MAR-GOES

I’m going to start this off by apologizing for being so far behind on my blogs. With my parents being here, school wrapping up, and trips every weekend, I have found almost no time to sit and write. However, I was so luckily blessed with a 5 am train from Edinburgh to London this morning, thus I have a little time to fill you all in. Yes, yes, I am in the UK now, but to keep my blog in order, lets go back 3 weeks to my trip to Vienna, Austria. We are pretending it is March 31-April 2. (Which seems crazy because this feels like yesterday, but April is almost over and time flies.)

Ok, so my parents finally arrived and we had one lovely night in Prague before setting off to Vienna on Friday morning. I was excited to get to show my parents how things worked in Europe. Although it was my first trip to Austria, I had the upper hand on them with knowing transportation systems and central European culture norms. (They were quick learners.) We got on our bus in Prague early in the morning and we were off. Of course we were there in the blink of one of my eyes (I fall asleep on any mode of transportation every time). Vienna was a beautiful, clean, and lively place. Lucky for me, my father is into doing the museums and historical places… not that I’m not into that stuff, but usually we walk by important things, acknowledge them, take a picture, and turn around. When my dad is around, we go in them, tour them, learn, and still take pictures. I have to get my pictures, always. We started off our trip by checking out the most prominent thing in the city, St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It is a beautiful Romanesque and Gothic style Roman Catholic church built in the year 1137. We quick peeked in and decided we would be back the next day to do the full tour.

We then made our way to the Habsburg Palace. This palace is situated in the middle of the city, and it is beautiful. Again, we went in to see the museum inside. It started as a museum dedicated to Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Sisi), the wife of the emperor and Queen of Hungary. It then moved into the Imperial apartments. This is where Emperor Franz Joseph I and Sisi lived. We were able to walk throughout their halls and peek into rooms, some untouched from their time, some exactly replicated. I always find these things interesting, being able to peek into the lives of these important royal people. (As extravagant as their palaces, jewels, outfits, and parties seemed, their lives never actually looked too pleasing. It makes me feel better about not being born to a royal family…)

 

Vienna, in some ways, really reminded me of New York. It had a main area filled with lights and touristy things, it had an area full of high end shopping, and it had a bustling feel during the day and a big party scene at night. The main difference? Vienna was spotlessly clean. It was unbelievable. Almost every single person in that city was smoking, however, there were no cigarette butts found on the ground. Props to Vienna for being extremely diligent when it comes to keeping the city clean. Of course, being with my mom, we had to do a little shopping. This is our favorite thing to do together at home. Well, it’s definitely my favorite thing… I’m not entirely sure how much she likes following me around a mall, watching me try things on, and then (if I’m lucky) paying for things for me. But we do it all the time so she must enjoy our time. I found a few cool things and we went back to the hotel to relax a bit before dinner.

Again, my dad was on the ball with his planning and we had a reservation at one of the popular eating spots in town. We ate Viennese food at Café Central. This is a café where people such as Peter Altenberg, Anton Kuh, and Leon Trotsky would go to socialize and do work. At one point in time, this was the place to be if you were a somebody. In January 1913 alone, Sigmund Freud, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, and Trotsky were all visitors to the café. We topped off dinner with some delicious dessert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning, we were up early to head back for the full tour of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It is an absolutely beautiful church and I was happy to do the tour to learn more about it. There were 2 add-ons to our tickets. One was to go up to the bell tower. This gave us a bird eye view of the whole entire city. It was really cool to see. The other was the opposite, it was a tour of the catacombs underneath the church. I had a bad feeling about this one because I’m not a huge fan of the idea of going underground to see bones but hey, for history right? So we went down and first we saw a room where members of the royal family were buried. They had beautiful and ornate coffins. However, along the sides of the room there were jars. I naturally assumed they were filled with ashes, nope.. they were filled with organs. We were off to a great start to our underground tour. The next room was the home to some bishops’ coffins. Nothing bad there. Ok now is when I started having issues. He brought us literally through a cave underground and it switched to probably 20 degrees. While we were in this part of the tour he told us to look into the one window/hole in the wall. Bones, just bones. A bunch of them all over the place. Yeah, I’m really not into that so no thanks. As we kept following these narrow passageways he kept telling us to peek into the various holes. I learned my lesson the first time and decided against more peeking. I’m not sure if that’s me being disrespectful BUT if you are into that stuff, you do you. The first hole showed the bones of people whose coffins deteriorated and the rows of them underground just kept falling on the one underneath it. Thus, a pile of bones. The other main room was filled with bones of people who were killed by the plague. It was a mass grave, so no coffins or ceremonies. According to our tour guide, the city needed to make room for more graves so they made the prisoners go down there, clean the bones, and stack them to make room. Yikes!!! This is why you don’t commit crimes people. Ok enough from me on this subject.

 

So, I won’t go into too much detail because you can look him up online, but Gustav Klimt did a lot of his work in Vienna. He is a famous artist from the late 1800s and you probably have seen some of his work in your lifetime, potentially without knowing it. Some of his work is on display at the Belvedere Palace. So to the Belvedere Palace we went. Let me tell you, if I could pick a palace to live in, this is one of my top choices. It was beautiful and right in the middle of a large park. It is now an art museum. We specifically went to see a Klimt original. We were tired of walking so we bought tickets, went to where his paintings were, and left. Can you tell we are huge art buffs? It was worth it though; Klimt’s work is truly astounding. (And having my father there, I got a little history lesson on him, his works, and his association with WWII.)

 

Vienna is known for a delicious dessert called the Sacher Torte. It is a chocolate cake made in the Sacher Hotel. They had a small stand outside the hotel for people to buy the famous cakes. Of course we bought a small one to share. When we ate it later that night, I swear it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. So 1. If you ever find yourself in Vienna: GET ONE, 2. If you do, a certain someone would love to eat one again. Wink wink.

That night we had a piano concert. It was in the basement of another beautiful church and I didn’t know what to expect. A young man, around my age, came out and sat down. I thought, “hmm well how good can this be?”. THIS MAN WAS UNBELIEVABLE. He played some classic Mozart but also some songs to showcase his talent. His show lasted an hour, but I could’ve watched him play all day. There were points where I couldn’t even see his hands, that’s how fast he was moving. It was just brilliant. And that’s how we ended our time in Vienna. It was a very pleasant trip, and I was happy to spend it with my parents.

Like I said, school has been kind of busy with the semester wrapping up. I have a few papers and a few projects to work on in these last few weeks. It is crazy how fast time is flying, but the weather is cold again in Prague and I see the home weather getting in the 80s. I was really excited to enjoy Prague in nice weather but it doesn’t seem like that is going to happen. The weather forecast for the next 10 days in Prague does not have one day going above 55 degrees. Oh well, I’ll be home in the summer warmth soon enough.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend if you celebrate. Take care my peeps.

xx