England and Vienna

ENGLAND:
Return to England
We flew into Manchester airport after our Asia adventure after a long flight. The flight was good, I turned it into a massive film fest having watched about four movies back to back so it just flew by.
It is worth mentioning at this point that we had not experienced temperatures lower than 30 degrees for about six months. When we exited Manchester airport we were greeted with 4 degrees and hail. Welcome to England.

Cultural observations
The main reason I am here is to look after my mum who is very sick; so we won't be doing that much travelling. Here are some interesting cultural observations instead of stories.
1. It is spring here and it is "warming up" which means it is a huge 17 degrees. We are freezing! We went to a village Easter egg hunt and all the locals were dressed in shorts and t shirts. We were dressed in huge jackets and hats trying to keep warm.
2. There are some things in England that are baffling to Australians. These are washing bowls; why not just use the sink? Where is the laundry? In Australia there is always a separate room for the laundry. British homes always have wallpaper, Australian homes never have wallpaper.
3. Shell is constantly saying hello to the locals and frightens them with her friendliness.
4. The Heathrow injection. This is common understanding within backpacker circles that when you leave England you will be 5-10kgs heavier than when you are arrive. The reason is both geographical and cultural. The contributing elements are bad weather, bad diet, pub culture encouraging drinking and a determination by the local population to avoid exercise.
5. Vegetarian options are eat meat or get out.
6. Healthy food options are, eat fatty food or get out.
7. When we were in Asia our diet was two thirds vegetables one third meat. In England our diet is one third vegetables two thirds meat. As a result for a week I was slightly constipated. The joke here is that the moment we arrived in Yorkshire I became very tight arsed (Yorkshire is notorious for its frugal people).
8. The seagulls are as big as lambs. A non-stop diet of fish and chips has bulked them up. Fly my pretties fly.

Husband of the year: Eurovision song contest Sunday 17th May 2015 – 22nd May 2015
After a little travel break, Shell and I will be placing on our adventurers hats once again and heading into the big wide world. It’ll be just a short visit this time.

Shell has, somehow, persuaded me to attend the 2015 Eurovision song contest in Vienna, Austria. The points for husband of the year are rocketing now. I have purchased a set of industrial earplugs so I should survive.

Now, you are probably wondering why I have agreed to this. I think it comes down to the following 2 reasons.
1. I believe it is important to support your wife in her interests.
2. I didn't want to be reminded of our missed "opportunity" every time Eurovision came on the TV.


So, on Monday we will get on a plane and "Rise like a phoenix (2014)" to fly to Vienna and see the 2015 Eurovision song contest. Australia is entering for the first time this year so I'm hoping it will go well for them and for it not to be their "Waterloo (1974)" that will ultimately end in "Only Teardrops (2014)". Regardless of the outcome Vienna is a romantic city so I am hoping that Shell has "Saved all her kisses for me (1976)" for a "Boom Bang-a-Bang (1969)" that will "Take Me to Your Heaven (1999)". Hee, Hee.

Eurovision Executive Summary
The details are below but the quick version of all the things we experienced are here. We went to Vienna, Austria during the week of Sunday 17th May 2015 – 22nd May 2015 to see the Eurovision song contest and check out the city. Our time was spent in three main areas, the Eurovision Village, Schloss Schonbrunn palace and gardens and the city of Vienna.
Eurovision Village
1. We saw sound checks and live performances by France, UK, Spain, Italy and Australia.
2. Guy Sebastian did a mini concert of three songs including his Eurovision entry.
3. Michelle bagged herself selfies with the Italian singer and Guy Sebastian.
4. We saw the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2015.

Schloss Schonbrunn palace and gardens
1. We toured the gardens and had an internal audio tour of the inside of the palace, some 40 odd rooms.
2. The palace is dripping in wealth both inside and out showing the power of the Habsburg Empire.
3. It’s big enough to house one of the oldest and modern zoos in the world. We visited the zoo and were impressed.

City of Vienna
1. We explored a lot of Vienna using either the tram or by walking.
2. We saw the museum quarter, the university, state opera house and multiple museums. The architecture was stunning and it truly is a beautiful city.
3. We saw the Viennese Spanish Horses, Belvedere Museum, the churches of St Stephen and the Jesuits and the Vienna time travel experience.

Other Comments
1. Vienna’s rail system is clean, frequent, on time, efficient and easy to navigate to the intended destination. England’s transport system isn’t.

