Pension Steinkellner Baden

... s Dome

• We listened to Gregorian chants; full choir & brass quintet; German mass) in honor of John Bruce’s birthday (Jenny’s brother)
• Jenny worried about watermarks on the new organ when the priest blessed the wooden organ with holy water

• Klimt’s ...
  Vienna, Austria jennyandpaul2

... big" lake. Matthias was the guy I learned the most from. The pale-skinned, black-nest-haired, twenty-year-old son of a diplomat, he was charismatic because he was passionate about many things. He picked me up at my tent near the marsh-land, drove me to his well-aired home, and cooked lunch for us and his mom. Afterwards, he said I could use his internet if I needed to. But, in two hours, I barely wrote two e-mails, because he kept ...

... is the paintings inside though, that makes the museum priceless and overwhelming. The museum is loaded with big-name artists like Brueghel the Elder and Titian. Afterwards, I walked through Neumakt (sp?), a busy street, all the way up to St. Stephen's Church. It's an old gothic church and felt really dark compared to the little churches with frescoes I have been seeing for the past 2 weeks. It's funny how ...

... who know your European history better than me, but I didn't realise how instrumental the Austrians (or should I say, Austro-Hungarians) were in the first world war. I was lead to believe that the Germans (and my grandfather was one of them!) were the baddies, but really I think most of the blame lies with the Habsburgs who were the dominant force at the time. Archduke Ferdinand, who got topped off in Sarajevo and started it all, was a Habsburg, the Kaiser was ...

... served in Austria with a side of water) and we were off once again. A compliment to Mom Sprague here because Mitch said that this world-famous cake tastes like the ones Bernice makes for birthdays. Time to open up a cafe of your own Bernice! :) Maybe the two moms can get together for that one - Heidi makes some fine cakes as well, eh mom? :) We then ambled back up the shopping street, looked into a ...

... screens inside the FanZone to watch the game. We watched the first half of the game in an area with a lot of Austrians but as we are all so short found it hard to see and at half time moved so that we were watching the game through a gap in the fence where it was not so crowded. Germany won! After the game we headed in to Stephensplatz as a lot of people were going there after the game. When we first arrived everyone was celebrating and the atmosphere was ...

... was really nice to have some fresh faces here. I was amazed to hear how similar their complaints were to ours; mainly clashing personalities in our groups. From the sounds of things they really liked it here in Vienna and they didn't want to leave so soon. Two of the girls in that group had done the Pierce in Vienna program before so they already kind of knew the city. We didn't really do ...

... unsurprisingly were quite dark and challenging but fascinating, particularly the sculptures created by an artist couple that used scrap metal pieced together in a seemingly random fashion but when lit from the right angle the shadows created on the wall were of the artist couple taking a pee! Next we headed for the Haus der Musik. A fantastic museum dedicated ...

... Stopped for a hot chocolate and blog update at our most expensive internet cafe to date. We left the center at 3:30 for a tour of the Schnaps Museum. Production of Schnaps began in 1875 in a small town outside of Vienna (now inside Vienna) along a major railway that brought fruit to the facility. The steam boilers were bought in Paris at the World's Fair and are stilled used today (they're the only two pieces of equipment that survived the ...

... only 40 euro. THen, we did a little more shopping. Meg had some trouble with her ATM card, so we had to deal with that. Finally, we had a chance go to dinner. We went to an Australian pub where I had nachos and then split a piece of chocolate cake with meg. We walked around a little more, then grabbed the bus back to the hotel. once back at the hotel, we did some packing since we leave ...