I have to start my Salzburg post by sending a massive THANK YOU to my lovely boyfriend. I doubt he will even read this, but without him, I wouldn’t have come to Salzburg at all!
I originally intended to spend three nights in Innsbruck. However, a week before my trip, we started watching one of my favorite shows of all time, which I honestly just consider to be a very long movie. It’s called The Tenth Kingdom, and it’s an NBC mini-series from 2000 that lasts around seven hours. My cousins showed it to me when I was little, and I’ve been in love ever since. It’s a right of passage into true friendship to sit through these glorious seven hours with me. Only one person has ever watched it with me start to finish within 24 hours. (Hey, Morgan!)
The series takes place in a world among many of the fairy tale princesses we all know. Several of the beginning scenes take place at this huge castle in the mountains, called The Snow White Memorial Prison. (Lol!) As we watched, I pondered aloud where this castle might exist in real life. Sean did some searching, and when he found out it was in Austria, he determined I’d be silly not to go. (“Why would you NOT go?!”)
I tried explaining I was not actually going anywhere near the castle, that the nearest big city was Salzburg, and even then it was over an hour of additional travel to reach the fortress. But again, he thought I was crazy for even considering not making this detour.
Whelp, I still think I’m a bit crazy, but I tossed my nonrefundable third night in Innsbruck in the trash and hopped on a train to Salzburg! (The reason I thank Sean is that I really quite enjoyed the detour, and I really did all I wanted to do while I was in Innsbruck. Win-win!)
I had planned to wake up at 8am, but on my early clock, I woke up at seven and decided to catch an earlier train, chocolate croissant in-hand! The early clock kind of rocks.
Due to work on the train tracks, I had to de-board my train after only half an hour and switch to a crowded bus. Boooo. The ride was still pretty, but I definitely picked the wrong side, so I didn’t get many good photos.
Once I arrived in Salzburg and got my bearings, I headed to St. Sebastian Church and its gorgeous adjacent cemetery. Some of Mozart’s family is buried here, as he was born and raised in Salzburg!
The only real thing I wanted to do on this day was to visit the Snow White Memorial Prison, tehehe. I was shooting for the two o’clock train so that I wouldn’t waste all of my daylight running back and forth. Luckily, when I picked up a city map from my hostel, it had been scribbled upon, and this little “city mountain” was circled with the path from the hostel outlined.
Salzburg is surrounded by these hills that are charmingly referred to as “city mountains.” They were great defenses in the old days, but now they make for great viewpoints!
I spent a couple hours just wandering up and around this mountain, getting a nice view of the city and the Salzburg Fortress. It was quite exhausting! I got so sweaty, haha.
I had a little time to spare after my mini hike, so I explored a couple churches in the Old Town, as well as the Mirabell Gardens and the neighboring Marble Hall in Mirabell Castle.
Pretty! But it was finally time for my big adventure. To the Fourth Kingdom! (If you know, you know.)
I caught some great shots of the castle just from the train, but getting off and hiking up to it was very worth the extra effort.
It was over thirty minutes of walking and hiking to reach the castle by foot, and I was momentarily distracted by an empty playground, equipped with swings and a zipline.
I continued my ascent toward the imposing fortress, still a bit in awe to be traveling to a land I’d seen so many times on the little screen.
As I’m sure you can imagine by the “Prison” title, this is not a super happy place in the TV show. There was this one especially-evil-looking mountain behind the fortress, but I couldn’t get a good picture before it became occluded by the clouds for the rest of the day. The other strangely evil thing was that these huge birds kept circling the fortress, just like in the show! It was all very surreal!
When I finally made my way to the entrance, I learned the fortress is home to a historical falconry, and as I was climbing the hill, they were in the middle of their daily presentation of these huge birds. I rounded the corner, and a giant culture flew directly at me, coming within feet of me! Ha!
I only caught the last few minutes of the show, but that’s probably fine since it was conducted entirely in German.
