Vienna: Schönbrunn

The Hapsburgs’ summer palace, the Schloss Schönbrunn, is about 30 minutes from downtown by public transit. (That is, if you get off at the correct stop to transfer (oops!) and don’t have to wait a really long time for that transfer, once you finally get to the right spot.)

We toured the outside first, and garden disappointment continued. You pay extra to enter the crown prince’s garden, except you don’t get to actually enter it – you can only view it from a small tower:

At the back of the palace, formal gardens stretch to a fountain and then up a hill:

Do you notice anything unusual? Take a look from the other end:

Only the four beds closest to the palace are fully planted. One more has, at most, a quarter of the plants it should and the other three are bare. It’s that partial one that seems the oddest. If you know you’re not going to have enough, why not maintain symmetry with four bare ones? Well, at least the fountain was turned on!

I hate to think what it costs to get married here, never mind sharing it with a horde of strangers who take your picture (guilty!).

We toured the state rooms and (royal) living quarters. Room after room stuffed with ornate furniture and decorations…

The Hapsburgs had obviously never heard that less is more. If they saw a bare space, they filled it. If they liked a fabric, it went on everything in the room. I liked the dark blue in Empress Sisi’s bedroom, but would have appreciated it more if it was on the walls or the bed or the chairs, not all of them! Facing sensory overload, I started to focus on other things – like the floors:

And the portraits. Many of the women were flat-chested. A Hapsburg trait or are these actually pre-pubescent girls with powdered hair?

There was also a painting of the Spanish Riding School at the Hofburg, where today the Lipizzaner stallions train and perform. We went to see a performance. It didn’t look anything like this!

One wonders how much learning was done at this “school.” At the performance we saw there were three parts: a single horse on a long rein (the rider walks behind the horse – there’s trust for you!), two horses and riders synchronized, and several horses individually doing movements on the ground and in the air. We weren’t allowed to take photos while the horses were performing, but here’s what it looks like today: