(Turkey on Rice)^-1: Froehliche Weihnachten

Wien was a great trip. The city is beautiful and it was certainly great to spend Christmas in a place where most of the population celebrates. There's lots of photos after the jump (somewhere around 150). Just saying.

Click on for the pics. That's what you really came here for anyway.

The first real view of Christmas in the outside halls of the Rathaus (city hall) on our way to one of the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) or more commonly Christkindlmarkt (Christ Child Market).

Tower of the Rathaus.

Lots of stalls selling food and wares.

The next day we traveled around Wien. The place was practically a ghost town. Finding food was more than a little difficult at times.

Oh. My. God. Cheese Land! a.k.a. Heaven

Sauerkraut and pickles

We did a little Christmas tree shopping. I could smell them from across the street and had to visit.

Lots of architecture to photograph.

The Rathaus in daylight.

I got this sugary concoction as a snack and didn't need to eat for another six hours.

We stopped in for a concert in the Rathaus. Obviously it was all in German. Unfortunately I was only able to pick up about 2% of what they were saying/singing.

In the Museum Quartier.

Maria Theresea Square

The Natural History Museum. Locked up that day (Chirstmas Day).

The Emperor's Palace

More architecture. The buildings were so close I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if there was a fire.

St Stephen's Cathedral. We came here the night before for Midnight Mass.

Another Weihnachtsmarkt. This time out by the summer palace, Schonnbrunn.

As we walked around we got hit by this overwhelming smell of gym socks and teenage boys. After a second we realised we were standing next to the Kaseraclettebrot stand! Basically the have big slabs of stinky cheese sitting under some heat sources and let the cheese get all melty. Then, they take it and slather it on top of a slice of bread with chives, onions and bacon. It was amazing. Top it off with a mug of Gluhwein (mulled wine) and you're good to go.

The cookies just say, "Badass."

St Niklaus rockin' it with Krampus on a chocolate bar.

Screw reindeer, these two get around in style.

Wood carvings, smokers and nutcrakers.

This guy had an awesome booth full of puppets. Had I the money I would have totally bought some.

These look familiar.

More ornaments.

Old-timey toys.

Pretzels!

Felt toys

Beeswax shop.

Looking at all the stalls full of ornaments I couldn't help but think of mom and how much she would have loved to have been there. I'm also pretty sure she would've bought too much Christmas stuff.

Miniatures

By Christmas night the streets were starting to look lively again. We had a very difficult time finding someplace to eat on Christmas Eve so we made sure to scope out some places Christmas Day as we walked around. I ended up with ribs. They were a little over done but still pretty good. We were just mostly thankful that this was not the Christmas we got introduced to Chinese turkey.

Carriages outside of the cathedral.

I have no idea.

We finally got into the Natural History Museum. The first part was all rocks. Made me think of Grandpa Rice.

This one reminded me of K.

I thought it was particularly interesting that they put down the chemical formula of some of the minerals.

Blacklight luminescence.

Meteorites

Being a chemist I know that various cultures are going to call chemicals and elements different things. However, I always thought that some things were standardised by IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, the governing body of chemistry) including formulae and element symbols. Then I came across this. Jod. What was particularly intriguing was that the symbol was 'J.' Now, no periodic table that I've seen has the symbol 'J' on it. I was stumped. Apparently it's iodine. Why that haven't converted the symbol to 'I' I have no idea.