Yay for the new Ubahn Station being open! Now I only have to ride to Kagranerplatz instead of Kagran, which cuts a good 10 mins off my trip to school everyday. They were throwing a party all day Sat at all of the new Ubahn stops, live music, balloons, it was crazy!
Anyway, I went to the Rathaus on Fri. It was pretty cool. Marriage of Figarro.
On Sat we got up early and went to Nachtmarkt and the flea market that is there on Sat. The flea market was pretty much just a normal flea market only bigger, except I did run across some Communist propaganda pins and Natzi artifacts, like passports and pictures of flags. It was weird and creepy.
The market was really cool. There was so much food! Meat, and vegetables, and barrels of pickles, tons of olives stuffed with cheese, honey, dried fruits of every kind, cheese, bread and pastries. But my favorite was the vinegar booth. They had so many kinds of vinegar! more than I ever knew existed. Fruits, and ciders, and wines... And it was all either in big wooden barrels, or in these fancy glass things. Each one had a tiny bottle that looked like a perfume sample next to it, and you would take it and put a drop on your wrist and smell it. if you liked it you went and bought an empty glass bottle, and then filled it up with vinegar. It was pretty cool.
After the market we went to Schronbrunn Palace. First we went to the maze, which was really the only thing I wanted to pay for. The palace grounds are free to roam, but you have to pay for a tour of the palace, and the many attractions on the grounds, such as the maze and labyrinth, the zoo, the pool, the gardens, the palm house, and others. Anyway, we went into the maze and labyrinth, which kinda reminded me of a mini sciene museum that never explains the science behind everything. The mazes were really pretty and cut out of bushes, and I think it said they had been like that for a couple hundered years, but to make it more interesting inside the mazes were different "games" you could play. So we were there for a couple of hours. Afterwards, Zena and miranda went to the zoo, and me and Michelle wandered around the grounds untill we were both tired and hungry and decided to go home. It was a really fun day.

The rooms inside the Rathaus were all lit up














Schonbrunn palace from the front


















The view from the back of the palace. In the distance you can kinda see the neptune fountain, and on the hill is the Gloriette. this isn't even really anything, the pretty landscaping isn't the gardens, it's just the grounds, and you can walk all around. If there's one thing I really didn't like about the palace, it's the gravel everywhere. It's not fun to walk on, plus it glares and it's ugly. they don't want you to walk on the lawn, which is understandable with all the work that's put into the landscaping, but I wish they would make the lawns bigger and the gravel less.
















































A lot of the trees are huge and really old. This one happens to be 200 years old.


















More of the tree. See the guy's head in the corner? Just as a reference to show how big the tree is.


















"dancing glockenspiel" you stepped on the squares and it played different notes.














The maze

































The labyrinth














giant jungle gym made out of trampoline pieces















water thingy... you pressed things and it squirted water















Giant bird!!! It flew up and down!! It was so fun!















See, the ropes in front would pull on the wings, and the body of the bird was attached to the wings so that it would go opposite of them, so if someone pulled on the ropes, the bird would "fly" up and down


















Back of the neptune fountain....blogger tends to put my pics not in chronological order...


















View of the palace from through the fountain


















The palace, and the city behind it. There's a lot of places with a "great view" of vienna, but the city is actually pretty boring to look at from up high. Not exactly an interesting skyline.














Behind the fountain



















Finally, here's the front of the Neptune fountain















The Gloriette up close.


















A detail from the Obleisk fountain on the grounds. The fountain itself isn't running and is all fenced off and looks really out of place since everything else on the grounds, even the statues in the woods, are nice and taken care of. But the hieroglyphics on the fountain were cool.


















The Gloriette















The palace and some of the grounds. Again, this is not even the garden. just the grounds.














we think these are Roman ruins....? it's hard to tell on the map exactly where you are. There are a lot of trails and things to see.

bears 'n such

A word about the escalators here.
They run faster than escalators in the US. And they're usually twice as long. And when you get on them, you step to the right. The left side is for people walking up them, the right is for standing still. So it's a little creepy when you get off the ubahn to watch entire crowds of people form a single file line on the right.
But today the escalator at Kagran was broken, so it was just steps, and it was really funny because everyone still made a single file line to the right.
Today I slept in late, and then wandered around the city for awhile. It was a really pretty day out to walk around outside. It was even warm enough to wear sandels, which was exciting.
At one of the parks, there's this exhibit with all these bears painted from different countries. It was really neat. I took some pics of a few of my favorites.
Tonight I'm going to the Rathaus for the last opera, sad. It's Marriage of Figaro. I was excited because I thought it was The Barber of Seville, but it's not. Oh well, this is a good opera too.
Tomorrow I have a whole bunch of things to do while the weather is nice. Hopefully I can fit them all in.


Moldova's Bear


















Hungary's Bear


















Turkey's Bear


















Croatian Bear


















Vietnam's Bear. On it's leg is written "who doesn't love doesn't live"


















Cambodian Bear


















Bears in front of the fountain and building.














Japaneese Bear


















Some of the bears next to a truck of theatre lighting equitment.














