Vienna

I am going to have to put my brains over a rack for this one, it has been a long time since my last confession.
Our arrival in Vienna was marked by a sudden rainstorm, conveniently. We made our way to the hostel, which was in disarray. It is student accommodation during the uni year, and this was the first day of hostel operations for the summer. The key system was stupid - one key per room. So if you left the room you had to give the key to reception in case your roommates wanted it. Very inefficient. Never mind, we had lovely roommates, and made ourselves a dinner of a can of goulash -type stuff that we'd been carrying around since Budapest. Spent most of the evening doing laundry.

Thursday morning, though, Vienna began for properly. After a healthy bowl of muesli we walked into the centre of town along Mariahilferstrasse. Vienna is a very wealthy looking city, lots of expensive shops and cars, and well-dressed people. In the centre of town is St Stephens, a huge gothic cathedral that is dirtier than the mind of a heathen. They do seem to be making an effort to clean it, though, and it will look amazing once they're done. Further into the town we came on the Jesuit church, the name of which escapes me, with a much less exciting exterior. The interior, though, was far and away the most lavish I have ever seen - and I've seen a lot of churches in the last month. The columns were a red and green swirly stone, and were not straight but spiralled. There was not an inch of bare stone. There was gold and marble and lavish paintings over every inch. This is a rich order of monks. Past this church, on the outside of the old city walls (which no longer exist at all), was the MAK museum, a very enjoyable museum about functional design, in which each room is curated by a different artist. It was full of beautiful articles of furniture, as well as a bunch of other stuff. After this we went to a slightly less light-hearted museum at Judenplatz. This commemorated the history of the Jewish community in Mediaeval Vienna, and had an amazing archeological dig of the foundations of the old synagogue, destroyed in 1421, entombed within it.
I had had enough of museums for the day, but Margot went into the Hofburg museum, which she told me later was wonderful. I spent the time visiting a few more churches, my favourite of which was St. Michael's, and wandered around the city a bit. I found a house where Beethoven had lived and written some of his famous music, and scouted out the Rathausplatz where it seemed there was a film festival. I then waited for M on the grass in the park behind the Hofburg. When she was done, we walked around a bit more, went back to the hostel for some pasta, and then headed to Rathausplatz to watch a film of a concert of Strauss, Haydn, and another guy. Of course it rained on us, but we were prepared, and had a wonderful time.

The next morning we tried to leave early, but somehow got started late. We went straight out to Schonbrunn Palace, which was absolutely amazing, despite the lacklustre audioguide. It was strange to walk through these opulent apartments where an actual emperor had lived and worked only less than a hundred years ago. And we stood in the room where Mozart had given his first performance, at the age of six, to the empress. Very cool. The grounds of the palace are also beautiful, and include some hilarious fake roman ruins. After drinking our fill, we went back into the city on the U, and went to search for tickets to see the Spanish Riding School, eventually finding them after some false starts. I'm afraid to say we stooped to McDonald's as we were desperately hungry by this point, but it's not as cheap over here, despite tasting the same, i.e. terrible. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the Albertina museum - it is supposed to hold photography and graphic art, but for some reason holds a collection of modern art. It did however have a very nice royal apartment which we looked through a couple of times. We spent the evening, after another home-cooked meal, wandering along the extremely dodgy looking canal, and through some very nice parts of the old town.

On Saturday morning we went to the Spanish Riding school, something I've always wanted to see. Unfortunately the proper show was on holiday, so there was just a display of some young stallions, some foals, and some carriage driving. A bit disappointing really but cheap at the price, and it's still nice to say I've been there. After that we negotiated the wasteland that is Sudbahnhof to buy our ticket for the next day, then made our way to the Belvedere. This is a palace built buy a prince and then bought by Maria Theresa for use as an art gallery. It contains some very famous artworks, inlcuding Jacques Louis-David's Napoleon, and a collection of Gustave Klimt, the most famous of course being "The Kiss", images of which are to be found plastering tote bags and coffee mugs in every second shop in Vienna. After exhausting the gallery's possibilities, I went on a mission to find a swiss army knife, which was successful. Now we won't have to cut salami and cheese with only our teeth! We spent the evening, I'm afraid to say, watching movies, in english. It was great.

In the morning, we took a last look around Vienna, and checked out the oldest church in the city, Ruprechtskirche, parts of which date back to 720. The majority of it is still 11th century, so very very old. Then, alas, our time in beautiful, expensive Vienna was at an end, and we had to board the train for Prague.