Danke, Danke, Danke Schön!: 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.

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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!

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