Danube River Valley

Before we traveled to Austria, we booked a tour of the Danube River Valley for the Wednesday we were there.  We figured it would be an easy way to see some of the countryside.  Ordinarily, we aren't big tour people, but considering how tired we had been in the weeks leading up to this vacation, I'm glad we planned a day when we didn't have to do much thinking.  The company that operated the tour seemed to do a very brisk business.  We were picked up from our hotel in a van.  At first, I thought that we were going to be on a very small tour with only a few other people.  But then, the driver of the van took us to some sort of central depot where there were several large tour buses taking people on a variety of different tours.  Our guide moved very ably between German, English, and Spanish.

Our first stop was Krems, a very picturesque town, where we were given an hour to wander around.

Then we started heading toward Emmendsdorf for lunch.  The guide showed us barriers that were put up to protect the valley from flooding (he described them as ugly and expensive), and told us that most people in the valley make a living either from tourism or wineries.  He also told us that apricots would be in season in a few weeks.  I was regretful to have missed out on that, although I will say that I got to eat plenty of other tasty things over the course of the trip.

After that, we headed to Melk.  The purpose of going to Melk was to visit a Benedictine abbey, but Scott and I also nipped into town before the abbey tour started.  While there, we saw a few quirky sites:

A bicycle covered in yarn...

A polished stone machine...

And a sign in Arabic advertising apple strudel!  Too bad the words are both backwards and disconnected!

Part of me wanted to skip the abbey and see what other amazing surprises Melk had in store, but the abbey was lovely, also.

View from the abbey

All in all, a lovely day.  When we returned to Vienna, we ate dinner in a tiny, decidedly non-touristy restaurant (no languages on the menu except German!).  The employees there were very gracious about translating for us.  We split a whole steamed artichoke as an appetizer--no doubt the last one I'll have in a long while!

Tuesday in Vienna

Tuesday took us to the Museum Quarter, and, specifically, the Kunsthistorisches Museum.  Vienna has an amazing number of museums, and if I ever return, I hope to visit more of them.  But as much as we like museums, we find them exhausting pretty quickly, so we decided to be selective regarding our museum visits this trip.

On the way to the Museum Quarter

View approaching the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Natural History Museum

Kunsthistorisches Museum

We actually arrived shortly before the museum opened (jet lag worked in our favor in the sense that we were up early every morning!).  I was impressed by how quickly we were able to purchase tickets, in spite of the crowds.  I was also impressed that school groups seemed to be able to go for free.

The Kunsthistorisches has any number of fascinating exhibits, but our favorite was the Kunstkammer, which housed a tremendous collection of objet d'art collected by the Habsburgs.  It is amazing what large sums of money (and perhaps a certain about of disregard for the wellbeing of one's subjects) can buy.  I was impressed by both the workmanship and materials involved, and I liked some pieces very much.  Others, however, I frankly would not want to have in my home, no matter how expensive or impressive they may be.  One sculpture particularly comes to mind.  There was one sculpture featuring three people standing with their backs to one another in a triangle formation.  One person was an attractive young woman, and another was an attractive young man.  The third person was clearly much older, and appeared to have both male and female characteristics, namely sagging breasts and a receding hairline.  It was an interesting way to conceptualize the fleeting nature of youth, but hardly seemed like an uplifting reminder to see every day.

After our morning at the museum, we left for lunch and a wander.  We wandered in the direction of the University of Vienna, enjoyed some gelato, and saw some interesting sights along the way.

Parliament building

The University of Vienna was founded in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world.  We hung out there for a while.

We then headed back to our hotel for some rest and some decisions on dinner.  We ate dinner at the Greichenbeisl, one of Vienna's oldest inns that was apparently visited by Mark Twain.  I'll have to reread Innocents Abroad sometime to see if it is mentioned.  We then ate dessert at the lovely pastry chain Aida, where we knew the sweets would be tasty and a fraction of the price.

Parting picture of the day:  a confusing mixture of old and new.

Monday in Vienna

We started out on an amble toward one of Vienna's Habsburg palaces, Belvedere Palace.  On the way, we walked through Stadt Park.  We were starting to see some early signs of spring--a few pale green leaves, some flowers.  A lot of the trees were still bare, though, aside from some truly amazing looking clumps of mistletoe.

I've never seen so much mistletoe on one tree!

It took us some time to find the entrance to Belvedere Palace.  Maybe we were approaching from an unusual angle, but there seemed to be little signage.  In fact, an Indian restaurant that was located nearby seemed to have more prominent signage than the palace complex itself.  Once we arrived, it was well worth a visit, not only for the two palaces of the complex, but also for the art exhibited.  The upper palace had several Klimt paintings, which I enjoyed seeing.  The grounds appear to be quite elaborate, as well.  We were there too early in the spring to get the full flavor, but numerous bare trees and shrubs carried the promise of future flowers.

