June 3rd: DAS ENDE

Well, it's taken me a while, but I've finally reached my last blog post, and this one's about the *sniffle* last day *sniffle* in Vienna!  I definitely miss it!

June 3rd began with our final discussion, which was mainly just a review and reminder about upcoming assignments.  We kept it pretty brief so that we could get out and enjoy our last day in the city!  Our first stop was a flea market, whose discovery I don't remember at all... I think one of my friends stumbled upon it.  Anyway, I wasn't really interested in any of the goods, but my friends got some cool stuff, and the people were incredibly nice!  One of my friends got a very nice tea set for just three euros, and some of my other friends were given things for free!  I swear the Austrians have a soft spot for Americans, or maybe just for people who try and fail miserably at speaking their language; it must be adorable..........  After the flea market, my group headed to a restaurant that we had been eyeing for some time, a place by the glorious name of "Asia Restaurant."  (There are actually lots of "China Restaurants," "Japan Restaurants," and "Asia Restaurants" in Austria, and maybe the rest of Europe)  As you can imagine, we were overjoyed to eat at a place that claimed to represent the world's largest continent.  Unfortunately, the food quality wasn't the greatest, and while there was Chinese, Korean, and Japanese food, food from the remaining 45 Asian countries was nowhere to be found—I totally should have asked for my money back, right?  The best part of the experience came at the end of our meal, when a waitress came up to us and said (phonetically), "keena vine?"  We were pretty sure we heard "wein" the German word for wine, but we had no idea what she was asking about it.  We tried to ask if it was free, but she didn't seem to understand.  She said it several times before walking away and coming back with small cups of plum rice wine.  At that point we realized "keena" was "China" in the German pronunciation.  It was pretty hilarious.  Fortunately the wine was free, and delicious!  After Asia Restaurant, I'm honestly not entirely sure what we did for the next few hours.  I think we split up and did some packing, some last-minute shopping, etc., but I really don't know.  In any case, the next big thing we did was pay a final visit to the Turkish baker near our hotel.  We always bought awesome baklava and other pastries from the guy, for really good prices (you could get huge loaves of bread for just one euro), and he sometimes even gave us extra stuff for free.  He was a funny guy.  He didn't speak much English, but he recognized that we were American, and one of the first things he said to us, with a big smile on his face, was "Obama!"  Anyway, on the last day we brought him a card that we had made and signed for him, and he gave us free cookies and took pictures with us.  It was great!  After that we headed down the block to Caffé Latte to have one last dinner with the whole class.  As always, the food was delicious (I tried tandoori shrimp!) and the conversations were great.  I even managed to get some hilariously awful pictures of my friends.  After dinner a few of us headed to Stephansplatz for some last-minute souvenir shopping, and I managed to find a couple of things, but the best part was going to the Hotel Sacher for a piece of the famous Original Sachertorte.  We got it to-go, which I thought was kind of funny considering the fanciness of the place, but they were happy to box it up for us.  We ate it across the road at the Staatsoper, where the rest of our group was watching an opera on the big screen outside.  Eating the Original Sachertorte is one of those things you just have to do in Vienna, and it was a perfect way to end the day, and the trip.  After that, all we did was pack up and get what little sleep we could—we had to go straight to the airport at 6:15 the next morning.  It wasn't the greatest feeling, getting less than four hours of sleep before inevitable jet-lag, but I don't think anyone cared.  We were just sad to be leaving one of the coolest places in the world!  Poor Wien, it must be so heartbroken that we're gone...

Well, that is das Ende of my blog...  I hope you enjoyed it!!  I will update this thing with pictures eventually, I promise!

PHOTO UPDATE:

The Original Sachertorte... take-out style.

Catching the end of an opera outside the Staatsoper!

Hilarious.

One last look at Caffé Latte!

Tschüss, Wien!