Irish Bear


















Random pretty buildings in Vienna.
















































Pretty building


















Doesn't this look like the mideast? What are palm trees doing in Vienna?

crypts and catacombs

Things in Vienna I already don't know how I'll live without:
Liptauer (a Austrian spread with cheese and peppers)
Multivitanista (multiviamin juice)
Peprika chips
yummy mediterranean soups (50 cent packs in stores)
Haselnuss creme (off-brand nutella, 1/2 the price and still yummy)

Yesterday I went to Don Giovani. It was ok, I didn't like the design for the opera that much, plus it was really really cold (wind chill in the 40s) so we ended up leaving early again.
Today I went up to school and bought my German textbook. Me and Emily went to Kaisergruft, and then to the Catacombs at St. Stephan's. also to H&M, but neither of us bought anything.
The Kaisergruft was really cool, and that's what all my pictures are of. It's the place where the tombs of the royal family are. All the tombs there are huge and elaborate, and its crazy because without the markers you can't tell the difference between the people buried in 1500 and the last Empress buried in 1989.
Even better though was the Catacombs of St. Stephen's. There's two parts to the catacombs, the newer part which is about 300 years old, and the older part which is about 700 years old. I think. I'm a little sketchy on the facts, cuz the tour was in German, but the guide was nice enough to tell us and some japaneese girls what he was saying after he was done explaining. Also the tour went really fast. And I didn't get to take any pictures. Anyway, so the crazy thing is, they still use the older part, so it's been renovated as recently as 4 years ago, so it looks brand new. All the bishops and higher up clergy in Vienna are still buried there. It's also where the organs of the Hapsburg's are kept after they were embalmed. One of the bottles was leaking, it was pretty gross. Anyway, the new part was amazing!! Everything I ever expected a catacomb to be, it was dark, wet, lit by lanterns on the rough chisled out floor. The new part had two main parts to it. One were these huge empty rooms. It turns out, those rooms used to be piled floor to ceiling with coffins (with people in them). The coffins were just wooden boxes and the people in them weren't embalmed, so evetually they would decay and smell bad. When the rooms were packed full, the smell got so bad it seeped into the church and people stopped coming to mass. So they basically took all the bodies out of the coffins and put the bodies in one room all piled up. We got to see it. You can still see the bodies on top decaying. It's insane. They know the names of everyone buried there, but they didn't know who was who. Next is the plauge victims. You litterally walk up to a hole in the ground and look down, and see a room underneath you pilled up with thousands of bones. There's also a room of skeletons, I'm not sure which kinds, that are piled into what's called a "bone house". They pilled the bones in a very specific pattern to make walls out of them. Aparently it was the prisoners job to not only stack the bones, but to scrape them of the flesh when they were "fresher". Also, right before we left there was a huge stone tomb. Apparently it used to be up near the entrence, but it was moved. It's a huge tomb, but they have no clue who it belongs to because not only is nothing enscribed on it, but the bottom was open so the body decayed.
All in all, it was a slightly creepy, but really fun day.




Me with my tiny mocha that I bought to try and keep me warm. It didn't really work.














The "American Food" stand at Rathaus
























































































































Maria Theresa and her husband...whose name I forgot...
(For those of you who don't know, Maria Theresa was a really famous Empress of The Holy Roman Empire, and you should at least know one of her daughters, Marie Antonitte, who isn't buried here. Neither is Franz Ferdinand.)


















That huge tomb is Maria Theresa's.





































A relief on the side of Maria Theresa's tomb














The top of one of the tombs.


















An image of one of the Hapsburgs.





































Tombs at Kaisergruft.














The catacombs














Really old flowers on Sissy's tomb. She had tons of flowers, she like Princess Diana to the Austrians, and her image is still all over Vienna.














The hole we climbed out of at the end of the Catacombs tour

free time

First off, I would like to correct myself that it's Willendorf.
I got my class schedule today. I have class tues from 10-5, with a break for lunch, and then thurs 10-1. That's it.
So I made a list of things I want to do in Vienna with my free time. A lot of them are free, yay. if you have any suggestions, let me know (anyone can post on this blog, or e-mail me).

monday monday

Here's some photos from last night, which was wonderful.
I left pretty early because I got really cold (I cannot get used to this weather), but the opera was beautiful, the accoustics were good, the setting was amazing... also I had some apple strudel which was really good, but the only reason I ordered it was because it was the only thing on the menu I could pronounce. Thank god my german class starts tomorrow.
I'm going back on Wed, for Don Giovani!!! I've never seen it, so I'm really excited, I like the music from it. (I think the opera I saw last night was La Travista...something like that. It was Verdi, I know that.)
Today I mostly stayed home and tried to get my things in order before school starts, but I did take the afternoon off and went and visited all my favorite stores: H&M, Mango, Zara, Pimkie, and a different H&M. I love that store. I didn't buy anything though.

The Rathaus and giant movie screen they set up. It looks scary in this picture, but it was really pretty.


Vienna at night. A alley by the Rathaus.



The beer garden they set up, and the remains of my apfelstrudel. Even though you're eating outdoors they give you real plates and glasses, but the forks and spoons are wooden. It's weird.


Statue at night