1st day in Vienna

Descending into Vienna, I got my first bird's eye look at Vienna from the airplane's passenger window. What I noticed first was how flat everything seemed to be, with little to no skyscrapers and a surrounding landscape that seemed to stretch for many miles without the imposition of hills or mountains. Our apartment is lodged in the residential district of Vienna, surrounded by beautifully decorated apartments and a surprising number of sex stores in the area. The apartments themselves belong to the Vienna University, but the students are on vacation now and the apartments are all vacant. In contrast with the somewhat cramped apartment system, the buildings of the crown and its court are magnificent. At the Heldenplatz in front of the Hofburg, 180 degrees of court palaces, libraries, churches, etc. are visible Downtown is a ways away, but our rail passes allow us unlimited travel on the public transport system. We took the U-Bahn to Stephensplatz, where we walked around to familiarize ourselves with the City. We saw the Stephenskirche (I think), Mozart's grave site, a monument to Goethe (and touched his shoe for good luck). I won't go into detail about the historical significance of all of these because we will probably go over them later. I know, I'm a procrastinator. I have become something of an unofficial German translator here. On the flight, I even convinced a stewardess I was from Germany. Overall today has been a pretty successful first day.