June 2nd: Sound, Paint, Chicken, and Chillin'

Saturday the 2nd began with a trip to the Haus der Musik, a museum (sort of...) dedicated to several different aspects of music and music history.  First of all, there were several exhibits on the history of classical music in Vienna, with a few cool pieces of memorabilia, such as Leonard Bernstein's tuxedo, Brahms's reading glasses, and an assortment of batons used by famous conductors.  Next there was a huge section dedicated to the physics of sound, with several fascinating oddities to learn about.  Probably the coolest of these was the Shepard scale, a special combination of sine waves that produces a seemingly "infinite" glissando; it goes up or down forever but never gets anywhere.  Some of the other displays included an audio catalog of human sounds and a series of ambience-domes (you stick your head into them and hear, for example, the sounds of a square in Venice).  After the physics stuff came the composer rooms.  These were large exhibits dedicated to single composers, including Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Schoenberg, and others.  There was so much to see and so little time that I didn't get to absorb all of the displays, but I did learn some cool facts.  For example, there are 27 documented Beethoven residences in Vienna, but he may have had as many as 60 in the 35 years that he lived there.  Other parts of the exhibits were just weird.  For example, they had a door from one of Beethoven's apartments, and they had several silly things like matchboxes with Johann Strauss II's portrait on the front.  That being said, I did enjoy most of the composer rooms, particularly the one dedicated to Gustav Mahler.  It had a really unique setup, with trees protruding through the floor and ceiling and hung with letters, pictures, and other historical artifacts.  It was definitely one of the most creative museum exhibits I had yet seen.  Our last stop before the gift shop was a virtual conducting game, where you hold a wii-remote-esque baton and conduct a recorded orchestra performance in which the orchestra actually follows your motions.  As you might expect, it was not entirely accurate, so my performance was really embarrassing.  Nevertheless, it was a fun way to end the tour!  After the Haus der Musik I went to the Café Salieri with a couple of my friends and had a delicious, if overpriced, Hawaiian pizza.  Italian food was simply unavoidable in Vienna...  After that we met up with the rest of our group at the Leopold Art Museum, another famous and fantastic assortment of works by Klimt, Schiele, and others.  One cool special exhibit was "Klimt Persönlich," or "Klimt Up Close and Personal."  In addition to his works, the exhibit had handwritten letters, postcards, notes... all kinds of things to provide insight into the mind of the famous artist.  It was neat to see how things as simple as his handwriting and writing style progressed over the years.  For example, his early letters were utilitarian, with only a few bare-bones words to get the message across and most of the paper taken up by his signature.  As the years progressed, however, the letters became longer and more heartfelt.  It was nice to appreciate these finer details of Klimt's life; it wasn't something I expected from an art museum!  As for the rest of the museum, I really enjoyed it too, but I won't go into great detail here because there was such a variety of things to see.  Instead I plan to post pictures (on all the posts) very soon.  That will give you an idea of some of the other artists, the biggest of these being Egon Schiele, one of Klimt's contemporaries.  His works were interesting, if a bit disturbing, because of a seemingly Freudian influence; he typically explored the darker, more primal aspects of nature and his paintings certainly reflect that.  After the Leopold Museum, we headed back toward the Turkish neighborhood near our hotel, picked up some Russian beer that I had been wanting to try for some time—it was delicious—, and met up at Café Ando, a primarily Turkish restaurant.  I had some curried chicken skewers that were pretty tasty.  After that we headed ALL the way back to the Museumsquartier (right next to the Leopold Museum...), the huge young adult hangout, just to chill for a while.  It was nice to just sit around and chat over some snacks and drinks after a long day (and a long trip at that!).

That pretty much concludes the next-to-last day!  One more post to go!  Woohoo!

PHOTO UPDATE:

Bernstein's tuxedo in the Haus der Musik.

Famous batons!

Part of the Beethoven room.

My personal favorite, the Mahler room.

Another view.  It was so cool!

Virtual conducting.

More great pizza!

At the Leopold.  This is an example of Schiele's work.

A portrait of Klimt's sister, by Klimt himself.

The Museums Quartier was the place to be!