Australian Opera: Eurovision
There is an interesting cultural observation when you tell people you are going to Eurovision. All the Australians we told whooped and cheered and are genuinely excited. They think the whole experience is great. British people, however, look at you as though you have told them you are visiting a sewage plant.
This year Australia has been allowed to enter into the actual competition and have been fast tracked into the final. It seems to me that the powers that be think that this is a quaint idea and don't appreciate that Australia are actually going to take it seriously and compete. Australians always compete and whatever they engage in they will give it a red hot go. I think this because they are sending someone who can actually sing, has an established fan base, and has done a decent tune. Not all countries have done this. We will see.

A tale of two train journeys
As always in my travel diaries a main event is always the travel to the event and this is no exception. Our first journey was Leeds to Manchester Airport on the trans-pennine express. When we arrived in Leeds the weather had turned cold with a smattering of rain. Train stations aren't the most insulated at the best of times for obvious reasons ( trains arriving and leaving ) but we were heartened to find a waiting area on the platform. We entered the waiting area and found that what we gained in shelter we lost in agreeable odours. Eau de urinal was the fragrance meeting our nostrils. Still, the train was on time and fuelled with Eurovision excitement we headed to our carriage and reserved seats.
As we climbed aboard we saw our fellow passengers. Sitting directly in front of us were six men in their late twenties. Keeping them company were many open and empty beer cans with plenty more closed cans awaiting consumption. I had the feeling that this was going to be a long journey. As is usual with drunks they were very chatty and spent the journey entertaining each other in very loud voices. The conversations broke down like this. 90% of every word spoken was the f word, 5% was how much did you drink last night, 4% was one of the lads ringing up a taxi company to apologise for his behaviour the night before and the remaining 1% was the use of the c word. The funny thing was that after an hour and 20 minutes of using the f word they actually turned round and apologised for the c word. I am pretty sure we had booked the quiet carriage which was a relief because I can only imagine what the noisy carriage would have been like. Suffice to say I was glad when I got off at Manchester and that's not something you say very often. What did occur to me was that they were then going to get on a plane. A train is bad but a plane is way worse.
The plane journey was uneventful (best kind of plane journey) and we arrived in Vienna. We proceeded to the train station to get the train from the airport to the city. We purchased tickets and a very nice Vienna platform guard who helped us find our train. The carriage was clean, graffiti free, spacious, mostly empty apart from a very nice middle aged gentlemen and a delight to be in. It left on time and was peacefully quiet. I preferred this train because at no point did I think I might get my head kicked in.

Palace and gardens Tuesday 19th May 2015
Vienna was really easy to navigate. The tram and train system works really well with either having a 7 minute gap between arrivals. It is also reasonably priced as well. We decided to spend our first morning visiting the Schloss Schonbrunn, an imperial summer palace. We decided to spend our time exploring the gardens primarily because they were free. It was a wonderful sunny day with temperatures in the mid to high 20s.
Just to give you an idea of how truly huge the gardens are consider the the fact that they house a zoo. The zoo is not only the oldest zoo in Europe but it boasts that it is the most modern. We did go to see if it existed and sure enough it was there and looking from the outside in we saw a rhino for our troubles.
Every house benefits from a water feature and the builders of this palace obviously agreed. Opposite the palace, at the end of a substantial walkway with pretty grass hedges is a massive fountain. It must have been 30 metres in width with huge two metre plus statues of Neptune decorating the centre. It is an impressive site to see because the scale and quality is stunning.
The fountain was at the bottom of the hill whilst at the top are the Gloriettes please see the photo on this page, it's the one with arches. We had a good walk up the hill and were rewarded with a great view of the palace and Vienna. What was really nice to see was that, because the palace gardens are regarded as a public space they are accessible to the public and many runners were making good use of the facilities. It would be an absolutely stunning location for a jog with plenty of things to distract you when things got tough.

Tour of Vienna via tram
A great thing about Vienna is the trams cover most places were one would want to go. Shell struck upon the great idea of using it as a easy way to see a lot of the city. Travelling on board the tram we were able to see the old historic city. This included the museum quarter, the university, state opera house and multiple museums. The architecture was stunning and it truly is a beautiful city. As an observation one thing worthy of note is that the artists of the city obviously though if one is going to do a marble statue make sure to do a big one. Marble statues do dominate in the feature stakes.

