel by yourself to these countries. It takes a lot of courage (or ignorance) to travel like this. I experienced several times on this trip that I could not communicate with Europeans, whether it's for ordering food, asking for direction, or simply chatting. I felt really vulnerable, but at least most of people still know some English, so I could at get what I was looking for. If you don't even speak English, it's almost impossible to survive by yourself. So, props to you, non-English speakers, for your courage to travel around the world.

Next stop: Vienna (probably will take another 2 or 3 posts......oh god.......

The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 12: The Sound of Music (Austria--Salzburg)

My plan of finishing the eurotrip posts before school probably won't happen. Yes, I'm half way through, but the rest of places have tons of backgrounds and stories that I want to share. This means I'm going to break each country's trip down to different parts. Well, we'll see how long this will get......

After Innsbruck, we visited Salzburg. This place is best known for two reasons: Mozart's hometown, and the Sound of Music. I also took a trip up the hill by myself (I told myself I wouldn't climb anything after Cologne......not happening.)

Our beautiful tour guide

Let's start with the tour guide. She's been a local tour guide for over 20 years, and she knows pretty every bit about this town--a great person to ask questions for. She even wore the traditional clothes for this town. Oh, the jacket is not included.

The trip went like this: we went to Mirabel's Garden first, where the Sound of Music took many scenes here. Many famous songs are filmed here as well. It was a nice day when we visited, so we got a good view of the garden. Well, too bad we didn't take "the Sound of Music tour," which they take you to almost every single place they filmed. it's okay, we still got a good share of it.

The Mirabel's Garden, with the Hohensalzburg Castle in the back.
Oh, and it's this fountain at the middle

I don't think I need to express how great the movie was. Everyone should have seen it already. If you haven't, shame on you. Even a person who doesn't watch old movies like me watched it. You have no excuse not to. Now, if you haven't watched it, go rent the movie or Netflex it or just stream it online before continuing, or else this post probably wouldn't make much sense to you.

You know what? I think it would be a better idea if I just post pictures and see how much you can recognize. It'll save me a lot of typing time and effort. Yes, I'm getting lazy.

The stairs. Don't remember? How about now?

The green tunnel. No clue? Check again.

Another view of the Garden.

Heck, I'll just show this entire song. Youtube doesn't have the complete video, and this one has bad quality..... oh well, at least it's a complete song.

There are actually more places that showed up in the movie, but they are not as recognizable as these ones, so I'm going to skip. Last thing before we move on: go watch that movie.

Mirabel's Garden is located here, and we moved across bridge after seeing the garden and moved here. It's Mozart's house!! Now, you might wonder why there are two locations for Mozart's house. The truth is he had two mouses back then before he moved to Vienna eventually. A little bit about this guy. He was a music genius! Like, GENIUS!!! He learned violin and piano the age I learned how to use chopsticks, and he PERFORMED!! I would love to perform my skill of using chopsticks, but probably no one would care. Not only did he perform, he also composed music at young age. You can listen to this while reading the rest of the post.

It's painted yellow, very easy to spot.

So this is Mozart's old house. He lived on third floor. This place has become a museum, and you have to pay to get it. Screw that, I'm not THAT interested in his life to pay 10 euros to get in. You can't really see the streets, but this place has become a center of the town, and there are many restaurants here (thanks to the tourists. I wonder how Mozart would think if he knows that his house has been a tourists attraction all these years......) Therefore, the streets are pretty clean (oh there's a 肉夾模 place here. Chinese are really everywhere.) Salzburg, thanks to Mozart and the Sound of Music, has attracted so many tourists that this town now lives on tourists. Their income mainly comes from tourism, and the percentage is only growing now that rich people come here from China, thousands of them.

Tourism aside, the rest of income just comes from daily services. They also have industries, but those are located outside of the city. People normally would choose being a tour guide over a blue collar worker.

Deeper into the town, you'll see the church established by St. Rupert, the tour guide even showed us the graveyard next to the church. Paying some respect to the dead, I didn't take any photo. I don't think people should, but people do. Flashes were going off everywhere. Fucking tourists......

I think show place showed up in Sound of Music as well, but this one is not the famous church in the movie. No, this one is not in this town. Okay, there are just several pictures I want to show you, along with some cool stories. Then we can end this post. The next one is still in Salzburg, but it's not about tourist attraction but more of my personal adventure. It's pretty cool, trust me.

A calsh of modern art and ancient buildings.

This picture shows the plaza in front of the Cathedral. This art piece is made by some guy who thinks he's so awesome. He decided to add some flavor to this town, so he made this. Art people, I don't get you. There are more than just this giant globe. It's not visible in the picture, but there are some giant chess pieces next to the globe as well. Apparently there are many other art projects around this town. Again, art people, I don't get you. Also, there was a farmers' market around here, pretty much right behind Mozart's house. Oh oh oh, totally forgot to finish the story. The streets around Mozart's house are not clean, but back then this place was a fish market. So basically Mozart was smelling stinky fish smell while composing music. I'd like to know if there's any study on the correlation of good music and fish smell......probably not.

