You can get what you want or you can just get old...

Vienna: city of coffee, cobblestones, and crowds of tourists horking down glühwein and buying suitcasefuls of holiday trinkets, nice or chintzy. My mental image of the Christkindlmarkt was one centralized entity, perhaps set in front of a picturesque medieval church or the like. In reality, for the last six weeks or so of the year, the city is all but overrun with little faux-wood stalls, shoehorned into just about every nook and cranny of the downtown area (and, Vienna being an ancient city, nooks and crannies abound). The defining characteristics of a Christmas market are apparently the presence of a mulled-wine vendor and at least one stand selling Traditional Artisan Handicrafts^TM; anything else is gravy (or lebkuchen, or pretzels, or whatever). The upshot of this is that two clusters of stalls, though they may be no more than a block or so apart, are considered two separate markets; the upshot of this is that there were just enough tiny tantalizing differences between markets to compel me to browse through every one that I came across. It is no mean feat to Christmas me out, but Vienna nearly managed it.

There is more to Vienna than Christmas knickknacks, though. You may have heard of a little something called wienerschnitzel?

Or, perhaps, schweinsbraten - or indeed, any sort of roast, with sauerkraut and potato dumplings?

Seriously, I could not live in this city. I would have to cultivate a more European attitude towards food - i.e., high quality, small quantity - and before I could manage that I would have keeled over from a heart attack (or possibly simply stomach rupture). And those are just the proper meals; on top of that, you have Vienna's café scene, which is a culture unto itself. Dating back to the 17th century, the Viennese café has always been a place to meet and converse, to exchange ideas and debate, and to supplement your three squares with fantastic coffee and platefuls of gorgeously presented calories.

The coffees are also always accompanied by a glass of water. I found this a little inscrutable, unless the assumption was that you couldn't possibly need anything beyond coffee and water, thus absolving the waiters of any further responsibility towards you until you were ready to pay (as if they really needed an excuse to ignore you).

Thus, I confess, most of my visit was comprised of Christmas markets and food. I might have gotten around to taking in some more culture had I not spent half a day gnawing my fingernails off after misplacing my passport, but - c'est la vie (or rather, so is das Leben). I did have a look at Karlskirche (mainly because there was a market in front of it)

as well as Stephansdom, or St. Stephen's cathedral, which has existed in one form or another since the 12th century, and which is so centrally located as to be essentially unavoidable.

Someday, when I am a little more financially stable than I am now, I will hopefully be able to go back and shell out to climb towers, descend into crypts, etc. Still, for a free peek, this ain't too bad.

More photos on Picasa.