Eurovision village
One of the buildings we passed was the Rathaus which we have conveniently named the "rat house" because we are ignorant tourists. Although, it is the name for city hall where I am sure a lot of politicians hang out so given the current cultural opinion of politicians it is probably not far wrong. Anyway, it is the location of the Eurovision village which is sandwiched between two unbelievably impressive buildings of such historical value they are staggering.
The Eurovision village is made up of about a dozen tents occupied by competing countries selling their country as a tourist destination, others selling merchandise and food stands. At the end of the tents right in front of City hall was a main stage flagged on either side by grandstands. The crowd is made up of Eurovision fans carrying the flag of their country mingling and chatting. The vibe is positive and good humoured. I am noticing that there are groups of men dressed in small t-shirts gathered together having a jolly nice time being rather chummy.
We arrived in the village at a very good time because some of the singers had turned up to do a sound check. We learnt that on the Wednesday that the so called “Big Five” countries of Italy, Spain, France, United Kingdom and Germany were going to perform a free concert in the village. Even better, Guy Sebastian, Australia’s representative was going to perform as well. We had just struck gold because Australia’s backing singers were currently performing their sound check and then a curious thing happened. Shell was possessed by the “groupie goddess”, a powerful entity that turns a normal rational person into a star struck groupie.
Shell immediately started looking for and speculating that Guy Sebastian was going to turn up and perform a personal performance. A frantic visual sweep proved fruitless and time ticked by, the possibility slipping away. Then I noticed someone at the side of the stage, I whispered in Shell’s ear that her hero had just arrived. She saw Guy Sebastian on stage and was so excited. Before I could say another way she disappeared pushing her way to the front to get the best view. At one point I had to ask her if she was going to throw her undies at him. She assured me that she wasn’t, only because she didn’t have her prettiest pair on. He didn’t sing but an appearance was enough to confirm that Eurovision was definitely on.
The Spanish singer turned up and did her sound check. She was phenomenal and really engaged the crowd and sounded really great. There was a strong Spanish fan base in the crowd which was nice to see.
We met another Australia couple who were really friendly and chatty. They were jam packed full of Eurovision knowledge and we learnt a lot about the whole event. We quickly realised that there were some really hard core Eurovision fans at this event.
The other thing that I noticed was there were a few homeless guys looking a bit bemused. I got the feeling that this was usually their home when hundreds of people from all over the world hadn’t descended on their park.

Churches and Museums
After a while hanging out at the village we moved on to walk round the city. We had a look at Vienna’s historic museums quarter which contained many impressive buildings. Entering a few of the churches we were blown away by the grandiose opulence of the interiors and exteriors.
Vienna is famous for its horse drawn carriage rides (which are expensive which is the reason we didn’t go) and these were prevalent throughout the city. The interesting thing was that they were designed with special poo collectors to prevent the soiling of the pavements. So, when a horse went to the toilet the poo was collected in a bucket rather than hitting the floor. Very clever!

Market Wednesday 20th May 2015
Shell likes a market so it is both inevitable and unavoidable that I will have to visit one at some point. This one happens to be a food market and we ended up buying a meats, cheese and bread for a picnic lunch. In the lonely planet it had warned us that local Viennese can be inexplicably grumpy and we got first-hand experience of this at one of the stalls.
Shell saw what I like to call a fruity splat. It was, basically, all sorts of fruits mashed to together to make a loaf but what really caught her eye was the Eurovision flag on the top. Launching into our we’re Australia’s and were so pumped with to be here for Eurovision we were greeted with a shrug and a “don’t care”. He wasn’t being rude, he just generally didn’t care but he did laugh about it. He was the exception; everybody else was really friendly and welcoming. His unapologetic apathy was funny.
We had lunch in the park and returned to the Eurovision village.

Groupie goddess strikes again
When we got to the village we arrived just in time to hear Italy do their sound check. They performed a couple of songs including their entry into the competition. They were phenomenal, unbelievably good singers with powerful voices. They were really good humoured and engaged the crowd really well. They got a resounding reception and introduced themselves as really contenders.
The other singers had all disappeared back stage but these guys came out into the crowd. It was this moment that the groupie goddess grabbed hold of Shell again. She was compelled to secure a selfie shot with an Italian hottie. To her credit she did ask for a photo before she plonked herself next to him and got an excellent photo.
We left to have drinks with a school friend of Shell’s and had a very enjoyable afternoon drinking in one of the bars in the centre of Vienna. We learnt that she had scored tickets for the grand final and were a little bit jealous. At 16:00 we left to return to the Eurovision village because it was “big 5 time”.

The Big 5 and Australia
The weather turned and it had started to rain. Luckily, we were able to secure some seats in the grandstands were we got a good view of the stage and crowd in front of the stage. It actually became quite a colourful scene because there many rainbow coloured umbrellas appeared.
In the grand stand we started to chat to the guy sitting next to us. He was an avid Eurovision fan who travelled each year with his male companion to see the event. He had a wealth of knowledge, telling us all about the competitors, their background, history and chances in the competition. He explained that the Italy trio had sung with Barbara Streisand (to be honest he looked like a Barbara Streisand fan) and were established artists.

