Monday, January 19, 2009

Trip to Vienna

There's no proper Xmas in Europe without Xmas markets. Xmas markets for europeans is pretty much a bunch of stalls with xmas souvenirs and gifts, then bunch of stalls with food (I love great sausages) and drinks (especially hot wine or hot punch). I bet a thousand bucks that most of aussies never tried hot alcoholic drink in their life before, so they might think it's weird, but trust me, once you come over to a cold country, you'll find out it's much better to have a hot wine rather than a cold beer (and you know that I'm a dedicated beer drinker).

Vienna Xmas markets





As I'm currently living and working in Bratislava, it's not far from Vienna (just an hour away), so me and Petkan decided to have a day trip to Vienna end of November to do a bit of sightseeing tour and then visit the famous Vienna Xmas markets. Train ticket (both ways) including public transport costs just 12 euros so it's definitely not an expensive trip. It's pretty much like going from Brissie to Gold Coast and back. We've seen all the most important sights in Vienna such as Belvedere with its gardens, Museum (2 same looking buildings - very unique), Parliament house, Hofburg (Habsburg's residence), Stephan's Dome (awesome gothic cathedral) and Mayor's House, where we ended up our trip as that was the main place - the biggest Xmas markets in Vienna. I have bought a lots of gifts, purse for my mom, beer looking candle for my dad, hat for myself (how selfish) and some good chocolates etc. It was pretty cold that day, so a cup of hot punch was one of the best choices of the day. I kept the ceramic cup with vienna theme as a souvenir from that trip. If you're interested to see some pictures from that trip check out here.




New guitar

While being in Vienna, we couldn't miss a place called Klangfarbe - a 3 levels building that sells musical instruments. As some of you know, I do play guitar and wanted to get myself acoustic, as I already have 2 electrics back home. Petkan wanted to start learning how to play guitar so it was a unique opportunity to get one guitar for both of us. Something like a common gift for Xmas. I decided to go for electric-acoustic then as it's a little easier to record. I must say I've never experienced such a service when buying musical instrument. The guys over there were very helpful, answered all the questions, let us try the guitars as long as we wanted and we even got a travelling discount as we came from another country. Isn't it great? I'm very happy with what we bought, it's Baton Rouge guitar (company focused mainly on acoustics), and we got it for a great price, just 370 euros (incl. stripe, capo and guitar case). We have that guitar for 2 months already and I must say it sounds great.

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