June 1st: Good Food, Good Paintings, Good Musicians, and Good Friends

Friday, June 1st, started with a final mapping session with my fellow mappers, Rosy and Maria, at Stadtpark.  In all honesty, we didn't accomplish anything extraordinary, so I won't detail it here, but suffice it so say that we finished up our notes and are ready to get to work on the project.  After mapping we stopped for lunch at a really nice Austrian restaurant.  The food was delicious!  One of us ordered bread with a "beer spread" that was surprisingly tasty, and which I'm going to have to find a recipe for sometime soon...  Anyway it was nice to actually experience Austrian food for a change; it seemed like all we had had up to that point was Italian food!  After lunch we met up with the rest of the group for a tour of another art museum, this time the famous Belvedere.  Our class came at a perfect time; in addition to the famous Klimt paintings on permanent display, there was a special exhibit on gold, so we got to see lots of examples of gold artwork and learn about the gold leaf process.  This was nice because almost all of the Klimt we studied was from his "gold period," featuring gold leaf in some way or another.  Learning about the process behind it was both fascinating and humbling.  It looked like it was difficult to gild even simple objects, so I can't imagine how Klimt worked the gold into his paintings!  After the gold exhibit we moved on to the permanent displays, which were really nice.  The best part, of course, was seeing Klimt's "Der Kuss," or "The Kiss," by far his most famous work.  I was surprised by how different it was from the photos and copies I had seen.  For one thing, it was huge, about 6 feet by 6 feet in size.  Furthermore, the canvas was covered in gold, much more than I had expected at least.  We also discussed some of the finer details of the painting, such as positive versus negative space, the inspiration behind it, etc., with our art professor, and I was amazed by how much I had failed to grasp the significance of the work.  It was an enlightening experience, to say the least!  In addition to the Klimt, we got to see works by Van Gogh, Monet, Schiele, and others, and there were both impressionist and realist works.  All of them were really nice, but one that stuck out to me was a painting by Carl Moll called "Der Naschmarkt in Wien."  It was a realist painting, almost photographic in quality, that depicted the Naschmarkt as it appeared in 1894.  For one thing, I had no idea the Naschmarkt was that old, but more importantly, it was awesome to see such a beautiful painting of one of my favorite places in the world!  The Belvedere was definitely one of the best art museums I've ever seen, and I wish we could have had a more thorough go of it, but it wasn't long before I and the rest of the music majors had to head off to the famous Zentralfriedhof cemetery.  It wasn't a required trip, but it was meaningful for us because we got to see the graves of Beethoven, Mozart (a monument; his remains are irretrievably lost, buried in an unmarked grave), Brahms, Schubert, Schoenberg, the Strausses, and other big wigs from classical music history.  It was a really special experience, not only because of the musical atmosphere, but also just because it was a beautiful cemetery!  We saw dozens of fancy-looking tombs belonging to random people we had never heard of, and that was only in a tiny fraction of the cemetery; the place goes on for hundreds of acres and has 3 million interments!  If only we could have seen more of it...  To top off the experience, on the way out, there was some kind of blackbird perched on one of the graves, singing these long, complex, beautiful melodies that just demanded attention.  I couldn't think of a better home for such a musical creature.  After the cemetery, we headed off to Esterházykeller for a second time, this time to enjoy a nice dinner with our music history professor.  On the way there, we encountered a group of really talented street musicians, the Cimbal Music Orchestra, and picked up one of their CDs.  It was totally worth it; in addition to the typical folksy stuff that you expect from street performers, there were renditions of music from movies like Pulp Fiction and Angels and Demons.  Cool stuff.  When we finally got to Esterházykeller, I wasn't very hungry because I had grabbed a käsekrainer, but I did enjoy some nice Esterházy wine and dessert and of course, a great conversation with my fellow musicians.  A great end to a great day!

PHOTO UPDATE:

The solitary heron of Stadtpark.  He sat like this for at least half an hour!

Between the buildings of the Belvedere.  No photos were allowed inside, unfortunately.

Beethoven's grave.

Mozart's memorial (his remains are lost).

Schubert's grave.

Brahms's grave.

Johann Strauss II's grave

Wolf's grave.

Gluck's grave.

Schoenberg's grave.  Perfect, right?

Awesome street musicians near Stephansplatz.

May 31st: Monks and Moors

Back to blogging!  Note:  I realized I left something out of my May 30th post, so I just updated it. Check it out!