Australia
First up, in the pouring rain was Australia’s entry from Guy Sebastian. Toughing it out in the rain (he had a cold as well) he did three songs, two of his most famous and the competing song. He was really good and the crowd was really supportive. We were blown away by the support he got, there were a lot of Australians in the crowd and all the other countries were backing them as well.
He engaged the crowd, acknowledged the host country and thanked everyone for their support. In short he did himself and Australia proud.
Again, the groupie goddess possessed Michelle and this time she bagged the big prize and scored herself a selfie with Guy Sebastian in it.

France
The French lady was a real character, a real wild card and very honest. When asked if she thought that not singing in English would hamper her she replied “No, my English is not good enough and I can be more expressive in French. When asked whether she was here to win, she replied “yes, of course, why else would I be here. We’re all here to win. If I am hungry I eat, if I enter a singing competition I am here to win.”
She sang really well, was really charismatic and really engaged the crowd. Her performance was well refined and could command the attention of crowd. In addition, she had a really playful spirit, having fun with the audience where she could. One of the volunteers came on stage with an umbrella to shelter her from the rain and she linked arms with him to do a little dance without skipping a note. She received a great deal of respect from everyone.

Germany
The Germany lady was a no show because she didn’t want to risk standing in the rain and wanted to save herself for Saturday’s performance. We thought this was a bit ordinary because everyone else turned up and it wasn’t in the spirit of the event.

Italy
Italy have a real El Divo feel to them. I said it earlier and I’ll say it again they have stunning voices and gave a stunning performance. Shell says that they are also good looking as well which will go in their favour I’m sure. We were convinced they were going to be in the top three.

Spain
In comparison to Germany the Spanish lady not only turned up but she got dressed up as well. Her looks and singing were both stunning. The crowd were singing along to every word and the song was rapidly turning to a real crowd anthem. It almost ended in disaster though because when she left she tripped on the stairs at the back of the stage. She was ok and recovered quickly.

Palace and Zoo Thursday 21 May 2105
On Thursday we returned to Schloss Schonbrunn to tour the inside of the palace (we’d only seen the gardens). We took the grand tour and saw the ostentatious wealth of the Hapsburg Empire. Using an audio guide we went through about 40 rooms and listened to a guided history tour of the palace. It is almost impossible to describe the size and wealth occupying these rooms. Funny thing was that a description attributed to Franz Joseph was that he lived frugal hard working life. I’m not sure that one can be called frugal when they are living in a house with more bedrooms than a hospital.
As I mentioned earlier the palace had a zoo which was to be our next stop. It is supposed to be one of the most modern zoos in Europe. Entry into the zoo proved to be a little bit challenging for Shell. There were two people turnstiles and a special one for baby carriages. The baby carriage turnstile was about waist height, square in design and next to the people one. For some reason Shell thought that she would use the baby carriage entrance. To my complete surprise she crouched down and pushed her way through the baby carriage entrance. I don’t know why she did this and when I pointed it out she didn’t know why she did this either. It was incredibly funny, particularly when the attendant had to come out and reset the person turnstile because it was still waiting for a person to come through. She had a look of bemusement and irritation on her face. Shell and I were laughing our heads off and feeling a bit silly at this point. The only way this could have been funnier is if Shell had done the limbo through it.
We proceeded into the zoo and started exploring. The polar bear enclosure was really good. Built on three levels they had plenty of space and visitors could see them from above, at eye level and under the water. It was very cool to see the bears swim under water. We saw penguins, rhinos, gazelles, and a very well designed rainforest enclosure. In the rainforest enclosure they had a cave for bats. When we walked through the cave we were dive bombed by the bats; in front of us were half a dozen school children who understandably freaked out.
Shell likes elephants so we were always committed to see the elephant enclosure. The thing is, we are rapidly running out of time because we were seeing our Eurovision semi-final that afternoon. We saw the elephants but now we were on the far side of the zoo about the furthest point from the exit as we could get. Shell is now experiencing a high level of anxiety about whether we could get back in time. The reality was that we had a good amount of time but we had to leave. Now, we had to navigate our way back and we really weren’t sure where we were going. I was convinced, based on no information what so ever that we could cut through the big cat enclosure so I led the way. It didn’t go the way I expected and we ended up in a part of the zoo that wasn’t familiar. Definitely, not the way we came in. Shell was very cross and was experiencing a very high level of anxiety. She turned round and asserted “we’re in trouble now; you’ve led me into the lion’s den”. Technically, this was true, because we were in actual fact in the lion’s enclosure being glared at by a number of lions. Whether Shell meant this comment literally or metaphorical it was pretty funny.
Anyway, we found the exit and proceeded back to the railway station. On our walk back we encountered three Christian monks wandering back to the station. They were all bearded and dressed in robes and sandals. I asked Shell if this was Austria’s entry into Eurovision this year? It was an easy mistake to make, a bearded bloke in a dress, it worked last year. Shell was very clear that it was not.

