First day in Vienna

We flew out to Vienna on Wednesday morning and arrived early for a humanitarian conference. Since it was breakfast time, we visited Cafe Landtmann, which has been there since 1873.

It was so fancy that there was a coat check! The waiters were older men who had clearly made a career of working in the cafe. It was very lovely.

Afterwards, we walked through the Christmas market, which we would see the next day when it would be open.

We met our group at the Hotel Josefshof and got to know the other missionaries from Poland, Hungary, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, and Germany. I loved this little front room of the hotel. We would watch employees come and feed the fire.

We enjoyed dinner at a great restaurant called Centimeter. Paul had ribs and I had bauernockerl, which was like mac and cheese. With all the employees and missionaries, we are a party of 22.

After dinner, we enjoyed a walk to check-in to the hotel and then on to a Mozart concert downtown.

Our manager, Helmut, was a Vienna concert tour guide before he joined church employment. He really knows how to set up a conference. Here is the Musikverein where they perform Mozart favorites every night.

This was our view from the back. It was fun to hear our favorite songs, but we were tired and left during intermission. We had wanted to stay until they performed Papageno, but we were too tired. Getting up at 3am will do that to you. We walked 15 minutes back to the hotel and fell into bed by 10pm.

I like to turn on the TV and see what I can find when we travel. I thought it was funny to see The Hunt for Red October in German. I know all the lines anyway, so I drifted to sleep to a German dub of Sean Connery's terrible Russian.