Vienna waits for you

If I've learned anything from Billy Joel it's that "Vienna waits for you" and since it's rude to keep cities waiting for too long I thought I'd go and visit Wien. After my Brussels airlines flight touched down it was a bit of a search to find the train station since it is one big construction site. When I got there I noticed that nearly all the passengers blindly follow the "CAT Airport train" signs and took the 9 euro train to the city center (Wien mitte) probably unaware of the fact that you can also take the 3 euro S-Bahn, which takes only 5 minutes longer and arrives at the same Wien mitte station. Or maybe these people simply value those 5 extra minutes in Vienna at over 6 euros, I don't know. For my travels within the city I used a 72 hour U-bahn (metro) card, which is proved to be very usefull since Vienna is huge, not just population wise (around 2 milion people make it one of the 10 biggest cities in the EU) but geographically as well. Thanks to the elaborate  metro and S-bahn network getting around was easy however.
We stayed at 2 different youth hostels "Wombats" and "Ruthensteiner" which are the best hostels in town according to every website I consulted, ad indeed both were excellent, with friendly staff, clean rooms and cosy hostel bars. The Ruthensteiner bar closes very early though, but there are other good bars in the neighbourhood, such as the Kangaroo bar (Sankt Pöltner Straße 26) which upon entry turned out to be a Belgian beer bar, which i certainly did not expect from a bar with that name. Both hostels are near the Westbahnhof and Mariahilferstraße, the main shopping street of Vienna.

It was my first time in Vienna, so I had to visit all the touristy sights such as the huge Schönbrunn castle, where we also visited the oldest zoo in the world, the Stephansdom church where guys dressed like Mozart try to sell you opera or theater tickets, and the endless series of extremely ornate palaces and other buildings in the city center. Walking around the city you can really feel that this used to be the capital of an empire.
Vienna is well known for its museums, but since the weather was so nice every day we decided not too spend too much time inside, so if "Vienna waits for you" the museums probably can wait a little longer as well.
Other things we saw were the Prater, a sort of permanent fair/theme park with the famous Vienna giant ferris wheel amongst many other things. We also went to Danauinsel, an island on the Danube river where thousands of Viennese people went to enjoy the nice weather in the parks along the river side.

As everywhere in Austria, the german is a bit different from what it is in Germany. My German is getting a bit rusty since I never really need to use it in Belgium, so it took some time to adjust to the (spoken) Austrian german. Most peopke speak excellent english as well however, so communication was easy.
A few days in a such a big and historic city obviously only scratches the surface of what you can do, and I can definitely see myself comming back here later.