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.