On Thursday the 31st we took another excursion outside of Vienna, this time to Stift Melk, or Melk Abbey.  We arrived early (before our scheduled tour), so we had plenty of time to explore the small town of Melk.  It was a lot of fun!  We found an antique store, a bakery, and a chocolate shop all in close proximity, so we took the opportunity to buy some souvenirs and/or food.  One interesting thing I noticed was that many of the stores we walked into had fancy liquors for sale, and the storekeepers were all very enthusiastic about offering samples.  I'm surprised we weren't drunk by the time our tour started!  The tour of the abbey was one of the best tours of the whole trip.  The first part was laid out chronologically, so we were able to see the history of the abbey from its founding in 1089 to its "baroque-ification" in the 1700s to its present state.  Our guide spoke very dramatically ("Join me... on a journey... to the NEXT ROOM!"  Okay, that was an exaggeration, but you get the idea), and it made the tour all the more enjoyable.  After learning some about the history of the abbey, we stepped into an incredible hall that was decorated in an elaborate Baroque style.  Particularly impressive was the ceiling fresco; the ceiling of the hall was not a true dome, but it appeared to be so because of an optical trick incorporated into the painting!  After the hall, we stepped out into a large terrace-like area and enjoyed the sunlight for a few minutes before heading into the library.  We weren't allowed to see all of it, but it was a truly massive place with over 100,000 books, some dating back to antiquity.  One interesting feature was that the main room of the library did have a true dome, also with elaborate frescos, so we were able to compare it to the previous hall.  I never would have known the difference if our tour guide hadn't pointed it out.  After the library we headed down a totally awesome spiral staircase (it had a mirror at the bottom of it to make it look bigger) into the next room, the cathedral.  It was probably the most ornate cathedral we had seen yet, covered in gold and sculpted with an unbelievable degree of detail.  The best part, however, was the pair of skeletons...  There were human skeletons, the remains of two "unknown saints" that had been given to the church... somehow(?), dressed in ceremonial robes and placed in windowed chambers at opposite sides of the cathedral.  The weirdest part is that they were posed, one of them kind of like a model.  Oh, and they were given the random names Friedrich and Clemens.  Cute.  The cathedral marked the end of our tour, so next we decided to take a walk through the abbey park.  It was a really chill place, perfect for monastic people but kind of boring for touristic people like ourselves.  Thus we didn't stay long before heading into the gift shop.  It had a selection of several fine wines and liqueurs that were brewed by the monks, so I picked up a bottle as a souvenir before we headed out to go back to the train station.  When we got back to Vienna, it was almost time for dinner, so we headed off to the Museums Quartier, a very popular area for college students and other young adults.  There we were treated to another free dinner from our professors at a biergarten called Gangl.  Everyone—except Dr. Toub—enjoyed the entrées, and some of us enjoyed the beer, but my favorite part was my dessert, "mohr im hemd."  The name means "moor in a shirt," which I find odd, but I suppose you could make the connection; it was a chocolate bundt cake with hot fudge and whipped cream on the side.  Apparently it is a popular Viennese dessert, and for good reason, because it was delicious!  After dinner, some of us decided to go down to the Danube to see a special area with shops right on the waterfront.  Unfortunately we got there too late and everything was closed, but we stuck around for a few minutes anyway just to enjoy the atmosphere.  After that we headed back to the hotel and socialized for a bit (my friend, Rosy, ended up climbing a tree in our courtyard, that was fun!) before calling it a day.

PHOTO UPDATE:

Melk Monastery.

Inside the monastery.

Some of the architecture was really beautiful!

Exploring historical artifacts from the monastery.

Amazing artwork!

View of Melk.  It was a beautiful little town!

One of the cooler architectural features.

Melk Cathedral.  A Baroque explosion.

One of the unknown saint skeletons!  I believe they named him Friedrich.

Park behind the monastery.

Mohr im hemd!  Delicious!

The Danube at night.