Then I was free to wander the castle grounds a bit.
There was a falconry museum and a temporary exhibit on witchcraft. Very evil!!
I joined a guided tour through the interior of the castle, but this, too, was conducted in German. I had to hold a boring audio guide up to my ear in English. A bummer, too, because the guide seemed so fun and animated! If only I could have understood her!
We got to see the courtyard from the upper floors of the castle.
And THIS was a window originally used to shoot intruders or pour molten pitch onto them, but it was later turned into a… Toilet. Who needs plumbing when you can just go down the side of your castle, right?!
Of course, my favorite part of the tour was the view from the bell tower.
Fun, fun, fun!
My phone battery was almost completely dead by this point (which will continue to be a headache for the rest of the trip, I think!), and it was spitting and cold. I made my way down into the town by hopping a free ride down the funicular. Thank goodness I didn’t have to hike that again! The path up was already slippery without the added rain!
My phone did turn off on me once I made it into town, so I spent a fair bit of energy looking for outlets, and even charged my phone in a bathroom at one point, in case I needed it to find my way back to my hostel in Salzburg.
I was also ravenous by this point, and mercifully found a grocery store. I picked up some snack sausages, two pretzels, and some mixed berries for dinner.
What I didn’t realize until my mama told me was that much of the Sound of Music was filmed in and around Salzburg!
Turns out the Snow White Memorial Prison was also used as a backdrop to film the opening picnic scenes of Do-Re-Mi! I had considered hiking up to the very hill where they filmed the scene, but with the blistering cold, the hunger, and the lack of phone battery, I decided it best to head home. A very fun day trip, indeed!
The hostel I was staying in actually plays The Sound of Music every single night, so of course I had to watch some. My mom watched it in the hospital while she was in labor with me, so you could say I was born loving it!
I meant to only watch a few scenes, since I was dreadfully tired, but I got sucked in and ended up watching the whole thing. Oops!
Then in the bathroom that night, I ran into one of the Australian girls from my Innsbruck hostel! Also, she was English! Hahaha. She said she’d even met an English boy from her very town who also thought she was Australian, so there must be something funny about her accent!
This was my latest night to bed so far, with a shut-eye time of around midnight. I felt it the next morning, especially because there was one girl coughing all night! Ugh. Did not like that.
In the morning, I wandered back toward Mirabell Gardens so that I could recreate some scenes from Sound of Music’s Do-Rei-Mi. So fun!
I was scheduled for a free walking tour, but I couldn’t find any breakfast on my way, so I was hungry the whole time! Always looking for a quick place to grab some food!
I signed up for the walking tour so I could get a speed round of the Salzburg highlights! One of the best ways to see a city on a time crunch. Our guide was named Sonja, and she was a delight!
We visited Mozart’s birthplace and childhood home, the University Church, and some modern art pickles.
I don’t usually like pickles, but I liked these ones! Hehehe.
This is the very theater where the Von Trapp family had their final performance and big escape in the movie!
Then we visited a monastery and the Salzburg Cathedral. I was taking mental notes of all the places I wanted to rush back to after the tour was over so I could actually go inside!
The first place I ran back to was the Salzburg Cathedral, just in time to catch the second half of the daily organ concert. It was very dramatic. There were multiple organs in the church, so the organist ran between them, allowing us to hear each one. The big finale was the giant organ at the back of the hall, and it was quite loud!
I also really enjoyed the Franciscan Church. The columns and the ceiling arches were so pretty.
A lovely highlight was the monastery church and the cemetery in its courtyard, which inspired the final hiding places of the Von Trapp family in the Sound of Music, where Ralph finds them!
I had a mad uphill dash next, to Stift Nonnberg, Maria’s abbey. Haha, last Sound of Music reference, I swear!
The view from the abbey was quite lovely, so I understand why the hills were calling her on that one fateful morning!
Exhausted and hungry by this point, I stopped for some coffee ice cream (yum!) before visiting the College Church.
