Day 4 - Walking Around Schönbrunn Palace

Date: 29th of June 2015

Sightseeing: Vienna

Following Matthias's advice, we decided to visit Schönbrunn Palace this day. We didn’t feel like entering the palace building, so we just walked around parks belonging to the Schönbrunn complex. We stumbled across the Neptun Fountain, a colourful flower garden, a Roman ruin and a pigeon house (Columbary). Maia followed a gardener who sneaked through a secret hole in a hedge, but there was nothing of special interest on the other side, unfortunately.

While we were climbing a hill situated near the palace, we thought that the view from there was really nice; we came up with an idea of taking photos of each other doing yoga poses there.

My favourite yoga pose - Urdhva Dhanurasana

On the top of the hill, we checked out the Gloriette structure, which had been converted into an expensive café and an observation deck.

In the meantime it started drizzling. We waited on the balcony of the café for some time until the rain stopped; then we headed in the direction of the city centre.

After we walked for some time, we became hungry. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any vegetarian restaurant en route. Despite our strict rule not to eat fast food, we gave up and ordered a vegetarian pizza for 7.80€. The waiter gave us a can of Coca-Cola for free. We didn’t want to break our another rule (we don't drink soft drinks), so we thought that we could just give the drink to a random stranger.

While we were walking next to a supermarket, we thought that our visit to Vienna would be incomplete without sightseeing a shop. We went inside, and spent some time there, revising food vocabulary and comparing prices of items in Austria and Poland. In a nutshell, fruits and vegetables were not so expensive, but for some things we would have to pay even four times more than in our country. Anyway, we managed to find cheap yoghurts for 0.29€ and bought two of them.

We still had some time left, because our hosts were at work, so we went to the nearest park and rested there.

It so happened that we came back to our host’s flat simultaneously with Doris. We waited for Matthias, and then Maia conducted a yoga class for the four of us.

Maia doing a front split (Hanumanasana) near Schönbrunn Palace

Stretched and relaxed, we chatted with Doris on a balcony (our hosts were growing their own vegetables there); meanwhile, Matthias prepared a tasty supper for us.

We had a pleasant conversation with them about our travelling adventures. We found out that Doris and Matthias had travelled a lot, and had visited several countries in Asia and South America, and that they both had been vegetarians for some time as well.

Then Matthias helped us choose a place to hitchhike on the next day, and gave us tips on how to get there with public transportation.

Since we all had planned to get up at 7 a.m. on the next day, we went to sleep before midnight.