Vienna, Austria - July 16-20, 2010

Vienna for the International AIDS Conference!

I arrived in Vienna on Thursday night the 16th. I basically went right to bed since I'd had a long day. I took the train to Zurich and flew from Zurich to Geneva. Too much travel makes me sleepy, apparently.

Friday morning I woke up very early and went to directly to the Vienna Marriott for the pre-conference on health system strengthening. The conference was packed with information and great speakers. Everyone in attendance is truly committed to the cause and passionate about what they do. It was really quite inspiring to be surrounded by such dedicated and intelligent people! However, it was also very tiring! I took notes on what went on for about eight hours, then went back to where I was staying and was starving! By the time I took a shower and made it back outside it was almost 10pm! Fortunately, a couple restaurants in the Naschmarkt were still open, so I wandered through the stalls and found some good food. After that I went back home pretty quickly to prepare for another long day on Saturday.

On Saturday again I woke up very early to go to the Marriott for the second and final day of the pre-conference. Same sorts of things, sessions on what we can do, what we should do, how we should do it, when we should do it, and why we should do it. Lots of ideas and hopefully some good collaboration for future projects taking place. After another grueling eight hours of note-taking I went back to the apartment and laced up my shoes for a run. It was a quick run, but a nice way to explore one of the parks near where I was staying. After that I went back down to Ringstrasse to look around at the buildings. I meandered down to one of the gay coffeehouses where I watched people pass drinking some coffee in the typical Viennese fashion. Unfortunately, it started to pour the rain so I had to move inside. But this lead me to meet several other people there for the conference so I had some companions for the night. We went around to lots of different bars in the area to see what they all were like, pretty much the same as bars you see anywhere. But it was a late night and a fun night.

Sunday was my big day for sightseeing and I tried to cram it all in! I woke up late but made my way out to the center of town with the cathedral as my first stop. Its a nice looking cathedral, but the part I liked best was the roof. It has some amazing looking patterns in the roof tiles, which you can see very clearly when you climb all the way to the top. After that I made the usual stops, the Vienna Opera House, Hotel Sacher, Vienna's city hall, Austria's congress building, the Spanish Riding School, the main shopping street. While I didn't make it into any museums, I fulfilled my tourist duty by at least seeing the sites even if I didn't go into them. I wanted to see the horses perform, too...but they were on their summer vacation in the countryside. Next time!

Monday afternoon I was flying back to Geneva, so I made my way home to repack my bag and get ready. In the morning I woke up early so I could cram in some more sites. As soon as it opened I made my way via train to Schloss Schonbrunn, the Hapsburg family's summer home. It is a beautiful palace, like many beautiful palaces in Europe. They all have unique elements and stories for sure, but after a while a rococo palace looks like a rococo palace and a gothic cathedral looks like any other gothic cathedral. The part I liked the most about Schonbrunn was the gardens. There was a great little zoo and a labyrinth in the back! The labyrinth actually turned out to be three small mazes, which was great. One was really just for kids with short hedges, but it had fun games in it where you could try to squirt water at others walking near you. Then it was noon, time to head back to town and go into at least one museum! I took the train back to town and headed right for the museum district. Fortunately I had seen signs everywhere for a Keith Haring early days exhibit, so I knew which museum I wanted to go in.

It was a short but sweet exhibit, lots about New York street art culture from the late 70s and early 80s, and a nice tie-in with the International AIDS Conference. I had just enough time after this to wander back to the main square by the cathedral and have another piece of sachertorte. Mmm, chocolate. Then I ran back, grabbed my bags, and headed to the airport. Home to Geneva!