Then I made my way back to my hostel and the train station, lunch finally in hand.
Danke, Salzburg, for a lovely, unexpectedly-fulfilling detour! And auf wiedersehen, Austria! On to other things!
Hallo! Last we chatted, I was just departing dear Liechtenstein. My train ride passed some gorgeous mountain villages and lots of out-of-season ski slopes.
My first stop in Austria was Innsbruck, a little city tucked into the alps. And I mean seriously – this place is absolutely surrounded by huge, snowy mountains. I’m used to seeing the Olympics and the Cascades on the distant horizon from certain vantages, but having these huge mountains looming so close from all angles was another experience entirely!
I dropped my bags at my hostel and had several very awkward encounters with the hostel check-in guy. He was just kind of all over the place, and when I found out he could give me a free public transit card, he was very strange about it, and I had to wait over a half hour before I received it. So yeah, not great. But there were several sweet Australian girls in my room, and we chatted a bit!
Then I was off!
I planned to get up to “The Top of Innsbruck, a viewpoint area that required multiple cable cars and lots of €€ to get to, but in the end, I’d taken so long to get the transit pass that I would have only had fifteen minutes at the top. I settled, instead, for the views from the bottom of the first cable car, and those were quite lovely on their own!
Then I made my way back toward the river.
And then to Old Town, hustling and bustling with activity.
One of my favorite things to do is to get a good view, and this city was full of them. I climbed the City Tower for a view from the center of it all!
Check out the staircase!
Then I simply wandered around. I found some beautiful churches and the Triumphpforte.
My walk back was just as lovely!
Innsbruck was much like Lichtenstein, in that I endured much less rain than expected. Fine by me! It was mostly sunny or partly cloudy all day long, and relatively warm. I’d worked up a craving for goulash by this point, so I grabbed an outdoor table and a glass of Zweigelt. ‘Twas quite yummy.
I only ordered a bowl of the goulash, but they served me a (more expensive) goulash meal, which came with this strange dumpling ball thing. I think it was mainly potato and flour? Very chewy and super filling. I left a few pieces of the extra tough meat because I just couldn’t eat any more!
I’m still on my early clock, so I caught up with my Australian bunk mate and settled in for bed around ten. This was my first time in a hostel dorm room in four years, though, and I’m out of practice! My bunkmate got up to pee at one point, and then several other girls did the same. Because of the streetlights streaming in through the window behind me, I just assumed it was morning time! I spent a bunch of energy trying to rouse myself, only to finally look at my watch and see that it was 2:30am! Yikes! The whole night was very restless, with people getting up to pee constantly. I didn’t get much sleep, though my Fitbit says I did. I don’t trust it this time!
Because I was so groggy in the morning, and I couldn’t think of much to do, I wandered and wandered until I found a nice Turkish café for breakfast. I popped a squat and read for nearly two hours! I even got a refill on my yummy Turkish tea. It was delightful.
Innsbruck seemed like a pretty sleepy town while I was there. I think generally, it’s just a gateway to the mountains, but we’re very much in the off-season right now. Not enough snow for skiing and snowshoeing, but too much snow for hiking and mountain biking. So it just didn’t seem super lively! I was also bummed because my hostel had a bar with a lovely menu and regularly scheduled live music, but I stayed on a Sunday and May 1st, which is a holiday in Austria, so the bar was closed both nights! Hmph.
Carrying on with the wandering after breakfast, I found some more pretty churches.
This is the most famous building in Innsbruck, with the Gold Roof:
I wanted to visit the Hofkirche, which seemed to be the most famous church in Innsbruck, so I bought a combined museum ticket, which got me into several museums in the area.
The first was the Volkskunstmuseum, or Fold Art Museum, which was connected to the Hofkirche by this beautiful courtyard.
Though I hadn’t planned to see this museum, it ended up being quite lovely! Lots of old rooms set up in the old style, with huge stoves in the corner and lots of wood paneling and carved wooden furniture. I couldn’t tell if any of them were original to the building or if they were all recreations.
