A modest summer home

Thursday morning I flew Niki airlines from Zurich to Vienna. The stewardesses wore jeans and bright-pink button-up shirts and pink berets, which would have been cute if not for their surly disposition. But the flight was comfortable enough and I landed around 10am.

My first experience with the Viennese was not entirely pleasant. As I approached customs, I took out my passport and asked for my visa stamp. The dwarf-like man behind the counter grunted and performed a brief shudder, but I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret this. Thinking that perhaps he hadn’t understood, and seeing the stamp about 6 inches from his left hand, I pointed and said again, “stamp please?” The man, this time visibly angry, shook violently and nearly yelled “No!” Slightly abashed, I continued into the airport to change my last remaining Swiss francs into Euros.

My parents weren’t set to arrive for another 5 or six hours, so I dropped my back-pack off at the hotel, picked a random direction and just started walking. I wandered into a little park, but in the distance I saw what looked (at least to me) like the minarets of a Mosque. I began walking towards it, but it turned out to be a monastery called Karlskirche.

The inside of this church is currently undergoing some massive restoration, but much of it was still visible, and it was possible to take an elevator and stairs up to the top of the dome to see the beautiful ceiling frescos up close.

The monastery is also home to a rather unlikely home of a small modern-art collection. Normally I’m not a big fan of modern art, but some of this stuff was actually pretty neat (though I wasn’t a fan of the all-red canvass or the random paint-splattering that looked like the work of a 4 year old; maybe he was trying to capture the youthful spirit of 4 year olds, but it just looked like vomit hung on a wall… I guess some people would consider that art too though).

After leaving the church, I picked another random direction, and happened upon a plaza with a monument to the soviet soldiers that liberated Austria from the fascists in World War II. I stood in the spray of the fountain to cool off (it was over 85^of/30^oc with high humidity) and then sat against a tree; I don’t think it was a banyan, but I thought I might still have a shot at enlightenment. Unfortunately, the enormous ants crawling on me made it difficult to keep my composure, so I decided to walk back to the hotel. On the way back I bought a baguette and some fresh fruit to munch on, returned to the hotel, and promptly passed out until my parents arrived 2 hours later.

That night, we caught a performance of one of my favorite pieces of music (in the composer’s home town no less): Mozart’s Requiem. The group was fairly small, but the acoustics of Karlskirche were ideal, and the performance was exquisite.

We spent most of the next day at the modest summer home of the former Austrian emperors called Schönbrunn (beautiful spring). Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside, but you can get a small sense of the grandeur of the place from the outside and from the massive grounds that stretch out for many hundreds of acres behind the palace.

Afterwards, we stopped my a massive cathedral called Stephansdom, which is in the center of one of the main shopping centers of Vienna. I also had my very first real Wienerschnitzel (Vienna in German is “Wien”), which is a breaded and fried cut of veal.

On Saturday we schlepped over to a little residential neighborhood near the banks of the Danube, where there’s an apartment and museum created by artist and architect Hundertwasser. He reminded me in philosophy and art-style of my roommate Paul. He was very into natural art, loved spirals, and believed that “the straight line is godless.” Even the floors and stairs in his buildings were not level.

Later, we headed over to the main palace complex, Hofburg, in the center of the city. This area is littered with beautiful Greek-style sculptures and had many museums.We checked out the Östereichische National Bibliothek (Austrian National Library), a glorious building with frescoed ceilings, wonderful sculptures and busts, 3 and 400 year old globes and rows upon rows of ancient book. It was gratifying to see someone commit as much time and money to housing knowledge as is usually spent on churches.

Tomorrow, we head off to Budapest via train. I wanted to take a hydrofoil d

own the Danube, but that would have cost over $100 more, so I decided against it.