Wednesday, January 30, 2013

January 27, 2013



This weekend we were out and about braving the cold once again. With a high of ten degrees, we walked (and shivered!) as we walked Vienna. We were happy to start later on Saturday so we could sleep in for a bit longer. Our first stop was brief at the Maria am Gestade—a beautiful but small catholic church that was located right in the middle of Vienna's first district. 

JudenPlatz
After that, we walked a couple of blocks to JudenPlatz. This square was supposed to be in memory of the Jews and the Holocaust but it did a worse job than the museum did on Friday in Slovakia. The memorial was a large concrete… umm, well for lack of better words, box. It looked like a storage unit or some type of structure that contained utilities for the surrounding buildings. The closer we got to it; we realized that it was designed as books, lined up as if on a bookshelf. However, we have no idea why books were representing the Jews. The longer we stood in this square, the angrier we got. In a city that lost so much due to the Holocaust, their attempt to commemorate those poor people was awful.  It’s as if Austria is just playing pretend and covering up what really happened. Everything we have seen up to this point finally came together. Berlin accepted the responsibility of remembering one of the worst times in history, but Vienna, who’s Jewish culture was similar to Berlin, can’t seem to make it right. Not that it ever could be right. Nothing could ever make that right.
 
As quickly as we began to fume about the lack of remembrance in Vienna, our moods quickly flipped as we approached the higher end of the city, passing tons and tons of shops that I could only dream of being able to afford. I laughed at the guys drooling over watches that cost more than a small fortune. But karma always makes its payback so when we walked around the corner and I did a little dance in the middle of the street because there was a Tiffany’s and Co. store, I couldn’t really say anything when they all just rolled their eyes. A girl can dream…

Up the street from the glitzy section of town, is the Hofburg—the city palace. This palace was interesting in the amount of detail it had. The entire first section (and it was huge) displayed dishes that were used in the palace. I never realized how many dishes were used in one day! After roaming through rooms and rooms of dishes and feeling like I was in Beauty and the Beast, we entered another section of the palace and explored the rooms and the life of the wife of Franz Josef, Elisabeth, and his mistress, Sisi. They weren’t as big, but equally as beautiful as the rooms at Schloss Schonbrunn. We saw the rooms where Elisabeth spent a majority of her time, avoiding her husband and beautifying her image. Its crazy to think about someone, who lives in such a beautiful place, lived such a miserable life.

For the second time since we arrived in Europe, the sun came out when we were leaving the palace. We hurried to the bus station, grab a sandwich to go, and jumped on the bus to ride to the top of the mountain to look out over Vienna. Twenty minutes of curvy, cobblestones roads through a quaint little village that turned into snowy hills and trees took us to the top. And when we got there; oh man, it was wonderful. The sun was shining, everything was white, and it was perfect. Even in spite of the haze, nothing could have made the breathtaking view better.

After a coffee and a croissant (I love croissants) we headed back down into Vienna. We went into the Cathedral that we climbed several days before. It was even prettier inside than it was up the 300 and some steps. There was an orchestra playing, which echoed throughout the entire building. I could have just stayed there the whole day and marveled at every tiny detail that made this place as lovely as it was. So beautiful.

We had a bit of a break before we trolleyed (see what I did there?!) across Vienna to the best dinner I think I have ever had. SO much Austrian food, SO good. It was a cute little place; I probably would have appreciated it more if I wasn’t already inhaling the deliciousness of my plate-- juicy meat, hearty dumplings, fresh veggies, and sweet sauerkraut. If you aren’t drooling yet, well, you’re not human.

Today involved a lot of… umm… food. We went to a gigantic brunch at a ritzy hotel on the other side of the city. Completely with a meat, seafood, cheese and dessert bar, we carelessly gorged ourselves until we physically could not lift our fork to our mouths. It was to the point where we didn’t want to let any food go to waste. So plates stacked up, as our stomachs got fuller and fuller. It was glorious, until the pain kicked in. Painfully, we used all of our energy standing up, then waddled like pregnant women out of the hotel, down the long sidewalk to the trolley that would take us to the Wien Museum.

The Wien Museum was actually really cool. It was all about life in Vienna. It showed games that many Viennese played over the years, models of the city during different time periods, and pieces of St. Stephan’s Cathedral that was damaged during the war.

By the end of the museum, we were all struggling not to collapse into a food coma. We waddled back to the hotel, where my bed immediately consumed me for two hours, sleeping off the food. I was so excited to sleep, that I didn’t realized until after my nap that we left the keys in the door when came back! Sometimes, I really do concern myself, but nothing beats that nap. 

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