Ein schoener Traum

Vienna's old town is encircled by a wide, busy street known as the Ringstrasse. The Ring is actually a marker of where the old medieval town wall stood before it was torn down in the 1860s to make way for the city's growth. A lot of the city's most important buildings line this street: the University, City Hall, Parliment, Natural History and Art History Museums, and Hofburg Palace. I could hop on the tram by Edith's apartment and have a little drive-by tour of all of these buildings before finally ending up at the Staatsoper. Yeah, I did that a few times.

My favorite building to watch at night was the City Hall (Rathaus). I say watch because during the winter, Vienna has a huge public ice skating rink set up in front of the Rathaus. There are food stands, the local pop radio station broadcasts live, and they light the place up like a disco. I'm kind of surprised that they got the OK to have the long-range, neon green searchlights, but they are definitely a very cool effect. You can see them all the way on the other side of the old town. I discovered this one night when I went out to get dinner. I was looking for the moon, but instead I noticed, "Oh look, green lights. People must be ice skating."

The city calls their City Hall ice rink the Wiener Eis Traum, which means Viennese ice dream. Good name.