Vienna

We spent ten days in Vienna. There’s no end of things to do and see, so I’ll break it up into a few blog posts. Our apartment was just a few blocks from the Hofburg, the enormous palace of the Hapsburg dynasty, and many of the other sights. We made the most of it…in our relaxed travel way. No need to zip through a half dozen sights in one day if you’re there for a while.

Across the street was the nicest garden we saw in Vienna, the Volksgarten.

Saturday was our first day in town and the main plaza downtown was mobbed with people. Definitely not our preferred way of seeing the sights. Fortunately, the crowd thinned out quickly as you got on to the side streets.

We went in the cathedral, but it’s the first one we’ve ever been in that had a pay wall – you could only walk in the door and to the back left corner for free. We were coming back for an evening concert, so didn’t fork over any money.

We did, however, see plenty of other churches. The private church of the Hapsburgs, Peterskirche, is the other one on the regular tourist agenda and was insanely ornate.

Other churches, which we found at random, were more to our liking. A Minorite church had a huge painting of the last supper that I especially enjoyed.

Some older heraldic shields caught my eye. What heraldic property does a crayfish have? And why isn’t it centered on the shield? Or perhaps it was added later as some kind of defamation?

This church, attached to the Hofburg, was surprisingly simple:

The church we liked the best, Kirche St. Barbara, was another random pick after a walk through disappointing gardens. Finally a church that isn’t gloomy!

Not all churches are open to the public. I had wrongly assumed that the big ones all were. This one, the Votivkirche, had to be admired only from the outside. Patterned roofs on churches seem to be a thing here – Stefansdom also has one.

Fortunately our disappointment was tempered by afternoon coffee and cake, a Viennese tradition. We took full advantage of the offerings! However, after a few days of actual cake, which I uniformly found to be too sweet (not something I expected in Europe!), we switched to pastries from a local bakery. My new love: topfengolatsche!

And while we’re on the subject of food, you can’t go to Vienna without eating wiener schnitzel! I don’t eat veal, but luckily they also make it from pork. The sides of vinegary potato salad and tart lingonberries are essential, refreshing your palate as you go along.

Back to the subject of gardens (always near and dear to my heart)… We went to Schloss Belvedere, whose website showed beautiful gardens. When we got there… not so much. The paths were weedy, the gardens were weedy, and there was almost nothing blooming.

So we walked to the Stadtpark (City park), which on the map appears to have a river running through it:

In reality: a very large concrete ditch with a puddle of water at the bottom. And almost no flowers in the park. Ah, well, at least we found St Barbara’s church afterwards… and coffee and cake.

Vienna is known for its music, and we made the most of it, going to three concerts. The Györ Philharmonic (from Györ, Hungary) played Saint-Saens and Dvorak in a highly gilded hall. In a twist we’d never seen before, the second piece was for orchestra with violin and cello – and the conductor was the cellist. He played facing the audience and only occasionally actually conducted. That must take some serious rehearsing!

The second concert was a string quartet playing Mozart, Bach, Haydn and Strauss in a small room, La Sala Terrena, where Mozart actually performed.

The third was a performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by a string quintet in St. Stephen’s Cathedral. I enjoyed it, though not the apparently sick and definitely whiny child sitting next to us. (His parents must have known he was not going to enjoy…or sit still for… a concert starting at 8:30 at night, but they brought him anyway.)

To close out, a few things seen around town:

I’ve seen green walls inside buildings, but never an entire building exterior. Cool!

And one thing seen on the train to Vienna – another sign that the US is way behind Europe in train travel. We got on a train in Munich (after getting off a regional train absolutely stuffed with people in dirndls and lederhosen going to Oktoberfest), and found signs above our seats showing not only that the seats were reserved but also for which part of the journey. So efficient!