Vienna Pictures

November 12, 2008
Today, I toured Vienna by foot. First I went to the Belvedere grounds and saw beautiful statues and gardens. Since it is Fall, the flowers and bushes are not in bloom. The statues are very old and made of the white statue stuff. I walked for quite awhile on these grounds and ended up not knowing where I was. After searching the map, walking and talking to some other tourists, I got back on the right track and traveled to the center of Vienna to see the St. Stephen’s Cathedral. There I was approached by a sales person and purchased two tickets to the Opera and Symphony for Thursday night. I’m quite excited about going to an Opera and Symphony in Vienna. I walked around somemore and found another Cathedral. These cathedrals have Mass several times a day and I was there for the beginning of one of them. I left after a few minutes because I couldn’t understand any of it.

I found a place and bought tickets for a city tour on Friday for Ralph & me. I hope he’s excited about my purchases.

I walked somemore and ended up back at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. I thought I was getting farther away. I found the next road I wanted to travel to head back to the hotel. I ended up at a music museum where lots of instruments from the past are on display. It was nice to see the beginnings of most of the instruments we have today. I had a phone thing that when I pushed certain buttons I could here about the instrument that I was looking at and hear the sounds it makes.

After spending most of the morning lost, I was glad to find a museum that I wanted to go to and found how to read the map and street signs better.

The people here are very friendly. I think my worst experience was at the tourist information center. I guess I didn’t know the right questions to ask for the info I wanted.

Everyone here smokes and there isn’t any water to drink. It’s very clean.
This typewriter keyboard is very different from the American one. Z is where Y is supposed to be and ä is where ‘ is supposed to be. There are some other letters, ß, §, ö, and some I don’t know how to get to.


November 13, 2008

This morning I didn’t feel much like going anywhere. My whole body hurt from walking yesterday. I decided to go on a Hop on Hop off tour. When I got there, it was just a bus tour and you couldn’t get off unless you bought the whole day pass. I didn’t want to do that. I went to the Horse school to buy tickets for the performance Friday night, but they were €22 to stand and watch for 90 minutes and for two of us, more than €100 for us to sit for the performance. I decided I didn’t want to see it that bad. I then went to look at some more museums, but decided to come back to the hotel and do more sightseeing when Ralph gets back. I took the long way back and wondered if I would ever get there. I wasn’t on the map most of the time, so I guess you could say I was mostly lost.

The first day when we got here, the lights in our room wouldn’t go on. We called the desk and found out that you have to put your room card in a slot by the door for the lights to work. I guess this saves on electricity.
Ralph got finished with his meetings, so I took him for a tour of Vienna. We went to the Belvedere Palace, then decided to walk to the center of town so he could go in the St. Stephen's Cathedral. We went inside for a bit, then walked around it because I think the best view of all the sculptors is on the other side. We found the entrance to the tower so we climbed it. The number of stairs is 7x7x7. You climb straight up in a continuous circle. At the top you can see over the whole city forever. We made our way back and got a large polish hot dog for dinner from a street vendor. We went to our concert and listened to the Weiner Imperial Orchestra along with a couple of Opera singers and a couple of ballet dancers that performed intermittently. It was a pretty nice day with a bit of rain drizzling the whole day.


November 14, 2008
Hi,
Today we went on a tour of the Shönnbrunn Palace. The family that lived there had 16 children with 5 rooms and 5 servants per child. That would be nice. It’s the biggest place you’ve ever seen. The gardens around it were huge. I don’t think anyone could imagine such a large place. Maria Theresia was the monarch and it was the ruling monarch at the time. One of the children was Marie Anntoinette. They lost their fortune through the wars. One of the children is still alive, and other ancestors, but they don’t have any fortune, they work for a living.
There was a furnace in each room and it was loaded with the wood from hallways inbetween the rooms so you couldn’t see the openings. The grand ballroom was lit by candles that would burn for 4 hours – then the ball was over.
The family was painted with the lady sitting and her finger pointed at herself and she had the boys stand by her. The dad sat on a different chair with the girls by him and they were honoring her. The faces were all painted the same without any blemish. The maid’s face was painted with a large nose.

After the tour, we walked the streets of Vienna. We went on a tour of the Opera House which was very interesting how they moved the floors and scenery around. The cost of the chairs by location was from standing spots for €3 - €4, up to front row of €240 or so depending on the Opera being shown. The standing spots go on sale the day of the Opera.

We found a Weinachtzmarkt and saw a few things, but they’re not really ready for Christmas yet. They’re just putting the decorations up. We bought some roasted Macaron which I think was roasted Chestnuts. They weren’t my favorite, but we did buy a few good pastries during the day.

They have a statue of everyone that has been a part in Austrian history. We found our train station tonight to start on our journey to Germany in the morning.