The Prater

Vienna's Prater is an amusement park that has been around for quite a while... I need to find the date again, but I know it has existed since before WWII. The ferris wheel you can see in the distance in this picture is called the Riesenrad (the Giant Wheel), which was built in 1897. It's the symbol of the park, and often, of Vienna. It was a gift to the city by a wealthy Jewish business man, but when the Nazis came to power, they "Aryanized" it; they didn't want to take it away from the people of Vienna, so they had to change its history. It used to have 30 compartments, but it was rebuilt after WWII with 15 compartments.

The Riesenrad has also become particularly famous because in The Third Man Orson Welle's character, Harry Lyme, gives his famous speech with his take on humanity in once of the compartments of the Riesenrad. The Third Man is one of the few successful movies that take place in Vienna, so even people who have not been to Vienna know about the Riesenrad.

It does not cost anything to get into the park, but you have to pay for each ride. To ride the Riesenrad, it costs 12 euros. My friend Lauren (who was visiting Vienna for the weekend) and I went on the Blumenrad (Flower Wheel), which is just as tall, but only costs 3 euros. This was the first time I got to see a whole view of Vienna. There are not a lot of easily-accessable hills to view the city from, and it doesn't have a famous skyline, so the Riesenrad has usually been what people associate with Vienna.

The rest of the park has the usual make-you-dizzy rides, stands with games, and a lot of vintage-looking haunted houses.

Ha ha, get it? Hallo Wien? (Vienna...) Ugh...