Montag, 5. Dezember
Melk und Krems
This morning we hopped on a bus to get out of the city for the day. We first traveled to Melk, which is a small town about an hour and a half due west of Vienna. It was pretty windy and chilly there, but luckily we were not there to be outside. Since we arrived a bit early, we went in the restaurant to get some coffee and to kill half an hour. After we had all warmed up a bit with our Melanges, we proceeded into the abbey (Stift Melk) for our guided tour.
Our guide walked us through a courtyard, which had some modern paintings, which my brother and I decided looked like ninjas when we were there last year summer. Apparently, they are the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage. The monks decided a while back to keep up with the times, so there was a bunch of modern stuff along with the really old stuff throughout the place. The museum our guide led us through next was a perfect example of this modernity. Each room was a different color, and was ridiculously modern. I was really surprised. It was quite an interesting museum, not as dry as I would´ve thought it would be. After the museum, we walked through the abbey a bit, saw some really beautiful ceiling murals, a couple cool libraries, and a really nice panoramic view of the town and surrounding area.
We eventually got to the church, which was really beautiful. They had some entire skeletons from the catacombs in Paris, which were posed almost....sexual. I really felt like one of them was saying, "Paint me like one of your French girls." The main altar, interestingly enough, did not have a crucifix, or Jesus on it at all for that matter. It was all saints, especially Peter and Paul, since they were some of the patron saints of the church. Mary and Jesus were in some of the smaller alcove chapels shooting off the sides. When we were done in the church, our tour was over, so after a small stint in the gift shop, we got back on the bus to head to Krems.
According to Dr. Rotenberg, Krems is in a big wine-growing region. Thus, along with the Wiener Schnitzel I ordered (I hadn´t had one yet, and really wanted one), I ordered a Grüner Veltliner, a white wine exemplary of the region. It was pretty sweet (sweeter than I expected, as most of the white wines I´ve drank were dry), but quite tasty. For dessert, I got Eispalatschinken--crepes filled with ice cream and covered in powdered sugar and chocolate sauce. Needless to say, it was very delicious. After that excellent meal, we had half an hour to walk around the tiny town of Krems before getting back on the bus to go back to the hotel, where I just hung out for the rest of the night, catching up on my reading assignment before going to bed.
Dienstag, 6. Dezember
Wien
Today we went to the Wien Museum--a museum of history of the city of Vienna. The ground floor was die Römerzeit (Roman times), and as you went up the stairs to the other floors, you got closer and closer to today. They had some original statues from the Stephansdom in the museum; I guess the ones that are on the church right now are copies. There was some interesting stuff there; I was really thrown aback by the modern stuff though. I´ve never seen a museum that has things from right now in it. In one of the exhibits, they had a postcard and some magnets on display that the souvenir shops sell, plus some credit cards that I have seen in advertisements. It was quite odd to see one´s own time in a display case.
I think my favorite part of the museum though was this one exhibit made in cooperation with some university students. They walked around the city, taking pictures of signs and things, and made magnets of the words, creating an art exhibit that the visitors can alter. They also made things out of trash resembling those things that high society celebrated around the turn of the century (i.e. hats with stuffed birds on them, crocodile handbags, etc). I´ll post pictures of those later, but they were pretty great. They also made an animated video, which I just searched for on youtube, but unfortunately it isn´t there. It was pretty great though. Very interesting.
Back downstairs, there was a special exhibit about Angelo Soliman, an African man who, around the turn of the century, was employed by a rich duke as his servant, won the lottery and thus his freedom, lived in the middle class with his wife until they dropped back down into poverty, went to work for the duke again, and then, upon his death, was stuffed and put in an exhibit of "native" African tribal people. It was such a scandal that this man who had made such a name for himself was reduced to nothing but a native in an exhibit--little more than an animal--so this man has become quite important in Vienna´s history.
