Well, it's difficult to say everything you want to say about a new place and country. There are so many levels of impressions - the people and the way they live, the city and its appearance, the impact of history on the place; the street life, the buildings, the shops, the traffic, the cafes, drinks and food, the smell, the sounds. Then there's the thing I focused on most in my last blog - the art and cultures.

We have a rather good guide - the AA guide. It had an intro section called the magazine with very useful and interesting little illustrated articles by local writers. One that amused us was about the horse dung. There are a lot of horses and carriages in Vienna and a new bylaw had been brought in to much public debate apparently. It requires the carriages to collect their own dung in what the locals dubbed as nappies. Well... in terms of the smell of Vienna there is no doubt that it is horse pee and dung! But I rather like that, having been brought up in the country - and it gives a rather oldie worldie feel that goes with the archtecture.
We did notice that for the quantity of horse and carriages clopping around there wasn't that much visible dung in the street despite the perfume of horse in the air. This was because carriages had a a rather nifty sort of canvas catch all which was supposed to catch the poo before it hit the ground. It rather depended it seemed to me on the horse pooing at the correct angle!
We were staying in the Imperial Riding Stable Hotel, which added to the horse theme. Amazing marble interior and pillars which must have been there when it was a stable! Horses are very very important in Viennese history. The royals adored them and seemed to have stables everywhere. Even one of our taxi drivers, explained that his English wasn't that good except for place names and held up a 'form' magazine for horse racing in England and read out really quite well, Goodwood, Cheltenham, Sandown Park.... He bet every day and expounded a rather scary philosophy about the place of gambling in his life - just below paying for his family's basic needs it seemed!
On our first early afternoon mooch around after we arrived, exahusted after a 3.00amish wake up to get to the airport, we stopped in a brilliant little restaurant with a garden at the back and a horse chestnut tree in the middle. We were completely dependent on the English menu, which is always embarrassing, but the waiters were lovely and we realised that we were in a real local place, We had grilled trout with delicious potatoes and a big salad. And beer of course! It was incredibly hot and we then walked across the green and tree filled Stadtpark full of people enjoying themselves, sitting on the grass, bands playing etc. There were lots of statues ot musicians, as you would expect- some rather heavily gilded.
We had a wonderful European city feel and commented that having lived in Italy for so long it all didn't seem so strange or alien to us, bur rather familiar and comfortable like coming home, even though it is a new country and a language we don't unfortunately speak!
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More Vienna and art to come in a later blog.