In fact, my favorite part of this museum was the sheer amount of intricate wood carvings. Brushes, rolling pins, chests, cribs, weapons. So many beautiful carvings!
There were also lots of strange modern touches. For example, I might be wandering around a room, looking at things in the center, when suddenly, I’d hear a light click on in a cupboard I’d just passed. I’d open the cupboard to find more objects inside. Motion detecting exhibits! I had quite a start when a full door swung open at once to let me into the upper level of the Hofkirche. Was not expecting that!
The ground floor of the church is famous for its huge bronze figures. You’ll see the one that made me giggle. The information pamphlet even said, “The wearing of the patina shows that it is often touched.” Yikes!
Thoroughly pleased by that visit, I picked up a treat for a snack. It was fluffy and delicious!
And then I was off again, this time further uphill in the opposite direction than I’d gone the day before. I came across a couple more lovely churches.
And then I was treated with a view!
I was here to visit the Tirol Panorama museum, which had a huge panoramic painting of a battle taking place in the surrounding area. It was also peppered with more viewing rooms, lots of artifacts, and some… Strange historical art pieces.
Ha! Scary!
I was impressed that the panorama itself really was of this same area, with those same two beautiful churches I’d just visited below! Lots of other buildings had not yet been erected, though.
I went outside to catch one more glimpse of the view.
And then I discovered a little hiking path, the Panoramarunde. It circled the Bergisel Olympic ski jump as it wandered through the forest.
That ski jump is no joke!!! Several stories high! It takes a special kind of insanity to think skiing down and jumping off that thing is a good idea!
The hike took about an hour, by which time, it was finally sprinkling just slightly.
Back in town, I visited the Swarovski store. This was my favorite piece, and it could be yours for a mere $16,000!
I had a yummy dinner of salmon tagliatelle with white wine, and then I made my way back across the river to my hostel.
I caught up with my bunk mate, who was also leaving the next morning, and then I was out again by ten! Gotta rest up for the travel day ahead. Danke, Innsbruck, for all the lovely viewpoints! And for not raining too much!
If we’re keeping the record straight, I guess my valentine this February 14 was a strange combination between Gustav Klimt, a library, some Austrian guy named Piet who has a girlfriend, and my actual valentine (who I celebrated with on January 14 – aka: actual Valentine’s Day from here on out). And yes, I spent the day in Vienna.
To sum up my feelings on Vienna: a lovely city, but not one I fell madly in love with. It certainly served as a nice, relaxing break after Taiwan, though. Vienna is a city I’ve been wanting to pay a visit for a long time, and when I found round-trip flight from Copenhagen to Taipei that conveniently had a layover in this Austrian city, I jumped on it. And then I planned out four whole nights here. Crazy, I know. If you know anything about my travel style, you know that one to two nights is usually more my speed, but I wanted to prepare myself for jetlag and actual sleep after a week of the unexpected in Taiwan, so I planned four nights in a room all my own in a quiet neighborhood. Very smart.
Besides helping out in the sleep department, this plan allowed me to take it verrrrry easy in this city of music. I landed around 11am on Monday, the eleventh, and I greedily took this opportunity to laze in my room for a minute before heading out.
My first activity was a walking tour – a great way to get to know a city I knew nothing about. Our tour guide was an enthusiastic Austrian woman named Anita. She was only the third tour guide I’d ever had who wasn’t English (dude, tour companies really like hiring English tour guides, regardless of the city or country), and she had a thick accent that helped to punctuate her determined history lessons.
She brought us all around the city, giving me great ideas on how to spend my next three days. (Library, horses, and cafes.) She also reminded me that a lot of artists and radical thinkers called Vienna home at one point or another throughout history.
After this walking tour, which only lasted about two hours, I was pretty pooped. Time for dinner to rest my feet and fill my stomach. I found a little Italian restaurant, and I had the whole non-smoking section to myself for the first half hour of my meal. Spaghetti Bolognese and some warm, alcoholic punsch!
