Vienna- 4 days in the capital

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Vienna (Sept. 23- Sept. 26, 2010)

This is our first school trip. These, I will find, are the best and worst trips. The best because you don’t have to do research about where to go, what to see, where to stay, or where to eat. And best of all you don’t have to pay for anything so you don’t stay in an hostel and eat kebabs, instead you stay in nice hotels and have full meals (several courses) made and served by the hotel. But you have no free choice of what you want to do and you have to wake up super early. I remember in Paris there were soo many things I wanted to see but I didn’t have time because our free time generally began after 3:30 or 4.

The first day of the trip we left Salzburg very early, around 8 am. Luckily Austria is very small so even though Salzburg and Vienna are on opposite sides of the country it’s around a 3 hour drive. Also very lucky because we arrived just as it was warming up. We had lunch outside of the palace in the kind of plaza in front and then began a guided tour through the palace, and it was amazing. Even though I’ve been to Europe before this and would travel throughout it during the next year, it was still the most beautiful place I’ve been. Every single room is decorated in an individual way. While there is an overall theme of the rococo in the décor, but it never seems repetitive. Sadly we couldn’t take pictures inside so I ended up buying a million postcards. I also ended up buying my Austrian cookbook here. The Schloss Schönbrunn was the palace of the ruling family of Austria the Habsburgs lived for hundreds of years. Also the grounds outside the palaces cover hundreds of acres and even have a zoo! The whole grounds are landscaped and there are fountains, statutes and faux Greek ruins all over the place. They are free to enter and there is a metro stop right outside so many people in Vienna go walking or running there in the mornings before tourists arrive.

After the Schloss (German for palace) we went to the modern art museum to see the Beethoven frieze. The Museum was ok, although the only exhibit it had at the time was the frieze. After the museum we walked over the see the Karlskirche, which means the Church of St Charles. This church is important because it is an excellent example of Baroque architecture but also because of the columns in the front that are modeled after some roman style ones. I think however the best part of that visit was the missionary who accosted our group and tried to convert everyone, including the people who said they were already Christian. After the church we were allowed to go free and we went back to the biggest outdoor market in Vienna, which was nearby, for dinner. We walked through the aisles (I bought a scarf) and we finally decided on Thai food. The market is really big and outdoors but still clean (in the typical German way). There were so many things to see. There are farm fresh fruits and veggies, and handmade sausages and cheeses, teas and coffee shops, food and jewelry. If you walk far enough (we didn’t until our second trip) it becomes a huge flea market. Eventually we were so tired from the long day we called it a day and headed back to the hotel to have a few beers. Pat and I went out for a kebab and a beer at a bar but we were back and asleep well before 11 pm.

The next morning the wakeup call came at 7:30 am. By 8:20 we were downstairs and had 10 minutes to grab some breakfast to go and get on the bus. Our first stop of the morning was downtown Vienna. We walked through downtown with Ghundi who pointed out several important buildings and works of art until we arrived at the Treasury of the Imperial Palace. This is a converted palace which stores all the imperial jewels. It was amazing. Everything had jewels on it! The bible covers, the gloves, the purses, the capes, and everything. There were doll houses made of gold and silver. It was awesome!

After the Treasury, we walked towards St. Stephan’s cathedral, and were shown the church where the hearts of the Habsburgs are buried and then we went to St. Stephan’s and saw where the rest of their bodies are. The cathedral is huge but still very intricately decorated. After the cathedral we were given time for lunch. Lauren, Alex, Becca, Alyssa and I went to a nearby pizza place, bought a few souvenirs and then got some Gelato. We all met up again the plaza in front of the cathedral and walked to the bus. However we were on the bus and started driving when the director did the count and realized we were four people short!! In the rearview we saw them running after the bus lol. After that, every single time he warned us not to be late, he said ‘or the bus might leave without you too’. Next we took the bus to the see one of the Hundertwasser houses. There are several of them and there are also several smaller works and the modern art toilet. The small building that houses the bathroom and the bathroom were designed by Hundertwasser. I generally don’t like modern art but I love all the works by him! We walked from one house to the next, which we couldn’t go into. There were several small works on the way and from that house we went to the “Toilet of Modern Art”. This path is called the Modern Art Walk because it’s a specific path that leads from house to house to the Toilet and there are several smaller works on the way. We stayed there for a while because we could see the bathroom and the building but also because the building houses a small market that sells Hundertwasser and general Austrian souvenirs. One place sold Steins that were very very beautiful and amazing work on the outside of them with real silver lids but they were so expensive we didn’t even pick them up. We went back to the hotel on the bus and we had a few hours until dinner. We were supposed to go straight from dinner to the opera so we were supposed to spend this time getting ready. I helped Pat go find a tie and then I took an hour nap because I was exhausted. Waking up at 7:30 is one thing but walking or standing the entire day too is too much! So Lauren got ready while I slept and I woke up and took the fastest shower in the world and got ready myself. Sadly I forgot to bring the dress I wanted to wear and had to wear a much less formal dress that I tried to ‘fancy’ up. It looked ok and luckily there are always the California people who look worse. One girl tried to wear a sundress and sandals. She was sent upstairs to change by the director. The dinner was actually really good and then we took a few pictures and we were off to the opera! In our music classes we had already learned about this opera which was good because I couldn’t understand anything they said. I actually fell asleep for 20 minutes because I was so incredibly tired still. Like 12 other people fell asleep too, and not all of them were guys. I saw the entire second half though and it was really great. We got back to the hotel and a few crazy people went out to go find clubs and bars but a few of us just went and had a beer at the bar Pat and I had found the night before. For some reason that night there was some kind of ethnic birthday party happening and there was a soccer game that night so it started to get packed and we left around 10:30 pm (also because we were so tired).

