Vienna

After I got up in the morning, Anna served me breakfast. Along with coffee, she gave me a piece of bread with a kind of sheep cheese called brina. It's not salty like goat cheese and tastes like feta cheese, but smoother.

Dad took me to Vienna. On the way I saw some of the new developments in Slovakia since the fall of communism. We passed by an Ikea at a mall. It reminded me of the Burbank Mall. I saw signs for a McDonald's and a Pizza Hut. Later, when we got to the capital, Bratislava, we passed over the River Danube, I saw that it's not really blue, but more of a muddy color, like the Mississippi River; it's probably been like that since way before the communists lost power. We drove over a bridge spanning the river. I could see Bratislava Castle from there.

Vienna was interesting. We had to get to a travel agency in the center of Vienna to pick up tickets for our tour of the city. That was complicated. Some of the streets are big and straight, but toward the center they snake around a lot. That's because they were designed for foot traffic centuries ago. After we got the tickets, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant. They had the best lasagna there I've probably ever had, lasagna made by an Italian chef.

The tour bus took us around to show us important buildings in the city, most of them built around 1800 by the Hapsburgs, such as Belvedere Palace, built by Prince Eugen, who fought the Turks for forty years.. We stopped at palace of Schönbrun, the favorite summer palace of Maria Theresa Hapsburg. It was huge. She had sixteen children and each one had to have five rooms and five servants. The tour gave me a chance to break in my new camcorder. I wondered who'd want to live in a place that big. You'd have to spend all your time walking just to get to another room. Also, in the time of Maria Theresa, there was no indoor plumbing. No water, no toilets. No thanks.

Click here to see pictures of Slovakia.