It was nice to get back that night. And though this seems like a very low-key day, remember that I had woken up about forty hours before, and had technically started this day with ten hours running around Taipei! Airplanes are crazy, dude.
My host was a young Chinese man, and he had decorated his apartment a bit for the New Year. This was a fun and familiar sight.
This day also marked the day I ran out of clean underwear, and in fact, I ran out of all clean clothes with the exception of this sweater:
So, in just this sweater, I did my best to cover my butt and do my laundry without causing my host any alarm. Ha! The thing is, the washing machine didn’t have any sort of display or timer, so I had no idea how long it would take, and European washing machines can often take two to four hours to wash a load of clothes. I was not going to be able to stay up that long, even if I tried. I lay down at nine, set an alarm for ten so that I could wake up to check on the laundry and brush my teeth, and I was out like a light. When my alarm went off an hour later, I slowly peeled my eyes open to the bright lights in my room (I hadn’t even had the energy to get up and turn those off before my heavy eyelids had failed me). I honestly don’t remember if I could hear the washing machine running or not, because I was awake and barely lucid for about ten seconds before sleep overcame me again.
I shifted awake once more and checked the time — 1:43am. With the lights still on, I grabbed my toothbrush and did a zombie shuffle out of the room in the slippers my adorable host had provided. But when I rounded the corner into the bathroom, I saw that the washing machine was wide open, empty. And after backtracking, I saw this:
My host had hung up all my clothes for me to dry. Gosh, guys. I had one Airbnb host do this for me in Barcelona, and I had thought it was weird at the time that he had handled my undies, but I was so stinking greatful to see this beautiful, beautiful sight of drying laundry. I silently rejoiced and brushed my teeth with my eyes closed. (I can’t even begin to explain how tired my eyes were.) Then it was back to bed.
I had a pleasant walk the next morning — okay, it wasn’t morning. By the time I got moving, it was almost two in the afternoon. Taking it easy, for the win.
But this walk had a purpose, and that purpose was lunch in Cafe Central, a cafe that once served the likes of young Hitler, Trotsky, Freud, and Stalin. Craziness. Now it’s just a pretty cafe stuffed with tourists and beautiful pastries.
I ordered a potato-bacon soup, a glass of wine, and a chocolate hazelnut magic crisp-mousse-bar-something. Ugh. So good.
It was all fun and games until my waitor took five-ever to bring me my check. A very strange thing about some places in Europe – it’s like they don’t want me to pay, or something! I had another easy day planned, but I had two more stops left before bed, and I was running out of time for the second. He finally brought the check when I snagged his boss aside to innocently mention I hadn’t yet received my requested bill. Boom.
But, alas, this effort was not enough, and I did actually run out of time for my second out of third activity. You see that cathedral in the second and third to last photos above? I was supposed to climb the tower inside, but I decided to put that off for another day because my third activity was time-sensitive.
Operaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Shout out to Timmy to giving me the major tip-off. Of course, I knew the Vienna Opera was like, the absolute opera company to rule all opera companies. And yes, I had sort of thought about looking into tickets, but Timmy told me that if you stand in line an hour or two before the show starts, you can buy standing-room tickets for less than five euros!!! And that is exactly what I did.
I did not manage to get the most amazing ‘seats.’ I had blindly followed an older Viennese woman who seemed like she knew what she was doing, and what she did was lead me to the sidelines where I could only see half the stage. If I leaned forward, I could make out about two-thirds, but there were plenty of scenes where I just could not see the singer, no matter how hard I tried. Still, it was a nice experience. The music was lovely to listen to, and the singers didn’t move around much anyway, so there really was not too much to see. I guess there was actually quite a ruckus when the show first played a few weeks ago because people hated the set – it was very, very, very plain. I wouldn’t even call it minimalist, because it looked like it was purposefully trying to just be boring rather than simple. But I digress.
