At the U-bahn, I quickly acquired a phone card at the local tobacco vendor and used the phone to call the pensione. Fortunately, they have a room.

From the U-bahn (boy, I love that name) I made my way pretty quickly to the Pension Kraml just of the Mariahilferstrasse. I found it to be a lovely clean place (typically German I thought) with small but clean rooms. Common bathrooms and showers were shared between a suite of four to six rooms.

My first impression of Wien was that it was very busy. Very noisy. Hot. It was undergoing a lot of renovation (street work) but everyone seemed very pleasant in spite of the heat. It must have been in the mid-80s.

They have a charming and effective streetcar system (really, trolleys) to complement their marvelous subway system. Between the two I was to find that moving around in Wien was very easy. In fact, I wonder constantly why American cities don't implement such a system. Probably because the cost these days of implementing it would be prohibitive. However, what with all the quakes we have in California, the freeways don't seem to hold up too well (witness the damage done to LA in the last quake).

20.00, Hotel Sacher, Wien. (84k)

I'm sitting having a coffee at the famous Hotel Sacher (just a short walk from the pedestrian mall - the Kartnerstrasse). I've just ordered an original "Sacher Torte" - we'll see how it holds up. Then I'm for the U-bahn and an early night I think. I just walked the old town's Graben and Kartnerstrasse pedestrian malls. I could see how this city might grow on one.

The architecture is very impressive (the Imperial palace is huge and in excellent repair). At the time of my visit they were filming scenes from the latest remake of "The Three Musketeers." Perhaps this contributed to the general air of unreality about the palace. However that may be, I found it easy to imagine how it must have appeared a hundred or two hundred years ago.

I do like the appearance of Austrian women as well - the young ones can have a great dark beauty about them (probably a mix of Italian blood). They seem to have great fashion sense as well. All are very well turned out in what must be the latest Parisian or Milanese fashion.

Vienna was the city of my mother's youth. I had read marvelous things about it and its cafes. In my imagination, it was a place worth living in. A center for the arts and letters. My original plan was to visit it for a day or two. Not nearly enough time as it turned out.

I found a decent place to stay out of the Let's Go book - one of its only uses turned out to be pointing me at decent lodging. My opinion of this tome changed as I spent more time with it. It was obviously out of date very quickly (or at least the authors never revisited places they had recommended). Or was it that the act of recommending a place spoiled it. Whatever the case, I found the restaurants it recommended to be uniformly poor - and overrun by American tourists.