The next day bright and early we left the hotel at 8:30 for the Spanish riding school. This is a tradition in Vienna. It was only Spanish stallions trained by Spanish trainers only for the royal family. It is still Spanish stallions trained in the same traditional way, but not only by the Spanish and not for the royal family. They train them to do amazing things like grapevine and lots of other tricks. Unfortunately there are no chairs. They just open the balconies to the public once a week. So we stood and watched for an hour maybe an hour and a half. After this we walked over to the Art History museum which is on the “ring street”. This street is a giant oval and it holds all of the Habsburgs buildings and most expensive old buildings in Vienna. The Opera house is there and the palaces and houses of the royalty. The Art History Museum is a converted palace and has much of the pillage art from conquered places. We saw all the Germanic, Austrian and other European art that the museum had and then in our free time we went to the roman and Egyptian wings. We were at the museum several hours and in the Egypt wing I saw a small turquoise colored hippo that would greatly impact my trip to Egypt, but more on that in my Egypt blog. At this point we met up again and were given time for lunch. We took the suggestion of our director Rene and went to an Argentina grill nearby. It was great and there were so many of us, atleast 10. After lunch we split into small groups and walked around the ring strasse.

After lunch time was over we all met up again to go to the opera. The opera we went to was a much smaller newer one near our hotel. This one was a huge marble building built several hundred years before by one of the kings of the Habsburgs Empire. It had busts of all the great who had had operas performed there, and we were able to see the private rooms of the king, such as were he went to have tea before it started and were he went to smoke during the intermission. After the opera we went to the belvedere museum which is a converted “house” of the royal family which house most of the abstract or impressionist works from Austria-Hungry. Almost all of Klimt’s works are there so we got to see them. After this we were taken back to the hotel and given a free afternoon which we spent walking downtown near Stephanskirche and we went shopping and searched for anywhere that would make smoothies or milkshakes. There was nothing. So we ended up in Starbucks because they make frappes and those are kind of like smoothies. We went back to the hotel and hungout in my room and we all had a few beers and went to bed.

On our last day we all had to go to mass. We went to see the Vienna Boy’s Choir perform. This is the boy’s choir that performed for the royal family is over 500 years old. It was really cool. We couldn’t see them but we could hear them and they were great. The mass was in German and the European mass is different than ours so I generally had no idea what was going on but it was mostly the boys singing anyway. However outside it was raining and sooo cold and we had to dress up for mass and I didn’t bring a coat because it had been sunny all week Salzburg and all weekend in Vienna. Ghundi let me wear her extra coat because she is like everyone’s super nice grandmother. She brought tea and cookies for the students to all her finals! After mass we got on the bus and head out of Vienna. After about an hour we stop at our final stop, the Melk monastery. This place was founded 1089!! The school started in the 12^th century and it soon became famous for its transcripts. The library is huge and filled with ancient books and manuscripts. And the school there is still operational. I was just impressed by how every inch of it is decorated so decadently. After this we headed home. We stopped for lunch at one of those really terrible roadside restaurants. They are super expensive but have like cold sandwiches and really bad schnitzel. We arrived home and of course it was a race to the laundry machines. It is always weird to think that life as normal will restarted the next day. You spend four entire days in Vienna and then bam class the next morning.

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