Back to Vienna – The Return Home

Once we got back from Prague, we had two days in Vienna. The first day we spent going to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum and the Hunderwasser House. At the museum, we saw the car where the good Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assinated in 1914 to start the first world war. The most interesting thing was how the museum handled the Nazi issue, I thought they did a good job of covering the subject. Most surprising to me was the fact that Austria had a Navy. The second day we went to Schoenbrunn Palace and spent the afternoon riding the Strassenbahn seeing all that we could see from the warmth of our trolley car.

The flight back was pretty uneventful, but the security was pretty tight. I guess that’s what to expect in this day and age in an airport that has only been terrorist free since 1985. Probably a good idea in a place where you had one flight leaving for Moscow, one flight leaving for Tel Aviv, and one flight leaving for Cairo. Not to mention our flight to Washington. It did seem to get progressivly tighter as the line got longer, we were one of the first people through the line, they checked our shoes, our bags, but we weren’t subjected to a search or a visit from the bomb dog. The Ukrainian gentleman traveling with his 2 year old son, a bottle of Vodka, and a lasagna wrapped in tin foil got a little bit more scrutinity.

The flight back to the US was a lot like the flight to Vienna, it wasn’t very full at all, which for a ten hour flight, it fine by me. We landed in DC, we made our way through customs, and then before too much longer we were back in Nashville, the trip was done.

All in all, it was a great trip. Vienna seemed a bit more like a real city where people actually live and go to work, Prague seemed to be stuck in time somewhere and very dependant on the tourism trade. But I guess that’s what 45 years of communist rule will do to a country.