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Sticking with the German language, our next stop was Vienna, Austria (birthplace of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Adolf Hitler). We caught the train from Munich after the Dachau tour and arrived in Vienna that evening. Mo wasn't too impressed with Vienna, but I hired a bike for a day, clocked up a lot of kilometres around the city and really quite liked it. Most attractions are in the city centre and are enclosed by a series of (traffic-jammed) boulevards appropriately called the Ring or Ringstrasse (spelt in German as Ringstraße - the 'ß' is the only German letter not in our alphabet). Northeast of the Ring is the Danube Canal with good cycle paths running along either side of it. And speaking of cycling, Vienna is a great city for it. There are paths throughout the city both on- and off-road, and because of this I was able to see a lot more of it and came away liking it a lot more than Mo did.

After dumping our crap at the hostel we went out for some dinner, and came back to this. Something triggered the fire alarms in our hostel but it was a false alarm - probably a good thing since all our stuff was in there.		Central Vienna is very busy with traffic, and I bloody loved cycling around it (and on the right hand side of the road to add to the fun :)
Within the ring road (Ringstrasse) are a lot of pedestrian streets; good for wandering and window shopping. A lot of the museums and galleries are also in this area, as well as Haus der Musik (House of Music) - a museum of sound and music, in which we spent a couple of hours.		Looking southeast along the Danube Canal, a former arm of the Danube River.
Vienna has a lot of parks and gardens throughout the city (most with cycle paths, even better)...
...and some very impressive architecture! Below-left is the Austrian Parliament buildings - flash!

There are also a lot of sculptures around the city. Here are a few of my favourites ;)

		St. Stephen's Cathedral, right in the middle of the city, was built during the 1300s and stands on the ruins of two earlier churches. I know it's been here a while, but it really could do with a bloody good cleaning.

The original church that stood on this site dated back to the 1100s, and today we have this. The funeral of Italian composer, Antonio Vivaldi, was held in this cathedral in 1741.		And speaking of dead composers, this is Mozart's grave is in St. Marx cemetery, a 30-minute walk from the city centre. The exact location of his burial is unknown; this monument and 'grave' are merely an educated guess.

While on the bike I headed to an area east of the city that is one massive island (surrounded by the Danube Canal, and a smaller canal coming off it). It was probably my favourite part of the whole city as it was full of cyclists, skaters, rollerbladers (no cars), cycle paths and off-road paths through forest (above) and parks (below left), and yeah - it's just really quiet and pretty! :)
		This was on the wall in our hostel hehe.

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