A little bit more about Sound of Music. Remember this fountain? Now try again. Wait, sorry, wrong clip. It should be this one.....stupid Youtube doesn't have a clip. Well, a picture will do. It's so nice to be able to do what the characters in the movie have done. I played with water here as well. Although kinda embarrassing, I had fun. I mean, I wasn't the only one doing it anyway! Some......little kid was doing it, too. I just followed his example. No foul here, no foul. Since there's no clip, I can only link you to the music. There was a woman in our group who's an opera singer. We made her sing bunch of Sound of Music songs. She was really good! We thoroughly enjoyed this day's trip......until later. Some crazy thing happened later in this day. I'll get to that part in next post. This fountain is near the smallest house in Salzburg. It's really small. Check the picture.

Smallest house in Salzburg

There's a story behind this. Again, no one knows if it's true, but it's quite interesting. So there was a guy who wanted to marry a girl he loved, but the girl's dad didn't like this guy. He told the guy: "If you want to marry my daughter, you have to have a house. Without even a place to live, how can I trust you with my girl." Being very poor, the guy had no chance buying a normal house in the town. He, however, refused to give up, so he came up with a way. Yes! He built this place and showed to the dad! I can imagine how pissed the dad was, if this story was true. As many good stories, the prince and princess have to live happily ever after. Same goes to this story. The guy eventually married the girl and lived here. Today, this place is transformed into a store. To be honest, this place is a lot bigger than....say shops in Taiwan. Those shops are tiny, and they sometimes don't even have a door. It's almost illegal. They pretty much sell stuff in a little alley where it's supposed to be used when there's fire.

The Cathedral.

Backtrack a bit. The Cathedral, being called the Cathedral of Salzburg anywhere else, doesn't really have a name like "St. Peter's Cathedral" or "St. James' Cathedral." Being the one and only, the name is just the Cathedral. The importance of this place? See the 3 doors? There are 3 dates on the 3 gates. The first one on the left shows 774, the middle one shows 1628, and the right now shows 1959. These are the three years that this cathedral was rebuilt. Because of wars and natural disaster (mostly war), this church was destroyed multiple times and rebuilt. It went through many bishops and kings. It's a standing piece of history. Feel free to research more if you're interested. Oh, did I mention that Mozart was baptized here?

Mozart was baptized here.

 There!

Okay, back to the smallest house. There's a coffee shop located next to this house, and it's Mozart's favorite cafe. Apparently Mozart used to drink coffee here everyday, and he would write notes on the napkins. To this day, this old cafe is still operating, and it's like a bar--you grab a seat when you see one. They don't take you to the table. The inside is smoke-free, but the outside is not. Being a tourist, I chose to sit outside and endured the smoke. I got some nice espresso and enjoyed a good 20 minutes here. They also serve dessert like ice cream or cake. I didn't grab any. I was expecting to eat lunch at the next spot. Well, then the crazy story happened and I didn't get lunch. Good thing is that I grabbed a sandwich on the way back to the bus. A very wise decision.

They serve water alongside the espresso.
You're supposed to rinse your mouth before drinking
the espresso to fully enjoy the flavor.

 You know what? I felt like a genius when I was drinking this cup of espresso. Like Mozart, I was drinking coffee at this spot. Alright guys, it's confirmed. I'm a genius. Thank you! Thank you!

Jonathan Chao, the musical genius. XDDDDD

Okay, let's see......one more post for Salzburg. Probably 1 to 2 for Vienna, 1 to 2 for Venice, 1 to 2 for Florence, 1 to 2 for Rome,1 for Pisa, 1 for Monaco, 1 for Avignon, 1 for Lyon, 2 for Paris......fuck me.......

The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 11: The Inn that Fits Thousands (Austria--Innsbruck)

View of Innsbruck.

After Liechtenstein, we moved to Austria. Austria is known for many things: Mozart's home, Sound of Music, music capital, and may others. Our journey in this country didn't really start in one of those cities. However, this city is well known for another reason. This city is Innsbruck.

Close look of the ramp.

Innsbruck is most well known for the ski ramp they built for Olympics. The ramp was built for the 1964 Winter Olympics. It then was used again for the 1972 Winter Olympics. The 1972 one wasn't supposed to be in Innsbruck. It should have been hosted in Denver. However, due to cost reason and fear of environmental issues, Denver decided to turn down the offer. The organization decided to turn to Vancouver, BC, but Vancouver rejected as well due to the change of government after an election. At the end, the organization turned to Innsbruck again since it already has a built ramp. That would save a lot of time and cost.

The Golden Dachl.

Olympics story was one of the more recent ones. The history of this city goes way back. In the middle of old town, you can see a building that really stands out because of the golden roof. This building is indeed called the Golden Dachl (which means golden roof). This golden roof was originally built in 15th century for Emperor Maximilian I, and it was actually a palace instead of just this balcony. However, the building got torn down and only the balcony remains. Now this place is listed in the protected property so that no one can ever remove it. Inside this building (the one behind the balcony,) it's a museum about this place. I didn't go in because I kinda ran out of money at this point of the trip. Plus it's probably something you can find on internet anyway.

A view of the Old Town and the city tower.