The first time I saw an opera was in Copenhagen, and it was very confusing because it was performed in Italian, and Danish subtitles ran smoothly on an LCD board below the stage. Seeing as it was my first month in Demark and I had never been to Italy, I understood absolutely nothing. The Vienna opera had a personalized subtitle system, so that each seat had its own little screen with different language options. Hallelujah! It was a little weird to constantly switch my line of site between the stage in front of me and the screen at my hip, but at least I could follow the story.
That is, until the second to last scene, when I sat on the floor because the singer was standing in my blind spot. It was very dramatic. Questioning whether life was worth living without his love, putting his heart and soul and vibrato into it.
And I fell asleep.
Just for a second, though!
But long enough that when the song ended and the audience erupted in applause, I leapt into the air to join them, thinking the show had ended. Hahahaha. It wasn’t even ten o’clock, but I was definitely ready for bed.
The experience as a whole was still a pleasant one though, and I made a mental note of how much earlier to arrive and which spots to scope out if I should ever return.
Day three started with a visit to the Spanish horse riding school. We weren’t allowed to take pictures unfortunately, probably so people wouldn’t try to film and steal all of the school’s equestrian secrets. The school has a grand performance every Sunday, but each morning, they hold a practice session that is open to viewers, so I got to see horses dancing around and trotting regally while a woman narrated in German and English. The training lasted from ten until noon, but I left halfway through because they kept doing an exercise where they had a horse prance around while a second trainer whipped its heels. It wasn’t very fun to watch. I was secretly hoping one of the horses would get wise and kick back!
They did have a lovely cafe, though.
Goulash soup (ugh, I can still taste its salty deliciousness), chocolate apricot cake, and a cafe melange, which my walking tour guide had told me was the number one espresso drink to order — espresso with lots of milk foam on top.
Then I went off to finally climb that tower in St. Stephens’s Cathedral! I found out there are actually two towers in this cathedral. One required climbing, and the other was elevator-equipped and boasted a less-obstructed view. I went with the view, of course! Though I admit that I did miss the climb.
The roof is famous for its pretty colored tiles that you can see behind my wind-swept smile in the above picture.
As you can see by the number of smiling pictures I took, I liked it up here. I liked it a lot. But, I had more exploring to do closer to the ground, so after nearly half an hour above the city, I descended once more.
I ended up finding another pretty cathedral that was elevator-eqipped, but this elevator stayed inside the building. It was gorgeous from the outside, but I had no idea that the interior would contain a pair of giant celestial mirror balls.
Why were these balls there, you ask? Dude, I have no idea. But they were otherworldly and beautiful, and the reflected back the interior of the church to make it seem ten times bigger and more glorious.
As I wandered the city, I came across a university library and tried to sneak inside. I love checking out local libraries, and I have a secret obsession with pretending to be a student at universities that are not my own (go dawgs!), so sneaking around university libraries and finding a cozy spot to read is basically my favorite pastime.
This library was a little weird though. First of all, it was one of those libraries that is hyper-sensitive to book thievery, so they require you to check all coats, backpacks, etc., and you can only carry your things around in a vinyl see-through bag. Also, there were no cozy places to read. All study desks and studying students. Gross.
Sad and holding my momentarily-useless kindle, I headed back to retrieve my things not five minutes after sticking them in a locker. They did have a few cool books laying around, though.
Next stop was Naschmarkt, an open-air street market filled with bowls of tea leaves, restaurants, and cafes. I settled for a pierogi stuffed with ham and cheese and delicious spices. It hit the spot.
I also stopped into a chocolatieria for a glass of hot chocolate, but instead of a cup of cocoa, I was given a tall glass of steamed milk, a chocolate bar, and a whisk. Do-it-yourself! Super fun (and very tasty).
Aaaaaaand, you’ll never guess where my day’s big finale brought me.
