Party Time

Hi! I've been super busy in the lab the last few weeks, but here are some updates:

Two Mondays ago I went to Kiliani, which is a festival for the patron saint of the city. It was basically like a state fair. And they had really good chocolate covered fruit. I went to that with Verena, her sister, and some of their friends.

Two Tuesdays ago, I went with Verena and her two English teacher friends to see a production of Othello in the gardens of the Residenz. It was really fun, because I really like Shakespeare. We also had ice cream afterwards.

This past weekend I went dirndl shopping, so now I have a traditional dress to wear if I ever go to Oktoberfest.

This Wednesday, after a really long day in lab, I went with Verena and her two friends Miri and Sabine to see Eclipse! Yay vampire movies. It was in an Imax theatre so it was huge :)

And then Thursday we went out for sushi with Conny, Miri, Sabine, and Miri's aunt and uncle. It was lots of fun, and then Miri invited me to her birthday party this weekend.

It's a musical themed party so everyone dresses up like a character from a musical. I'm going as a revolutionary from Les Mis because that's all I could put together from my clothes... I have a blue and white shirt, I will get a red neckerchief, and I have bought a loaf of bread to hold. I've also been listening to music from the show all day to get ready!

Revolutionarily,

Julia

More Vienna Pictures - from Alison!

Here are some more pictures from the trip, this time with pictures of me too!

This is from the first night of the trip. Notice the size of the food on my plate. Wayyyyyyyy too much.

View of the Vienna Skyline from the Ferris Wheel we were on. I think that's St. Stephen's Church.

Oooo from the Art Museum that looked like a castle! This Roman bust just said 'Julia' on it. And then some things in German. But, it's me!

Picture of a pretty building next to the Albertina. This is from when we got lost in all the pretty buildings and couldn't find the Hofburg palace.

When we were walking around, we found this stuffed animal store! I had seen this brand before when I was in Rothenburg - apparently they're really famous. The company is called Steiff. Oh - according to Wikipedia, they were the first company to manufacture stuffed animals. The important point here, though, is that they had a ginormous bear outside the store:

My new friend the giant bear!

Alison and the Giant Bear!

Alison snook a picture of the Marionette Theatre stage.

Ice cream after the Marionette Show. I got 'pizza ice' See! It looks like a pizza! But there's a watermelon on top!

And Alison got spaghetti ice. She had never heard of it before, so it was a top priority for the weekend to find her some.

The Vienna Opera Haus. We think

And, lastly, Alison and I at the Imperial Gardens at the Schonbrunn Palace.

And me at the palace!

Schonbrunn Palace

View of the front of Schonbrunn palace. It's HUGE. And realllly pretty. We first bought our tickets, which would let us in to the Imperial Chambers, and the gardens, and the maze (which we ended up not having time for) and the apple strudel tour (extremely important).

After we got tickets we ate at the palace cafe. They called their Hamburgers 'Habsburgers'. So cute! We then took a tour of the apartments. They didn't allow pictures inside :(, but we saw the room where Mozart first played for Empress Maria Theresa. That was awesome.
After the tour we walked out to the gardens. What you can see in the distance of this picture is the 'Gloriette' - their viewing gazebo for their gardens.

Fountain in the gardens.

Back of the palace.

Strudel lessons! This man showed us how to make apple strudel, and we got a free tasting sample. They also gave us the recipe, which I'm bringing home yay!



After this, we went back to the hotel, picked up our bags, and headed back to London/Wurzburg. It was a fantastic weekend full of museums and palaces and walking all over Vienna!

In which Alison and I may have broken in to Beethoven's house...

Our goal for Sunday morning was to see as many composers houses as we could, and then spend the early afternoon at Schonbrunn palace before depearting. :(
We first went to Beethoven's house:

Close up on the plaque:

Notice that this was the house in which he wrote Symphony #5. And Number 6! The Pastoral Symphony :)
We walk in to the building at about 9:55. The museum opens at 10, but everything looked dead quiet. There was a paper sign on a door which said 'Beethoven's Apartment, Fourth Floor': we then realized that this is still an actual apartment building. People live downstairs from where Beethoven used to live! That completely blew my mind. I was also wondering if this was the house and the time period of Beethoven's life which the movie 'Beethoven Lives Upstairs' was based on, but I don't know.
So, we went through the door, and there were no lights on at all. The whole stair well was pitch black. The flash on my camera makes the staircase look less sketchy than it actually was:

We walked up the stairs, and got to the fourth floor and found a door that said in small lettering 'Beethoven's Apartment'. It was odd how low-key this was in comparison to Mozart's house.
The museum was free because it was the first Sunday of the month! Alternatively, we got in for free because it was July 4th - not. Good timing on Alison and my part!
Beethoven's piano!

From Beethoven's house we took the subway down towards Haydn's house, which is a little more removed from the central part of the city. Back in Haydn's time, it was more of a suburb of the city. He moved to that house when he was old, and died there. He also had a parrot - the house had this recording that played parrot noises sporadically. Kind of creepy.

Haydn's piano!

Haydn's other piano!

A chair in the Brahms room in Haydn's house (confusing). I have decided that I want chairs in my house with music written on them.

From here we took a train over to Schonbrunn Palace!