[Eurovision
“‘Cause I’m living my dreams, I’ve never been so alive
The sky’s the limit now that I know I can fly
No more pulling me down, no more mucking around
I’m growing up, and it’s my time to shine” Switzerland 2015 Eurovision Entry

Shakespeare never put these English words together in such a way. Its Eurovision day and we went to see the second semi-final. I’ll omit a second by second account as the show unfolded and just emphasise the main observations.

1. The show was great and it was a really interesting to see how a TV show is put together.
2. The whole stage and positioning of the singers is definitely framed for TV rather than a live audience.
3. The actual stage, when seen from above shows a countdown of how long an act has to set up and x marks the spot(s) where they need to place equipment. An act has 45 seconds to set up.
4. The songs that received the greatest cheers and support were Sweden and Israel. Both songs were real crowd pleasers.
5. Malta gave a great live performance even though the song wasn’t that great.
6. The live performances sounded better than the TV ones.
7. Norway gave a good polished performance.
8. In the dress rehearsal the hosts were giving false results which confused the crowd no end. The hosts did have to pause for a second to explain they were giving a false result just so the cameras could practice getting into position for the reaction.

Last day in the city of Eurovision Friday 22nd May 2015
For our last day we went tourist crazy. We visited the following.
1. Viennese Spanish Horses
a. This was a training session.
b. They were beautiful horses and well trained.
c. If you were a horse rider you would definitely appreciate the control.
d. Their training stable was spectacular.
2. Belvedere Museum
a. Home of the artist Klimt and his most famous work “the kiss”.
b. I’m not a great art fan so I feel I lack the necessary knowledge to appreciate this experience. What is art next to the artistry of Eurovision?
c. Bizarrely, in this home of great paintings and art works there was an inflatable hulk in the entrance way.
3. Time travel Experience
a. A mixture of animatronics, sets and 3D presentations detailing the history of Vienna.
b. This was really good and an excellent way of learning about Vienna’s history in a fun way.

It was now home time and, yes, I did ask Shell why she had taken me to a gay singing competition.

What I got out of Eurovision
1. It was fun and frivolous.
2. Met interesting characters.
3. Energy and vibe.
4. Good way to visit and get to know a European city.
5. Excuse to be silly.

Leaving Eurovision Land
We've enjoyed our week but it was time to return to England. Getting the correct train to the airport was easy, there were plenty of them, and they were on time, clean, quiet and efficient. No problems at all.
Surprisingly, when we arrived in the UK it was sunny; in fact it was better weather than in Vienna. We stayed overnight in Manchester and returned to Yorkshire next day. The taxi driver that took us from the hotel to the railway station asked us if we had had a nice trip. We then spent the next ten minutes expressing our enthusiasm about the energy and vibe that we experienced in Vienna. How Eurovision was a bit of fun and everyone was just having a good time. We proceeded to tell him how big a deal it is in Australia and how, as Australians, we were delighted to get the opportunity to compete and be involved. His response was “You’ll get tired of it”.
We arrived at the train station to discover that our train had been cancelled because the train was broken. We consequently had to get into the city on the next train, find the platform, get on a new train and find a seat with all the other agitated passengers. We had booked seats but because this was a new train the reservations weren’t honoured by the train company. We booked a quiet carriage but that wasn’t being enforced so we had to listen to the girl in front chatting loudly about nothing in particular.
Having made it to Leeds we joined another train, this one was packed and again full of drunks. Four lads in particular were cracking their way through the stella. So, to summarise within a two hour trip we had encountered things that didn’t work, situations which are three times as complicated as they need to be and people with bad attitudes. We are truly in the UK.

Cultural observations
1. Vienna has yet to ban smoking in bars and restaurants; they are worse of for it in my opinion.
2. Trains are clean, on time and frequent. The system works.
3. The security pat down at Manchester Airport is so thorough I felt that I should have been bought dinner first.