Upper Palace

Lower Palace

Inside Upper Palace

Inside Lower Palace

After spending most of the morning at Belvedere Palace, we decided to head to Naschmarkt for lunch.  It took us a while to find that, too, but was also well worth it.  I had imagined a completely covered market, but it turned out to have uncovered walkways, with assorted restaurants and shops.  We had a giant seafood lunch of seafood steamed in white wine.  Yum!  I was very happy with what we ate, although when we walked around some more after lunch, I was sorry to not also be able to try the falafal.  Some of the falafal stands were gathering a crowd, which made me think it would be fresh and tasty.  I looked sadly at the produce--I wish I could get such quality and variety in Kazakhstan.  I did buy a bag of brown mustard seeds, having recently run out of them and not located a source in Astana.

My pictures of Naschmarkt itself weren't very good, so I'm posting a picture of an interesting building near the market.

We then visited Karlskirche, a baroque church on the way back to the area where we were staying.  The church was quite striking even from the outside, and we decided to go in to see its frescoes.  One thing that was unusual in Karlskirche was that we were able to get quite close to the inside of the dome by taking an elevator and then a series of stairs.  There was something about this particular elevator that brought out a sudden fear of heights in me, but Scott encouraged me to keep going and take the stairs to the top.  I wonder if it'll ever see frescoes painted in a church dome at such close range again.

Picture taken from floor of church

Moving up toward the dome

Close-up of fresco

Looking up at the dome!

View from the top

Karlskirche from the outside

Last, but not least, we visited Cafe Sacher to try their sachertorte!  I would highly recommend this dessert to all chocolate lovers.  It had layers of chocolate cake with apricot jam between layers and a dark chocolate frosting.  It was served with unsweetened whipped cream.  On the whole, it was probably not as sweet as many American chocolate cakes, but I loved it because the chocolate tasted like it was of very good quality.

The midday steamed shellfish meal combined with the late afternoon sachertorte pretty much killed our appetites for dinner, so we had yogurt and fruit in our hotel later.  I was happy even with that, though, because there was so much nice yogurt and fruit available in the grocery store we popped into.  Besides, I think sachertorte is worth killing my appetite for.

Saturday and Sunday in Vienna

First of all, there were no travel snafus leaving Kazakhstan.  I cannot overstate my happiness at this.  The flight wasn’t even at too horrible of an hour.  It left at 7:40, which meant an early morning, but also some sort of opportunity to sleep the previous night.

We took Vienna’s wonderful train from the airport to the city center, and had maybe a ten minute walk to our hotel.  Our room wasn’t ready yet, so we stored our luggage, went out for breakfast, and took a walk around the area to get our bearings.  Up until this point, my experience of Europe consisted of the European portion of Istanbul and a handful of airports, so Vienna was something very different for me.

Due to our early wake up and our lingering winter diseases, we decided to take a nap after that.  We got up in time for dinner, and went to a place recommended  by our guidebook as having some of the biggest and best schnitzels.  I wasn’t sure what I would think of the schnitzels, but they were terrific, and mine very impressively stuck out over the edges of the plate.  We got salads with these, and it was such a treat to have an array of leafy greens again.

The next day, we had various time constraints.  First, Scott and I ended up with some administrative tasks to take care of in the morning.  Secondly (and more enjoyably), we had purchased concert tickets at the Musikveirin in the evening.  We did some more wandering around with some smaller activities interspersed until it was time for the concert.  We saw the Anker clock, visited one of the two Judenplatz museum buildings, and saw the memorial to the victims of fascism

The Musikveirin was an impressive concert hall.  We saw the French Radio Philharmonic Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky and Berlioz.  We didn’t know much about the seats we were getting when we bought the tickets.  It’s a good thing we didn’t buy the cheapest seats because those appeared to not be seats at all, but rather a place to stand in a crowd.  I think our seats were the next price bracket up, and they were literally on the stage, behind the musicians.  I have never experienced that sort of seating arrangement, and it seemed quite surreal.  The sound quality was great, so I can’t complain!  Also, I was impressed that I didn’t hear a single cell phone or see a single camera flash during the performance.  Kudos Vienna concert-goers!

Memorial to the victims of fascism

Musikveirin, from my view on stage

Musikveirin from the back of the stage

Musikveirin from outside

St. Stephen's Cathedral

Anker Clock

 I learned about the Anker clock when I was reading about Vienna before our trip.  This large clock forms a bridge between two parts of the Anker Insurance Company building.  A historical figure (or pair of historical figures) represents each hour.  At 12:00, all of the historical figures move across the face of the clock.

I thought this sounded interesting, but didn't really want to plan a day around clock-watching.  However, Scott and I each had some administrative tasks to tend to on Sunday.  By the time we were done, it was pretty close to noon, and our hotel isn't far from the clock, so we decided to go.  A crowd of maybe twenty or so people were gathered to watch.

I haven't found an exhaustive list of all the historical figures on the clock, although I also haven't researched it too exhaustively yet.  It can be fun to guess or to make things up, anyway.  I managed to get a photo of each historical figure or pair.