Marionnetes

Saturday night we had tickets to a Marionette Theatre Production of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’. The theatre is on the property of Schonbrunn palace, so we took the subway over there. The palace grounds were so pretty! The marionette show was really awesome. We were both amazed at how well the puppeteers were able to make the puppets look lifelike. And the costumes were really awesome too. The music was from a recording by the Berlin Philharmonic, which was spectacular.
After the show, we took a tram back towards the city center to walk around a bit. We immediately saw a café that was showing the Spain – Paraguay game outside, but we didn’t want to watch there because we didn’t want to eat food; we at that point really wanted ice cream. I wanted to find a place with spaghetti ice cream because Alison hadn’t heard of it and didn’t quite believe that such a thing was possible. So at the first café, I say ‘It would be awesome if we found a place serving spaghetti ice and showing the soccer game’. So, we turn the corner, and right there we find a store selling spaghetti ice and showing the game! Alison got the spaghetti ice, and I got pizza ice – basically vanilla gelato smeared on a plate to make the ‘dough’, strawberry sauce for the ‘tomato sauce’ and then all sorts of fruit for the toppings. So tasty. Alison has pictures on her camera. :)

Welt Meisterschaft

The Belvedere is a little removed from the bustling downtown area. To get there, we took the subway to the nearest stop, and had to walk for about 15 minutes in the REALLY HOT weather. At this time, it was about 3:15. The Germany – Argentina game was to start at 4, and we really wanted to see the game. We figured we would find cafés showing it when we were by the Belvedere, because when we were in the main part of the city, every café had signs up saying ‘WM LIVE HERE’. However, when we were walking towards the Belvedere, we realized that there were very few cafes – furthermore, we were walking down a street called Argentinerstrasse. Not a good sign. We get to the museum at 3:30, and notice there is a restaurant across the street. We run inside, see the two rooms full of Klimt paintings, and go out to the café across the street, which we realize is a Greek restaurant. At this point, Alison and I were exhausted from running everywhere in Vienna in really hot weather. The owner comes out, and in my desperation (it was like 3:55) I asked “Are you showing the World Cup? Soccer? Futbol?” trying every word I could realizing I didn’t even know if the guy spoke English. He then replies in perfect English – ‘yeah, we’ll turn it on. Come on in!’ We watched the first half there – the only people in this random Greek restaurant. After the first half we wanted to go back to the center of the city where there might be more people and more excitement. We tried to take a tram which stopped across the street, but none were coming, so we just walked along the tram lines back towards the city. As we got to the Ringstrasse – a circlular street that encloses the ‘old city’, we realized why there were no trams: There was a HUGE gay pride parade going on. We maneuvered through the throngs of people, and finally made it to a normal café where lots of people were watching the game, and watched Germany destroy Argentina. :D
Oh, also during our walk, we saw the Opera House:

Why am I not a princess?!

After Mozarthaus, Alison and I again attempted to locate the Hofburg Palace, and finally did! It's huge, and practically in the middle of the city. We also almost got taken down by some horse-drawn carriages trying to get to it.

It’s pretty funny that we couldn’t find it the first day, but I guess that will kind of demonstrate just how many huge old buildings there were in those few blocks of the city. After we found it, we stopped for lunch at a café. Lunch actually ended up being more like ‘mid afternoon dessert’ – we decided to try sacher torte. SO GOOD. And we each had chocolate/coffee/iced tasty things because it was sooooooo hot out.
We then took a tour of the Hofburg – our ticket let us in to the Silver Collection, the Sisi museum, and the Imperial Apartments. We were mostly just interested in seeing the Imperial Apartments, but we walked through the other two exhibits quickly. The silver collection was about 15 minutes of ‘OOOO THAT’S SHINY’ and ‘did they eat off of solid gold plates?!’. The Sisi museum was interesting – it showed the life of Empress Sisi – wife of Franz Joseph. She is supposed to have been the most beautiful woman of her time, but was also quite opposed to the court lifestyle, so was kind of mysterious. And she was assassinated, so of course there’s a whole mystique about her now. What I got out of it was that she was anorexic and a little crazy.

Finally, we got to the Imperial Apartments. I WANTED TO BE A PRINCESS SO BAD. I kept asking Alison why I didn’t get to be a princess, and she quite aptly responded ‘If you were a princess, they wouldn’t let you do science.’ So, I guess overall I’m OK with my life direction. They didn’t let us take pictures inside of the apartments, which was quite sad, because everything was gorgeous. The Habsburgs used the Hofburg as their winter residence in the city, and went out to Schonbrunn for their summer holiday. So amazing.

After touring the Imperial Apartments, we went to the Secular and Sacred Treasury. Crowns, jewels, and relics, basically. Here are some highlights.

Crown. Pretty. and Shiny.

The crib of Napoleon's Son. He married one of the daughters of Maria Teresa, Marie Louise, so the baby Napoleon was technically a Habsburg. When Napoleon fell, his wife and baby came back to Vienna.

The largest emerald in the world.

Unicorn Horn, or narwhal tusk, you decide.

A huggggggge agate bowl. What made it really valuable is that part of the natural veining of the agate looks like it says Christ, so the Habsburgs thought this could have been the Holy Grail.

This was in the reliquary: a nail from the True Cross.

Crown of the Holy Roman Empire. With lots and lots of jewels.



Coronation robes, with gold threads. Pretttty.

Coronation medallion of the Order of the Golden Fleece. They never quite explained the order, but there is a golden fleece hanging from this collar.

Goblet! and British tourist who wouldn't get out of my way when I was taking the picture.



After this, we decided to go over to the Belvedere Museum, which has the world’s largest collection of Klimt paintings….