Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...
Trip Start
May 06, 2007
1
81
166
Trip End
Jul 24, 2008
Vienna,
Austria
Friday, November 9, 2007
Saturday was filled with rain and wind. While walking to the big outdoor market (Naschmarkt) the wind actually blew the top off of my umbrella. I was left standing in the rain with a small metal stick in my hand - not exactly useful for keeping me dry. Luckily I had on my hooded sweatshirt under my fleece, so something could protect me a bit from the rain until I got back to the hostel to get my rain jacket. The market was really large with lots of delicious-looking fruits and veggies. And luckily most of the stands were covered so I didn't have to actually stand out in the rain while looking at things. I had a falafel sandwich there for lunch before heading into the warm, dry escape of an art museum.
Vienna has so many museums that it was hard to choose which ones to visit. I decided to start out at the Leopold museum, one of the large art museums that has a very famous painting - The Kiss by Gustav Klimt, one of the most famous Austrian painters. In addition to their Klimt collection, the museum also has a large collection of works by Egon Schiele, another Austrian artist.
That night I cooked dinner in the hostel and spent the evening hanging out with people there. While sitting around talking to a couple of people, a girl approached me and asked if I was from Chicago. When I responded yes, she asked if I was Jenny Horn's cousin. After a second yes from me, she explained that she was friends with Jenny in high school and recognized me from then. It was a very random coincidence that she even recognized me. That night I also convinced a guy from Texas with a laptop to watch the play-by-play of the end of the exciting Wisconsin-Michigan game (Go Badgers!) since the hostel had free wifi, but using their computers for the internet cost about $6 an hour.
I made Saturday an early night so I could wake up early Sunday morning to go see the Vienna boys choir perform Schubert's "Messe G-Dur" during the mass in the Hofmusikkapelle. Standing room spots are free, but you have to get in line around 8:15am. I walked over there with a couple of other people from the hostel where we waited in the rain for a bit before being let in to wait for the mass to start. The chapel was beautifully decorated, though the small Jesus figures on the ceiling were rather strange to me. The boys choir and the orchestra were on the top balcony, so no one who was there could actually see them while they were singing. At the end of the mass, the choir came down and sang one last song where everyone could see them. In all, the mass/performance lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes.
We walked out of the building into large amounts of snow. At this point very little was sticking on the ground, but it was snowing pretty hard. It was a good thing we weren't planning on going very far to reach Hotel Sacher and the famous Sachertorte. It was very expensive for a piece of chocolate cake, but well worth every Euro cent. Delicious. Unfortunately, during the hours that we spent sitting at the cafe the snow increased and began to stick everywhere. It made for a fun walk back to the hostel, but gave me plenty of reason to spend the rest of the afternoon/evening curled up on a couch in the common room with a good book.
Monday morning I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the snow had stopped and most of it had melted away. I joined another Laura from my hostel to visit KunstHausWien, a museum of the work of the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. The museum was very strange, but really interesting. His artwork was very colorful and a bit abstract.
On the way to the museum I tried to get money out of ATM, but got a strange error message to try again later. Not wanting to worry too much about it, I figured I'd try again on the way back from the museum. Unfortunately, my ATM card didn't work that time either. So I tried a different ATM from a different bank. No go. Nor did it work at the three other banks I tried. I immediately got online and emailed my mom to call the bank and see if there was anything wrong on their end. They claimed everything was working fine so I tried again and it still didn't work, so I figured I'd wait until the next day in Bratislava before I got too worried, though it did mean I needed to be very careful about how I was spending my last Euros.
I allotted 3.50 of my Euros for standing room tickets at the opera that night. I saw Un ballo in Maschera by Verdi at the Vienna State Opera House. It was wonderful! All of the singers sang beautifully and were also wonderful actors. The standing room area was interesting. It was a small section with rails for each different level with small text screens to show the words in English or German. Since there are more people than screens you have to share with the people around you. Luckily Emilie, an Australian girl from my hostel, and I were able to get one that we could put in English. After each act, a number of people left, so we had progressively more and more space. This was my first real opera experience and I really loved it. If I had had another night in Vienna, I would have gone again.
Overall, Vienna is up there as one of my favorite cities on this trip. I could easily have spent a lot more time (and a lot more money) there, but I really wanted to head east and away from the Euro into cheaper countries. Next stop - Bratislava, Slovakia - only an hour away from Vienna and touted by travel writers as "the next Prague".
