Zauberhafte Wien - Vienna the beautiful, Teil 1 - Part1

This was the official name of the tour. But the first sights were not exactly impressive as there was a big building site nearby (no photos of that, however!).

Kirche Maria am Segen. I later heard that it does not have many visitors now. Initially it was built for working class people living nearby, but later on there came quite a lot of non-Christian immigrants came to live in the district, so the church was not needed that much anymore. But the building is still impressive.

A kind of saturday Gothic youth parade at shopping street Mariahiferstrasse, taken especially for a "gothic" friend Zhenya, who gave up reading this long ago...

No more worthy fotos on the first (half)day

Summary what I and my new companiom did: went walking to Westbahnhof - West Train Station - then to Maria am Segen - then along some other street - trying to tune my mobile phone (but in vain) - then discovered Mariahilferstrasse (had been previously told that there was a shopping street called Mariahilferstrasse near the hotel) - went along - dropped into a couple of shops - I saw a bookshop (talia.at, German books in abundance!!!), bought there a couple of books (actually, 4) - went back - still could not tune the phone - went back to the station - bought a phone card - finally called home - lost myself in press&more(a stationbookhop which was perfectly good for me and it had an ENORMOUS choice of magazines - up to those for doll and teddy bear lovers and GeoWissen and similar had all the issues! and that a station shop) - made up my mind to see Hofburg the next day - read up a bit of the travel guide - felt dizzy and dropped to sleep. My only companion was a lady in her 50s from Moscow, with whom we later get on very well. Guess what: she's a language teacher at a Moscow Academy, so we have that language&cultureeducation background in common! She does not speak German, however, her major is French and she just kept gushing about her wonderful Paris trip last year :-)