On our second day in Vienna we started out with a trip to the Sigmund Freud museum. It's situated inside Freud's actual home/office from the time that he lived in Vienna, which was for the majority of the time he was doing his most important work in psychology. Now, as a psych student I can tell you that most of Freud's theories about psychoanalysis are now basically defunct because most of what he proposed is not falsifiable (I wrote an entire enthralling essay about it last year if anyone cares to bore themselves to death :P), & yet he made a huge contribution to my field of study mostly because he was the first person ever to propose that mental health problems could be resolved simply through "talk therapy", rather than cutting peoples brains open & poking around & pulling bits out & what not. Which is lucky, cause I'm really not great with blood. So I was really quite excited to see that actual consulting room where people used to lie on Freud's couch & talk about their parents etc. etc. & to see all the other articles that had been collected by his daughter Anna to tell the story of his life & work. Including a little bottle of cocaine, which he documented that he took for several months himself to find out if it was addictive like morphine (apparently not).

After all that intellectual Freudian history so early in the morning we took a relaxing tram ride around the "ring road" that encircles the city centre. From here you can see most of the important historical building like the parliament & the place where the Vienna boy's choir rehearses & performs (would have loved to see this but they only perform on Sunday mornings). We wanted to take a walking tour of the city but the girl at the front desk at Wombats explained that they didn't do them in Vienna because apparently the test they have to take to qualify as walking tour guides is really hard because there's too much history or something…uh, yeah. Tell that to Amy, our guide of Prague! She'd only been in the city 10 months & she knew ridiculous numbers of dates, names, facts etc. about a city that's got centuries of history!

We had lunch in the centre of town at Stephensplatz in a lovely outdoor courtyard, great for people watching. Unfortunately we had another Prague-like experience with the weather (strangely, also right around the time we started desert…) & in the space of about half an hour the sky completely filled with menacing clouds & then broke out into pouring rain. Fortunately we were far enough under the umbrellas to keep us, & our traditional Viennese apple strudel, dry (om nom nom), but after about half an hour or so of constant rain we figured we might have to make a run for it if we ever wanted to leave. We dashed across the road to a shop where about 30 other people were huddled in the doorway waiting for things to ease up, & literally in the space of about 10 metres we were drenched! We waited for another 20 minutes or so, & then figuring that we didn't have much to lose as we were already soaked anyway, we made a run for a nearby coffee house.

The coffee house is something that the Viennese pride themselves on, & coffee houses like Hawelka have been around for many years & were known to be regular haunts of many famous writers & great thinkers. A waiter in a vest & bow tie hurried over to us & asked what we would like & I sensed that asking for a menu would be a stupid question…mostly people here respond to that question simply with coffee, tea, and/or cake (Sacher cake - NOT the original - or strudel). I asked they do lattes & he seemed to think they could do something like that. They didn't. They don't. Coffee with too much milk is a bit of a cop out in Vienna (or Europe in general it seems) & caffeine intolerant people like me should really just toughen up & drink their coffee ridiculously strong like everyone else! Nigel & I both added 2 lumps of sugar to our coffee & I still couldn't drink it - I was pretty much getting a caffeine high just smelling it!

Eventually the rain subsided & it was just as sunny & warm as it had been 2 hours before. So we decided to head to the Prater fun fair, which has a great big Ferris wheel with beautiful views over the city, & a whole bunch of other quaint looking carnival rides that look like they wouldn't pass the Disneyland safety standards... They also have the world's highest chair swing ride, which is pretty much my worst nightmare! Considering my fear of heights makes me nervous even on a Ferris wheel there's no way I want to be hoisted about 117m up in the air & then flung around a pole on a little chair attached by flimsy looking chains! That's just a 60 Minutes story on dangerous fair rides that have killed innocent riders waiting to happen! Instead we kept our feet firmly planted on the ground & spent an hour or so wandering through the Madame Tussaud's museum, which was established in Vienna only a couple of months ago.

In the evening we went back to Stephansplatz again for dinner, & again we had to make a run for shelter halfway through our meal when heavy rain broke out one more. Oh, & we also had strudel again! A cheese strudel this time, kinda like a baked cheese cake in a vanilla custardy sauce :D The rain was just as heavy, & the strudel just as delicious :)