a couple days in vienna.......

we just got back from a couple days spent in vienna, we enjoyed touring around the city and their many christmas markets and tea houses! fellow OM'ers(dave ad brenda babcock) who work and live just outside vienna invited us up to stay with them. also dave's sister janet who is working in the czech was staying with them, we attened mts training when we first arrived in hungary with her so it was great catching up and laughing together about our past year. we really appreciated our couple days there, it almost felt like going home for the weekend, vienna has many things that are impossible to find in hungary, like breakfast sausage and root beer, i was so excited to buy some root beer i can't even describe it, i have another 3 in the fridge and am resisting temptation on drinking them all right now. thanks so much brenda for hiking all the way through the city for my root beer! vienna has many markets all over the city, the first pic is infront of the main market infront of the city hall, we had walked through during the day and it was pretty cool buts it so amazing how the atmosphere changes once it's dark and the lights are on. the also was another market up in front of the summer palace which is quite the backdrop for a market (pic below), i must confess i quite enjoyed it even though i'm not so into the craft stuff, lynnette found some great little christmas things. vienna is only a 3 hour train ride from home here but it's quite a big differnce from budapest, both are really beautiful cities but the difference in terms of money and cleanliness is quite drastic. we had to laugh getting of the nice, high tech austian train in budapest and onto our train to home in erd, completely graffiti covered and browned from years of use,i don't even dare look into the bathrooms but i kinda enjoy the feeling of our trains here, gives you a real feeling of history. both cities have the danube as a center point but both are very unique to themselves, did you know the danube has 7 capitals of countries on its banks?! i wrote a couple posts back of songs that now make sense to me well i have another one to add, "chestnuts roasting on a open fire" never knew what it meant well now i do, on the steet corners there are always vendors selling roasted chestnuts over these drum fire things, so we thought we better try some, thinking they would be crunchy and probably tastey, we were wrong, not so good and not so crunchy, more like warm soft and tasteless. lynnette chocked down one and i tried my best to aquire a taste for them but gave up after 5 of them and decided they look a whole lot cooler than they taste!.... so anyways we had a great couple days in vienna, thanks so much janet, dave and brenda for allowing us to spend the days with you! we also put more pics on our flickr site if u are interested follow the link on the side for more pics. merry christmas to all and to all a good night!