Vienna has tons to do throughout the year. Ice skating at the City Hall, outdoor movies, open markets, clubs and much much more. Take the ice skating at the City Hall for example. They set up a huge ice skating rink that goes around the park, on the paths, and near the street. The cool thing about this is that there is a HUGE rink right in front of City Hall! Vienna is great at night also. It's all lit up and restaurants are serving scrumptious food. The food in Vienna is magnificent, wiener schnitzel is probably the most famous of them all. Clubs in Vienna, such as the Empire Club (above) are always filled with people from all ages (usually not babies or grandpas or grandmas though, you never know though.....). Every Saturday at the Naschmarkt there is a big flee market where many vendors try to sell their items. Vienna, Wien in German, is definately one of the most sought-after places to travel on earth.
In Austria, you speak German (just in-case you didn't know) and there is nothing harder to do than to try to speak to a local. Everywhere you go you can only understand a little bit (unless you learn German in school). For example, you go to the Spar, my favorite food store in Vienna, and you want to buy some ground beef (Faschiertes). Here's the steps you would go through, or at least I go through:
1: Try to figure out which type of ground beef you actually want to buy.
2: Try to think of what to say to the person behind the counter.
3: Try to say what you thought of earlier without trying to sound like a total idiot.
4: He/She will most likely reply "Ja, gut." which mean "Yes, Good."
5: When he/she asks you a question such as "Alles?" which means "Is that everything you would like to order?" you will try to reply you're best OR if your desperate enough, you will have to say "Ich spreche nicht Deutsch." which means "I don't speak any German."
6: She will probably answer you with a "Das ist schrecklich." which means "That is BAD." and return to her work.
7: You most likely feel embarrassed and leave quickly (I have experience with this :p).
Those 7 steps is what happens to me a lot (notice how I underlined try). Although my German is coming along quite nicely, I still feel pretty uncomfortable after having that experience. That is what us ex-pats have to deal with. I have to say though, most people in Austria are always willing to help. If you ask them a question in English, they usually answer to the best of their extent. Overall, I like the German language, unlike the French language (which I unfortunately have to take as a class in school).