May 28th - 30th: Wine, Ferris Wheels, Museums, and More Museums

Monday the 28th was our first day back after our free weekend trips, and as such, it was a lazy day.  We got up later than usual and began by sharing about our weekend adventures.  There were two groups that actually left Vienna; ours went to Innsbruck and Salzburg and the other went to Budapest.  The Budapest group apparently had a lot of fun!  I don't remember everything that they did, but judging from their Facebook photos, they rode tandem bikes and other strange, multi-person, human-powered vehicles, took chairlifts up to an overlook, ate giant funnel cakes and cotton candy, talked with Israeli people, and rode around in a night bus full of drunk people.  Cool!  A couple of interesting things I learned:  1) Budapest is actually a combination of two cities, Buda and Pest, and 2) Hungary's currency is called the forint, and as of this post, 1 forint = 0.0042 U.S. dollars.  One of the Budapest goers was telling me they got a 10,000-forint bill when they exchanged their cash (that's approximately $40)!  I wish I remembered everything the Budapest people did, but nevertheless, it sounds like they had a lot of fun.  There were a few people, including the teachers, who stayed in Vienna for the weekend, and I think they had fun too.  My friend, David, had lessons with the principal trumpet player from the Wiener Philharmoniker and bought $500 worth of musical scores—he brought a little more spending cash than was necessary.  My friend, Drew, explored the city, found some new sights and attractions, and went to some awesome concerts.  Dr. Hellenbrand, the German literature teacher, ran into the Dalai Lama.  Dr. Toub, the art teacher, and Dr. Mansure, the music history teacher, did pretty much nothing.  Weirdos.  After we shared our weekends, we discussed some Austrian poetry before heading off to work on our mapping projects for the second time.  We noticed some more cool stuff this time.  For one thing, there is a lot of wildlife around the pond in the middle of the park, mostly birds, and all really cool!  TONS of pigeons and ravens congregate there, so you can see all the variation in their coloring, which is really neat.  Then, of course, there are lots of ducks swimming around.  But the coolest thing is that there is a giant heron living on an island in the middle of the pond!  At one point we saw it flying around the pond, and I swear its wingspan must have been ten feet.  We also noticed that the canal that divides the park actually divides it into (2/3) a "lounging" area with lots of open grassy areas and (1/3) a "playing" area with game courts and playgrounds.  It also appeared that nearby schools used the park for recess and/or field trips (it was hard to tell; some groups just played on the playgrounds for a few minutes, but another group looked like it was being given a tour of the park).  We also noticed that some areas of the park don't architecturally "work."  For example, one area appeared to be nothing more than empty planters surrounding a fountain.  It was a fairly large open area, but it was completely devoid of activity, I guess because it appeared there was nothing to do there!  We'll have to do some outside research on the park to figure things like this out, but I nevertheless feel like we made some good progress this time around.  After mapping for a couple of hours, we headed off to find a little winery in Stephansplatz called Esterházykeller, which carries the wines of Schloss Esterházy.  We stopped in at happy hour (which typically spans several hours or even whole days in Austria!) for €1 wine, and it was excellent quality, if a bit too strong—I think we were all feeling a little droopy on the way out!  Whether that was from the wine or the exhaustion of our weekends, I don't really know, but it wasn't long before we headed off to bed anyway.

PHOTO UPDATE:

Esterházykeller.  It had great wines from Schloss Esterházy.  That's the only photo for today!

Tuesday the 29th was a full day!  It began with a visit to Schönbrunn, the "summer home" of the Hapsburgs, the royal family of Austria.  The place was pretty much hilarious.  Not only was it massive and drowned in gold, but also, even the supposedly "modest" rooms were incredibly extravagant, and the grounds of the palace featured a 100% artificial plot of ancient Roman ruins.  According to our art history professor, that was the fashionable thing for rich people back in the day.  Despite its ridiculous features, I did actually enjoy Schönbrunn much more than I did the Hofburg, mostly because Schönbrunn didn't have an hour-long tour of the royal dinnerware.  Some of its opulence was actually, dare I say it, interesting.  One room had a ton of Chinese ink prints that were all tinged in black and blue, creating a beautifully uniform color scheme and a unique atmosphere.  Another room was lined with black and gold materials (go App State!) that gave the walls an iridescent, mother-of-pearl quality.  It too was unique and beautifully crafted.  After touring Schönbrunn, we stumbled on a Chinese buffet that had low prices and surprisingly high quality.  I ventured out of my comfort zone and tried raw sushi, and even sake and rice wine, all of which were delicious!  After the buffet we scoped out a new café called Café Neko, which is home to five free-roaming cats.  It was really fun to drink coffee and eat pastries while cats prowled around our feet!  We stayed for a pretty good while before heading off to the Prater, the largest park in the city and home of the Riesenrad, Vienna's famous giant ferris wheel.  Naturally, we rode the ferris wheel first, and it was a lot of fun, but there was another ride that stole the show.  It was a rotating swing set, just like you see at carnivals, amusement parks, etc., but it was special in that the swings rose up to the top of a tower that was as tall as the ferris wheel, 212 feet!  It was fun to ride but also kind of terrifying because a maintenance guy was standing on the spinning part for the duration of the ride.  We all thought we were either going to die or see a horrible accident...  After the Prater, we finished the day with a viewing of The Third Man, an Orson Welles classic—and an awesome movie!  What made it so special for us was that it was set in Vienna, so we got to see several places we had actually visited throughout the city, including the ferris wheel!  I won't detail the plot here, but follow this link if you would like to learn more about it.

PHOTO UPDATE:

Schönbrunn, the SUMMER HOME of the Habsburgs.

The palace grounds.

Despite its excess, it really was beautiful!

100% artificial Roman ruins.  Apparently all rich people had to have them back in the day.

These little guys were prancing around our feet in Café Neko!

The famous Riesenrad!

View of the Prater from the Riesenrad.