The Opera again! Or at least, the opera house. Ballet is also performed here, and when I found out they were in the middle of Swan Lake, I couldn’t resist. My favorite ballet! I was looking forward to comparing this performance to that of PNB’s in Seattle and the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen. I also remembered my notes from the night before and got in line about fifteen minutes earlier.
AND IT PAID OFF.
Yes, that was my view! Front and center. (Okay, back and center, but still about as centered as you can get.) I was so nervous and doubtful as I was standing in line, because I knew it would make a great deal of difference in my viewing experience if I had an obstructed view. I just couldn’t tell if I had gotten there early enough, and I cursed myself for not getting in line even earlier. But as I ran up the stairs, eye on the center door of the gallery, I was shocked to find that several spots were still left unclaimed. You see, standing spots are unreserved and first-come first-serve. The rule is that you have to bring a scarf (or some substitute) and tie it on the railing in front of you to claim your spot. Then you can roam freely to check your coat, grab a drink, or use the toilet, and you just have to trust that all other artlovers will respect your mangey scarf as law.
I was so excited and relieved to grab my amazing, unobstructed sightline, that I almost immediately began wandering, not being able to sit still.
When I finally returned to my seat five minutes before curtain, the friendly middle aged woman who stood behind me and had taken my picture before tapped my shoulder. She informed me that the gentleman to my right had tried to take my spot, but she reported him to one of the ushers. “I did not stand outside for two hours so someone can come to try to change the rules,” she said. The poor guy (and he was a big guy) spent the whole performance standing behind a giant pillar, craning his neck around the right side away from me to try to see the stage. Thanks, kind lady! We actually ended up chatting quite a lot before the show and during the two intermissions, exchanging travel stories and life stories. It’s always nice to watch the ballet with a friend, after all.
Oh, and the ballet was devine, by the way. I was honestly really worried about staying awake the whole time, because there is nothing worse than falling asleep during the ballet, but I was so fascinated and entranced the whole performance that I forgot I was tired. During the second intermission, I read the synopsis on Wikipedia, and I read that there were many different endings commonly performed for Swan Lake. Almost all were tragic in their own special ways. Sometimes the swan dies, sometimes the prince dies, sometimes the bad guy dies, and sometimes everybody dies! I was wracking my brain, trying to remember which ending I had seen before. (I say ending, singular, because the Royal Danish Ballet had only performed the first act before switching to a very strange modern piece and leaving us Swan Lake lovers stranded.) I won’t spoil the Viennese ending for you, but it was, in fact, one of the tragic ones. Nothing happy at all. ):
Except me, of course! Love, love, love.
Okay, the big day. V-day. And also my last day in Vienna. I started with a visit to the Belvedere Museum.
My European History teacher in high school once told a story about seeing Michelangelo’s David statue in person. She complained that everyone only cared about the front, but since she was a runner, she was into the backside of the sculpture. All. The. Muscles.
Ever since then, I’ve made it a point to check out the backside of these marble sculptures. Never disappointed. Always great butts.
And the back muscles ain’t bad, either.
At one point, as I was photographing a particularly interesting painting, a museum guard came up to me and said something in a thick, rolling accent. I gave her a bit of a blank stare, and she repeated herself.
“Ah… English?” I asked, giving up on trying to understand what she was saying.
“Yes, yes, English,” she said before spouting a phrase that may or may not have been the same as the ones she’d already spoken. This time, though, I forced my brain to work extra hard to parse her sentence. Then I realized that she had asked, “Are you Rapunzel?” She had a devious smile on her face, too, like she was being clever.
“Aaaah… Rapunzel….” I laughed. “I think she was blonde,” I said.
“No,” the woman said, her smile turning to a flat line, adding a quick shake of the head. “In the original story, we do not have a hair color. There is no hair color for her.”
“Ah, okay, maybe then,” I said with a smile, before slowly continuing my gazing.
Just before I stepped away, though, she said, “Ask your mother if she is your real mother.” Then she added with a knowing nod: “You never know.” That dubious smile was back.
