Wien

Greetings all,

I'm feeling pretty smug - it's the End of Financial Year in Oz, and I'm on holidays! Nyer nyer!

Vienna Day #1 cont.

After faithfully blogging and sending messages home, we went to one of the Wien institutions, the American Cocktail Bar. Why the "American"? Who knows. This little bar has just turned 80 years old, and the cocktail list was very impressive. [I kept up with my keep-sake tradition, collecting cocktail menus... Everyone needs a hobby, right? To be fair, though, I did make sure that the menu I procured was pretty ratty and likely to be replaced pretty soon anyway. Promise.] We met some VERY lovely local lads who gave us lots of local hints for places to see & go. It turns out that the German & Austrian nations are not the best of friends - kinda like the Aussie-Kiwi relationship - so everyone here is rooting for Spain in the Cup final.

After a few drinks, we wandered about some more and found a cute little pub bistro for dinner. No dark beer on tap, which was a slight bummer. Since we're in the Schnitzel capital of the world (I LOVE that it's always spelled correctly here!) we had to have the cliche-ed Wiener Schnitzel for dinner, and I have to be honest here - it was pretty disappointing. NOTHING like the wonderful fare at Una's! Hopefully we'll get the chance to try again while we're here. After dinner we staggered back to the pension and continued the nightly game of "Sleep is Optional". I suspect the SFH (Stinking, Frickin' Hot) weather is still to blame.

Vienna Day #2

I'm loving this city. We spent Sunday wandering the streets and saw some amazing stuff...

We started out by walking up towards the palace & grounds to see the sights plus the Euro Cup Fan Zone. We walked past the Jewish Monument, a memorial for those lost in the Holocaust. The powerful images it represents were only slightly diminished by the wafting aroma resulting from all of the horse-drawn cart tours passing by. The smell of horse plus the standard SFH weather makes it pretty easy to locate the tour path!

We also managed to find an English-only cinema, thanks to our cocktail-loving locals. It was showing the new Roger Donaldson flick, The Bank Job, which seemed a good, air-conditioned alternative to the SFH weather!

The Fan Zone was pretty-much a yawn affair - merchandise, sponsor stands and a big mo-fo screen with a count-down to kick-off. We did a quick lap and continued on to the Museum Quarter, home of the National Library (by crikey, in an impressive building! Beats the hell out of leaky Ultimo for a library space!), the royal palaces & collections, plus the usual assortment of souvenirs, etc.

We then jumped on the metro to the Summer Palace, but we both quickly realised that this involved a lot more walking about in the sun and SFH humidity - no thanks. We headed back to the pension for a nap. After a few hours, we spent some time looking through all our maps, tour booklets & travel books to try and organise the rest of our visit time.

We walked back into the centre of town, looking for a nice place to Eat, Drink, and get football Merry, and struck gold almost immediately. A great little Indian place advertised itself as a Cocktail Bar & Restaurant, which to me indicated that they had their priorities in order! We found some seats outside in the crowd facing one of the mega-screens showing the game coverage and settled back.

2 hours, 4 cocktails and a butter chicken later (plus a partridge in a pear tree!), the score was 1-0 in favour of Spain. Again, most of the Austrians in the crowd were barracking for Spain, so just-about everybody was pretty darn happy with the result. We followed the crown into St Stephen's Square, mingled a bit with the party and headed back to bed.

Vienna Day #4

If I wanted 95% humidity, I would have stayed in Sydney...

After playing another night of Toss & Turn Olympics (no, not the fun kind!) we were both awake, showered, dressed and breakfast-ed by 8.30am which has been unheard-of so far in this trip. We headed back on the U-Bahn to the Summer Palace, and this time actually walked around having a look. The cool change finally came through (FINALLY!) and the rain was really welcome. The tour arrangement of the private rooms at the palace was pretty efficient, and we were herded through with about a gazillion other tourists.

Seeing this place, it is now pretty obvious to me why there are revolutions. Looking at the way the royal people lived over several generations, you start to dislike the smug bastards. Do they REALLY need gold gilting on every single wall? Surely the money they spent on the freakin' silver carriages COULD have been put to better use?! Plus, all of the in-breeding, political marriages and conniving could have been effort best put towards something a little more productive than more generations of in-breeders.

Regardless, it was a truly beautiful building. We headed into the (uber extravagant) gardens to the sound of a brass band. Once we arrived at the concert stage, we saw that the performers were from the NSW Fire Brigade Band and Marching Squad. We traveled half the way around the frickin' world to hear a band from home... (Helen rolls eyes in disgust). Mind you, they were pretty entertaining. The marching girls were a little scary, though.

Lots of attention was paid to two pretty different women - Empress Sisi and Princess Maria Louise. Separated by a few hundred years, they had some pretty different stories told about them. For example, I learned that Maria Loise inherited from her father, and managed to keep an empire together despite all sorts of maneuvering. She and hubby were apparently very much in love, and much credit is given to a piece of paper found in her bible after her death, counting the years, weeks, days & hours of their marriage. The fact that they had 18 children is probably a contributing factor to the theory of a happy marriage. (It's probably easier to have a big family when you have a palace full of servants to help take care of them!) Queenie is also praised for her prudent politicking when choosing spouses for her children to advance Austria's alliances in Europe - her daughter Marie Antoinette married well (I swear, they think this was a good, motherly marriage for her to make!) and the fact that poor Marie was auctioned off at the age of 14 to a dude who ended up loosing her a head just means that she didn't pay enough attention to the lessons her mother taught her! (These Austrians are crazy.)

This contrasted by the example of Sisi, a frivolous girl who married into the royals at the age of 16. She was, by all accounts, a flighty & vain lass, who wouldn't pay attention to her wise and instructive mother-in-law, but instead became obsessed with maintaining her slender figure and flitting about Europe. (The fact that she was ignored by her workaholic and cradle-snatching husband, had few friends, had 8 kids so probably had to work damn hard to retain her pre-baby body, and wasn't even ALLOWED to have a say in raising her own children, are facts conveniently ignored.) when she did rebel, and refused to send kiddie no. 8 back to Austria for her MIL to take of the poor lad's education, they practically sent the army after her.

We did a quick lap of the formal gardens, saw the big mo-fo of a fountain, and grabbed a quick lunch. We then headed to the art nouveau metro station, M got some pictures while I got a coffee.

Back into the city, we stopped in at the Royal Crypt in a church just off the central mall. Despite all of my bolshie raving about the palace, the crypt was very moving. The crypt goes back to the early 1600s, and the obvious attention and love with which the memorials have been made and laid here is amazing. The saddest part were some of the graves for the little guys, plus the memorial for Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie of WWI misfortune. Sophie was not a popular choice as royal wife, so when they married FF was forced to sign a document acknowledging the fact that Sophie would not be buried in the royal crypt. Good on him, he added that he wouldn't go there if she couldn't, and arranged a joint burial site for them in one of his country estates - on yer, Franz! Such a shame they ended up needing it so soon...

Afternoon tea was a Viennese coffee plus sacher torte - when in Vienna, do as the Viennese do! Mike is currently doing a walking tour showing the sights from the movie The Third Man. We're meeting up at the local brew house for dinner & beverages soon.