St. Anna's Column

Going towards the south of old town on Maria-Theresien-Strasse, you can see the St. Anna's Column standing at the middle of the street. This is for commemorating the liberation of Tyrol from Bavarian troops. monuments are another thing that you see often in Europe. Again, many are in form of obelisks, and few are in forms of other shapes. Many involve Catholic background (especially St. Mary) and few have kings/queens. This one has St. Mary standing on a crescent moon.

The Triumphal Arch

 Going pass St. Anna's Column towards south, at almost the end of the old town area, you can see an arch of triumph standing in the middle of the street. This one is built by the Queen Maria Theresa (you hear this name really often in Austria. See her as Queen Elizabeth II or Queen Victoria I, but in Austria. A very powerful woman who reigned for a long time. She also had many kids who married princes/kings/princesses of other countries. The political relationship of this woman was super strong.) for her son with the princess of Spain. However, on the same day of the wedding, her husband died. That's why you can see two sculptures on this arch. On the northern side, it recorded the happy wedding; on the southern side, it showed the death of the husband.

Swarovski Crystal Store

Not too far from the Golden Dachl, a store selling crystal stands there. It's the famous Swarovski store. I'm pretty sure you guys see the commercial on TV. This one is apparently the original store. I spent some time checking out the crystals they sell inside. I gotta say, to buy it, you gotta sell your kidney. You might even need to sell both to buy one crystal...... They also have decorations around the store using different colors of crystal. It's really pretty and magnificent. Then again, go sell a kidney before coming here...... (welp, at least they have free bathroom. Most of the public bathrooms cost money to use. They even gate the door so that you have to put in coins before you can enter. Normally it's 50 cents. For popular places like Venice, it can even go up to 1.50 euro. I'll talk about it again when we enter Venice.)

One of the columns in Swarovski store, made entirely with crystal

Royal palace. The Court Church is right next to it.
The background is the Alpine mountains.

If you walk towards the north of the Maria Theresa Street, you will get to see the imperial palace. This palace is, again, built for Emperor Maximilian I in 15th century. Unfortunately I didn't enter the palace due to time constrain, which I really regret. Apparently this palace holds the most prestigious ballroom in the Alps. It also has portraits of Maria Theresa's family. Even though the latter ones are easier to see (Once we entered Vienna, those portraits of royal family are kinda at every corner.)

Leopold Fountain

Next to the palace, there's a fountain for Leopold V. It's a fairly big fountain, and many families play here. Little kids.......okay I can't find more words to describe the atmosphere. It's actually not that exciting, lol.

St. James Cathedral

Near the Golden Dachl, there's a cathedral named after St. James. This baroque style church is the biggest one around. The inside of the church is very beautiful. Too bad this time there was no organ playing. There's a famous painting at the altar called "Mariahilf." (Mary holding baby Jesus.)

It's funny how I went to Innsbruck and completely missed the "Innsbruck." Bruck means bridge, and Inn is the river that flows through the town. Therefore, Innsbruck literally means "the bridge across Inn River." According to the tourist map, the bridge is pretty close by, but I was so busy checking out all the buildings and people that I completely forgot to go to the bridge! Shame. Here is a picture of the bridge.

I'll just share some more pictures to end this post.

Another picture of the cathedral

Tiroler Landestheater, a concert hall for musical and drama performance.

Map of the Old Town

Coffee shop. They have English menu, lol.

A dragon made of crystal. It's cost more than two kidneys......

Next stop: Salzburg, Austria

The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 10: Post Stamps (Liechtenstein--Vaduz)

before going on this trip, I didn't even know this country existed, let along how to spell it. In this trip, we went to 3 of the smallest countries: Liechtenstein (4th smallest), Monaco (2nd smallest), and Vatican City (1st smallest). The 3rd smallest is Nauru. We got to the capital, Vaduz, at around 9:30 am, so not many stores were open. Only staying here for an hour didn't help, either. Therefore, there's not much to tell.

Still, this country is known for its stamps and mail delivering history. They have a museum showing all(?) post stamps ever created. They also have a history of old European mail delivery.

Vaduz Castle

One of the tourist attraction (if you call that an attraction) is the Vaduz Schloss (Vaduz castle), but we didn't go up (again, what a disappointment.) See, what I don't understand about small country is that there seems no point of forming a country when you can't even support yourself. I mean, they could support themselves, but they rely largely on countries like Germany. Later when we went to Monaco, it's the same thing. They rely on France for almost everything. The only things they have there are casinos, Grand Prix, and beaches (with naked people.) AND it's inside France!! I just don't see the point of having an independent country when the area is THIS small (less than 500 acres, Central Park in NYC has ~840 acres, for your reference). Well, I guess there must be a reason. I just don't get it.

Chinese takeout

Oh, even for a small country like this, there are still Chinese people!! This is the first thing I saw when we entered the plaza. The second one would be a souvenir shop next to it. Chinese can live everywhere!!! For a small country like this, there's no need for Chinatown. A takeout place like this is good enough......

I really can't think of anything to tell you guys for this country......I guess being surrounded by Alps doesn't really make it more fun.

City Hall

Rathus. It doesn't even have an English wiki......

Next stop: Innsbruck, Austria