A couple minutes later, she found me in another room and told me she could take my picture if I wanted. I hadn’t actually been thinking of taking a picture in this fairly unspectacular room, but I shrugged and handed her my phone.
“Make the face like them,” she said, and I turned to check the expressions on the sculptures surrounding me.
Hahaha. Quite the lady.
The main attaction of the Belvedere, howerver, is the assortment of works by Gustav Klimt, or as I like to refer to him in my head, The Gold Guy!
It’s all about The Kiss!!! One of the most famous, if not THE most famous, works by Klimt. So much gold and love and love and gold. Made me a bit jealous, honestly. But that didn’t stop me from staring in awe for a good twenty minutes.
If you’ve seen the movie Woman in Gold with Helen Mirren, you’ll know that the beautiful painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I used to be here as well, but its position here was a product of World War II and the Holocaust, and it was essentially stolen from the owners by the Austrian/ German government at the time. In 2006, it was reclaimed by descendents of the painting’s rightful owner after years of legal battles. And while I support the decision overall, I can’t help but feel the painting would have been more valued here than in its current museum in New York. Hard to say. I guess I’ll have to visit the museum in New York and test out the vibe there!
Lots of pretty things and works by famous artists were on display here, including Monet, Manet, Kandinsky, Rodin, and even Jacques-Louis David! I was a bit confused, though. Isn’t this like, a very famous painting a Napoleon???
It was just in a random room with a bunch of other random paintings! I feel like this one should be getting more attention, and I definitely feel it would be better appreciated in France. But I digress.
Next stop was to meet that Austrian guy, Piet. A friend of some friends and an interesting fellow, for sure. We met to visit Schonbrunn Palace.
When trying to meet up, I asked how I would know it was him when we met, and he replied that he with, “Tall. Palm tree.” As you can see by the height difference, he really wasn’t exaggerating.
We sat up near the Gloriette with a lovely view of the palace, loitering on some fenced-off grass to discuss life, language, and the way I pronounce the word “fat.” Apparently it’s funny.
Then off to dinner!
We passed through the Underground, and Piet translated that this is a counter for how many books have been loaned in Vienna since January 1st. Cute!
Piet ordered the viel schnitzel so that I could try the good stuff, and I ordered some spatzl, which he described as Austrian mac-n-cheese. For dessert, Kaiserschmarren, a shredded pancake with plum jam. When the waitress first came out with the Kaiserschmarren, the two exchanged several sentences in concerned German before the waitress walked away. I asked what was wrong, and Piet said, “We don’t want it, right? You’re not hungry.” He took this opportunity to gesture toward my mostly-full plate of spatzl.
“No! We want it! I was saving room!” I protested. At this, Piet lept up, chased down the waitress, and returned with the sugary goodness. Hahahaha. Close one.
My last stop with Piet was to a grocery store where he showed me all the secret goodies that can only be found in Austria. One of them is this interesting drink that is made using juice and whey. It was quite tangy.
Then he was off to hang out with his real valentine, and I was off to hang out with one of mine.
This is the National Library of Austria. And you know, it was interesting. You see how smiley I am in that picture up there? That was how I felt when I first entered this gorgeous library. It was a little weird that I had to pay six euros to get in (What happened to libraries always being free???), but I was quickly overcome with awe when I looked up and around me at the stacks of gorgeous, ancient books.
But then I realized I couldn’t touch any of them.
And there was nowhere to sit except a couple wooden chairs out in the open.
And the only books within reach were hidden behind glass cases, and even THESE were actually just copies of the originals.
That’s when I realized: this wasn’t really a library. It was more like a sad, dimly-lit museum. Beautiful, yes, but not much of a library, in my book. (Ha. Get it?)
Don’t worry, though. There are plenty more libraries in my future, and I’ma touch aaaaalllll the booooookssss….
So, this was Vienna. A grand city and a charming one. But one of my favorite countries lies ahead, and you’ll have to check back next time (or check the calendar I sent you) to find out what it is.
