Vienna Sightseeing
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
51
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Vienna,
Austria
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
It's not just the backpackers, though. It may as well be high tourist season in Vienna. I went to see the "morning exercises" of the horses at the Spanish Riding School today and the place was packed. The Riding School is overrated. Riders dressed in napoleonic era outfits clod around on white horses in enclosure the size of an ice rink. There are seats on two levels and all of them were taken. Three hundred tourists and I were all taken. Why did I pay six Euros (with my 50% student discount) to watch horses being riden? Because my DK book on Vienna said I ought to. Everyone in Vienna is using a DK book. Without any exaggeration, I have seen hundreds of copies in other tourists hands, in English, French, German and so on. DK is making a killing here. Vienna makes it easy.
Vienna is an elegant city. Everything seems to have been built for a night out. It's like every building is wearing a tuxedo or a ballroom dress. The roads have a slight curl and look good. The street cars have a classy look about them, and have useful routes (for the tourist). The trees are nicely pruned and the sidewalks are clean. Buildings get their regular maintenance.
Vienna is a nicer looking city than Paris, London or Berlin. No question about it. In many ways it has the best parts of each of those cities. I had not realised that I had seen so many depictions of Vienna before I got here; in movies, art, etc. I thought that those images were stylised fantasy. I do love those images (the movie "Baron von Muchausen" is one of them) and for me it is like fantasy come to life. The Palaces (Schönbrun, Belvedere, Hofburg) are enormous and magnificent. The museums (be they of painting, ancient scupture, military history, or of another specific genre) are of a superior quality. I'm finding myself wishing that the Hapsburg Empire never fell. It did such a nice job of making a beautiful city (most of my favourite monuments were put up before the Empire collapsed).
Of course there are downsides. The people have such drawls! After a few days I am getting used to it, but I just about burst out laughing when a the voice of a metro public announcement came on and said something about the next stop. I had no idea that Austrian German is something like the equivalent of English from the American South.
The other main one is that the boundaries of fashion between generations are not that firm. My eyesight is good, but sometimes it takes me a moment to realise how old a person is. For example; there will be a woman in a nice outfit that looks good on a woman in her twenties. She will have nicely dyed hair and a made up face. I'll appreciate that for a moment (after all I am a 20 something guy). Then I will realise "oh hello,,, you're fifty." But I'll have seen a woman of perhaps 22 in an outfit stylistically similar thirty seconds before. And then there's the problem of the young blonde men wearing their hair long... Just kidding, I haven't been fooled.
There is a lot to say, so I'll continue this entry with a few snapshots. I should avoid the droning on that I lapse into!
St. Stephen's Cathedral. The famous gothic tower is covered in scaffolding. I took the audio tour and enjoyed it. Of course, I forgot all of the details five minutes after leaving the church, but it gave me an excuse to linger and enjoy the atmosphere. Church officials have segregated the church into two areas: one for general visitors, and the other for audio tour paying guests (when Mass isn't in session, as it is six times daily). Because most people don't want to shell out a few dollars for the audio tour, it meant that I was one of a dozen people in the audio tour area (compared to the hundreds in the free area) and my area was more tranquil as a result. It was nice to be outside of a crowd for once. All of the attractions are so crowded.
Both of the former Imperial palaces of Schoenbrun and Hofburg have been turned into excellent museums. Once I got past the queues, I found out that my entry fee at both of these museums included an audio guide. The latter museum has a long exhibit on the Empress Elizabeth (fondly known by her subjects as Sisi). From what I was able to discern, Princess Di was not the first of her phenomenon. Sisi was of some nobility before she became Empress but it was too much for her. She was followed around by the press and she hated it. Grotesquely enough, the press also contributed to her death!
Talking about royals getting killed, I also saw the car in which Franz Ferdinand was killed, and the outfit that he was wearing when he was shot (there were even blood stains). That was in the Austrian Army museum. It had lengthy sections on Austria's 18th and 19th century wars, and there was a fair bit in English. It had a bit of a Turkish tent from when the Turks last besieged Vienna (apart from setting up doner kebap shops) back in 1683. One bizarre museum anecdote: after the First World War, the museum curators had put in a certain large cannon. During the Second World War it was put back into service and it has been missing ever since!
Another worthy museum was the Ephesus/Historical Instruments/Ancient Arms museum; three different museums lumped together in one ticket. I went to see the Ephesus museum, having been there (see earlier entry) and I was interested to see it from the perspective of the Austrian archeologists who dug the place up. It was these guys who put most everything that is together today back together. They had some marvelous bronze finds, including a life sized bronze athelete. The sculpture was really amazing. The rest of the museum was a pleasant reminder of my visit to Ephesus.
The Ancient Arms section was really the best part of the museum. The audio guide explained everything to encyclopedic detail. It had displays on medieval tournaments (one of which comprised having two competetors wear flower displays on their heads: The winner bashed the display off the others' head first!), commentary on the better armourers, rare examples of horse armor and Habsburg heirlooms. These latter ones included Carl V's gauntlets (he ruled Spain, Holland, Belgium, Austria, bits of France, Italy, and he was known as the Holy Roman Emperor to boot).
The section on historical instruments wasn't my slice of cake, but it was worth a peek, and the audio guide had examples of music played on old organs, pianos, and even the Henry Lime song (from the Third Man) played on that little string box (if you know what I am talking about, please tell me. I am about 1000 km away from Vienna already so I can't go back and look).
My last anecdote for you comes courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (art history museum) where the better part of Vienna's classical art is housed. They have a great section of Egyptian antiquites, and another excellent section on Roman artefacts. Both are displayed in halls painted to the theme; the Egyptian rooms are painted like tombs, and the Roman halls look like an Emperor's palace. Little of the displays is in English and with the complicated technical terms I didn't learn a lot from the museum. But for someone who knows the eras well enough already, the collections were still enjoyable.
I was very disappointed though, to find out that the museum's section on historical objects was closed. I had particularly wanted to see Cellini's "Salt Cellar." Cellini was a 16th century goldsmith whose most enduring achievement was to write his autobiography. He celebrates his artistic achievments to some lenghty degree. I am reading it at the moment and I wanted to see how good he really was. The "Salt Cellar," a place for storing salt, but decorated with gold figurines, was stolen in 2003 and found in 2005 in a shallow grave. It was badly damaged and is is currently undergoing restoration. I do hope it is okay, so when I come back to Vienna in 2056 I can see it.
And so my five day visit to Vienna has come to a close. At eight oh three, I caught a night train to Belgrade to begin my tour of the Balkans.
