Midway (between Budapest and Vienna)

EH has me humming Strauss's *Blue Danube.*  Or some off-key proximity thereof.  She started this when she actually saw the Danube for the first time in Budapest on Monday night.  She's kept it up even after recognizing Strauss was Austrian...until today, where we passed a hotel named after him.  Yes, it's like that in Vienna.

But first what EH calls "traveling with pedants."  The esoteric discussion over dinner last night was "what is the difference between a dumpling and pasta."  Since most readers will know how I feel about pasta, you can imagine how this comes up.  Since I am NOT a fan of dumplings.  She says "they are the same thing" and it goes from there.  Answer: although they can have the same ingredients, no one "prepares" dumplings, unlike rolling pasta.  I argue the dumplings I know have no eggs, but her google search denies this.  You know you can find ANYTHING on google.

Dinner tonight.  Picture.

For those of you (cough cough) who do the German thing, you may recognize this as a "palatschinken."  Right.  Anyway, the English version of the menu called it a "pancake."  We laughed at the translation: either the Austrians are still pissed about Marie Antoinette and don't want to touch French or they have a serious misconception of a pancake.  (they are crepes...duh)

Which led to the "what's the difference between a crepe and a pancake" question -- pedants on vacation.   Answer: pancakes have a rising agent. 

So, dinner.  We found this cafe which was quite nice about a ten minute walk from our hotel, which is quite nice.  EH ordered...wait for it...Viennese goulash!  What??!?! What, what?!!?!?  

She did not say for a fact it was better than the Budapest version, but she did admit potatoes make everything better (for her).   It was "more vinegary."  Thus saith Julie Child. 

We arrived in Vienna after a mostly blah train ride, where there was no Wifi as promised till we reached Austria (and no cell service for us, though, as is traditional, someone nearby had phone conversations AND someone else had their phone set on "alert me if there's wind" and it beeped constantly -- thanks, dude, glad to know you're so popular, but TURN IT OFF!!!!!).

Karen asked for pictures from the train.  Like this one. 

Nope, don't know.  We went through cities with names I'd never heard before.   All in western Hungary.  There was no landscape worth documenting at 70 mph and the rail stops weren't anything to blog about either. 

We ate lunch outside the rail station in Pest (pronounced for us pedants as "pesht"), eschewing instead of chewing Burger King, McDonalds and KFC.  I'm not making this up.  OC there was a Starbucks there and...wait for it -- one on our walk to dinner here in Vienna.  You see my shocked face. 

Our morning included a trip out to Heroes monument, a circle on the end of one of Pest's avenues.  This was built in 1899 for the Millenial Exhibition.  It's Gabriel on the column and a bunch of guys named Milosc and Laslo are the statues.  

The Agricultural Museum looks like an old church --

and there's a spring that spits out hot water (72 degrees C, we were told by the tour guide) from under the Heroes square -- and into their "famous" baths (we went in, saw no one bathing, and left).  If you can figure this one out: you can drink the bath water (yuck) and it helps your gastro-intestinal ailments.  By killing you, most likely. 

And that was it.  

Some things to know: several times I was asked if I wanted my purchase on my Visa card (don't leave home without it) in HUFs or in American dollars or Euros.  I ended up going with HUFs -- the one time I know they wanted $12+ and the charge came through as $11.50.  Shysters.  

Also worth knowing: most of the good stuff in Istanbul is on the European side of the Dardanelles.  Just sayin'.  

Tomorrow we are going to maybe two palaces.  If EH is up to it.  She had a bout of the water retentions today and we had to slow down.   She seems better before and after dinner (didn't have the multiple glasses of Hungarian wine with her goulash tonight).  So, fingers crossed.  And, to save time, we aren't hopping on and off, but taking the underground (the Metro) straight to places tomorrow and Friday.  An hour dragging around the city on a bus is a good way to get to know a place, but it cuts into your actual looking time. 

But here's our first impression: Vienna ain't no Budapest.  The train station was newer, sleeker and more lively.  The taxi driver was Nikki Lauda.  The church near our hotel (Votivkirche) is only 150 years old but is mistaken for a Gothic one in town that's 700 years older.  Vienna is cleaner and you can tell this was the rich end of the Empire.  Bastards!  Bigger buildings, bigger promenades, you name it.  

But it looks nice. 

Here's the picture link.  I'll create a new album tomorrow for photos, so there won't be so many to get through.  

We're halfway through.  Arrividerci.  Or...guten nicht or some such shite.