Roberta and Allan Cohen returned to Omena in time to enjoy this last taste of summer weather from their trip to Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary; and Paris. In Vienna, they stayed at the world-renowned hotel, , the Hotel Sacher Wein, where the famous Sacher Torte was invented. After some touring on their first afternoon there, they headed straight for the Café to try some. It was extraordinary! The next day, at breakfast, they discovered that it was also available at the breakfast buffet!
While in Vienna, they saw St Stephen’s Cathedral, marveling at its beautiful exterior and magnificent interior. They visited the impressive Shönbrunn Castle, where the Austrian -Hungarian Emperor Franz-Joseph and his beautiful and very vain wife, Elizabeth, known as Sisi, lived in imperial splendor. They stopped at the bustling Naschmarkt, — a great place to grab a snack or just soak up the atmosphere! They saw the Secession building with its beautiful golden dome and spent time at the Belvedere Palace where Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece, The Kiss, was on display. Then it was on to the Leopold Museum with more Klimt works. On their last day in Vienna, they visited the Imperial Complex and also spent time at the Albertina Museum.
Taking the train the next morning to Budapest, they dropped off their luggage at the hotel and went directly to the Hungarian Parliament Building, which was breathtakingly beautiful. A very poignant site was the Shoes on the Danube Memorial located along the banks of the Danube. Sixty pairs of iron shoes, designed to resemble the old worn shoes of the thousands of men, women and small children, who in 1944-1945 were told to stand at the river’s edge, remove their shoes and then were shot, their lifeless bodies falling into the Danube. This atrocity is memorialized on the spot where it took place.
