Trips, continued (as promised)

Sooooo, back to the trips. Bratislava, Slovakia! Seems like a shady place, at least according to Eurotrip: (actually that Bratislava scene was shot in Prague...heh.). SUPER FALSE! Bratislava was really great, what with .50 euro ice cream and a really beautiful, if small historic downtown. Another bonus of Bratislava is that we stayed on a "botel" or basically an anchored riverboat with hotel rooms on it (and also a strip club?). We took a four and a half hour tour here, which was super great except for the unfortunate sub-zero weather...




























After we left Bratislava we departed to Vienna, which is the best city ever maybe (after Prague). Over the whole week most of the places we visted were pretty small and quiet...Vienna, definitely not. Tons of museums, tons of shopping (not that I had any money to shop...), tons of resturants, really great. The first place we visited was the Belveder, which is the Museum of Austrian Art. Both Klimt and Egon Schiele were well represented, and although I was much more impressed with Schiele, the main attraction seemed to be Klimt's "The Kiss." The next day we had a great tour with a young student and tour guide, Wolfgang (appropriate, I thought for Mozart's favorite city (after Prague)). After our tour, a few of us visited the Museumsquartier, a large plaza with three large modern art museums. We got a double day pass and visited the more experimental contemporary art museum first, MUMOK (Maria Lassnig and some permenant collections). Overall unimpressed by Lassnig but the other permenant collection was great. The next day we went on another more intense tour and then went to the Leopold Museum which has a huge Schiele collection and had a Kathy Kollwitz show on, both of which were amazing. That night, my friend Katie and I went out with a Austrian friend we had met in Prague.