Wednesday the 30th was a double museum day!  We started with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, or art history museum.  It had some fascinating exhibits, most of which were from the 15th and 16th centuries, and there were so many paintings we hardly had time to see a fraction of them.  That being said, there were some amazing works by Caravaggio, Titian, Vivarini, Arcimboldo, Durer, and others—and even more amazing were the student painters who were copying these masterpieces, right in the middle of the museum!  One section that stuck out to me was a series of paintings by Arcimboldo, in which human faces were formed from objects associated with the different seasons (for example, summer's face was made up of fruits).  It was interesting to see a seemingly modernist idea in a medieval painting.  Another great exhibit was the collection of paintings by Peter Bruegel, which is currently the largest Bruegel collection in the world.  I was intrigued by Bruegel's style because it was so distinct from those of his contemporaries.  For example, he had a way of enhancing and diminishing different features by playing with perspective, selectively "flattening" and "extruding," that I had never seen before.  Furthermore, the objects of emphasis in his paintings are sometimes unclear or surprising.  For example, in "The Procession to Calvary," Jesus is in the center of the painting, a traditional focus point, but he is also small, dark, and hardly discernible from the other people in the painting.  This "Where's Waldo?" approach to painting seems to make some statements that are very unusual considering Bruegel's time period!  While the Bruegel was probably the most interesting painting exhibit in the museum, I think my favorite part was a special display at the entrance of the museum that allowed visitors to climb up near the ceiling.  This allowed us to view the elaborate wall and ceiling paintings from inches away, to examine the detail to a degree that is not normally possible.  In particular, we viewed the paintings of late-19th/early-20th century artist Gustav Klimt, whose renderings of the female form were absolutely incredible, almost photographic in detail.  I wanted to see more but it wasn't long before we had to move on to the Naturhistorisches Museum, or natural history museum.  It too had some amazing exhibits, featuring everything from evolution to dinosaurs, gems to fossils, and ancient tools to ancient art.  Particularly interesting was the Venus von Willendorf, a small figurine that was once thought to be the oldest piece of art found in Austria.  It was neat because the museum also had the ACTUAL oldest known work of art from Austria! It was much more crude than the Venus, but it was nevertheless interesting to see both artifacts in one museum, and to be able to compare and contrast them.  We looked at a few more ancient artifacts before venturing off to Ottakringer Brewery, the last large brewery remaining in Vienna (others have been bought out by a massive corporation).  We sampled several different beers, including a citrus "radler" (a "lemonade beer" style that is unfortunately not available in the US, to my knowledge) that was very tasty.  We shopped around for souvenirs for a few minutes (I got an Ottakringer stein!) and then my group headed off to see yet another museum, the Albertina art museum.  We arrived pretty late, but we moved quickly, so I think we got to see all of the exhibits.  They were really nice!  There was a special Picasso/Monet (and other modern art) exhibit that featured one of Monet's famous "Water Lilies" paintings and several of Picasso's late works.  As you might expect, everyone appreciated the Monet, but much of the Picasso was difficult to appreciate.  Fortunately there were plenty of works by other artists too, so we all found something to enjoy as we toured the exhibit.  I particularly liked a painting titled "Landscape with Lanterns" by Paul Delvaux.  After the main Monet/Picasso exhibit, we toured a Klimt exhibit that was, unfortunately, somewhat disappointing.  The first room of the exhibit featured some of Klimt's paintings, but after that, there were just halls and halls of sketched studies (no final products).  That being said, many of the sketches were preparations for paintings that we had already seen and studied, so it was at least interesting to see how Klimt's ideas progressed as he refined his works.  I think if we had had more time, we would have been able to better appreciate the exhibit, but we had to rush through much of it because the museum was about to close.  We stopped by the gift shop for a minute and then headed back to the hotel for bed!

Just a few more posts left to go!  I'm almost finished, you guys!

PHOTO UPDATE:

Inside the Kunsthistorisches Museum.  This scaffolding allowed for an up-close look at Klimt's work!

One of the more amazing sights at the museum.  She wasn't the only one either!

Vivid detail!

One of my favorite works by Bruegel, "The Tower of Babyl."

Huge mineral exhibit in the Naturhistorisches Museum.

Who doesn't like dinosaurs?!

Venus von Willendorf.

One of the creepier displays...

There were so many cool animal displays.

At the Albertina, I managed to snap a shot of Monet's "Water Lilies" before I realized no photos were allowed!