When I finished with the museum (everyone finished at different times, so I was alone the rest of the day), I walked through the Adventmarkt right outside (the Karlsplatzmarkt that I was at a few days ago but closed so I couldn´t see a lot of it), and got a Glühbier and Bratwurst for lunch. The bratwurst came with a garlicy flatbread, which was pretty cool...usually they come with rye bread or a roll or something. This was a tasty change. However, more exciting than garlic bread was the Glühbier. I didn´t even know it existed until I saw the sign, which is why I ended up eating there actually. I got a cute little 0,3 L stein full of this hot, surprisingly sweet, beer. Unfortunately, once it got cold, it was not really that good. But it was delicious while it was warm though! I love all these warm drinks. In addition to Glühbier and Glühwein (red), there´s also Glühmost (white wine), and many many many kinds of Punsch. There is hot punch made of basically any kind of fruit you like, many with mixed kinds, and a bunch with different kinds of additional alcohol (punch generally already has a bit of alcohol in it already [unless you get Kinderpunsch], though it doesn´t taste like it). What else is interesting about all these drinks is that you can walk through the whole city drinking them (and any alcoholic drink for that matter), as opposed to in the US, where there are only certain fenced in areas, and if you walk down the street with alcohol you can get fined.
After the market, I went back to the hotel and chilled for a while, until I went to go get some dinner with Jocelyn. We went to a Wurstl stand and got some sausages and some Glühwein before coming back to the hotel to get ready for the opera.
Klemens, our guide in Salzburg, had gotten us some discounted student tickets for the Staatsoper (state opera) performance of Nabucco, a Verdi opera about the struggle between the Assyrians and the Jews in Babylon. It was pretty cool being in that space, though I felt rather under dressed next to all these fancy gowns. Unlike the other two operas I´ve been to, instead of English subtitles above the stage, each seat had its own little subtitle thing, on which you could choose English or German subtitles (I chose English). I was kinda bummed that they didn´t translate every line that was sung, but I suppose they got all the important bits. After the opera, we were going to go to a wurstl stand and rub elbows with the rich and (maybe) famous [according to our professors they all go to the sausage stands after the opera I guess...trading classiness for lower street food], but it was raining, so we decided not to. We were going to go to a cafe instead, but their kitchen was closed, as was most everything near our hotel, and since I wasn´t really hungry anyway, I just went to the hotel and went to sleep.
Mitwoch, 7. Dezember
Wien
We were with Dr. Rotenberg today, and our assignment was to go to a supermarket and examine products, ingredients, and brands from countries within the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. In our store, Spar Gourmet, there really wasn´t a lot of things made outside of Austria or Germany, though quite a lot of produce was from Italy. As we were looking at things and writing their countries of origin, one of the workers asked us what we were doing. When I told him we were working on a project for school, he said that normally that is forbidden without permission (which, when I asked Dr. Rotenberg later, apparently entails a signed/stamped letter from the professor about 3 weeks in advance). Since he said "normally," Bria and I decided to stay and finish the assignment, though we went to a different part of the store.
After the supermarket, we hopped on the Straßenbahn with the hopes of riding around the Ringstraße to our next cafe, but all of a sudden, the train left the ring. We thought it might eventually go back to the ring, so we stayed on it for a while, until we realized it really wasn´t going to head back there. So we hopped off and got on one going the other way. When we got back to the Ring, we decided to walk to the cafe (it was only like 4 blocks away). When we were almost there, I realized that my map, and thus our assignment paper, had fallen out of my pocket. So we walked all the way back to where we got off the S-Bahn, luckily we found the paper, but we didn´t find the map (which wasn´t an issue, I just got a new one from the hotel later). After having to walk there and back already, we decided to get on the S-Bahn instead. When we finally walked into Cafe Prückel, we almost left; the smoke was so thick you could hardly see. However, I then saw a glass door in the back, that fortunately led to a non-smoking section (I am so glad smoking inside is outlawed in the states....being here and going to cafes, bars, and restaurants where people are smoking...its awful). I ordered Schinkenfleckerl, which was bits of ham and little square noodles; it was quite tasty. We sat there for a while, reading and writing our assignments, and then proceeded to our next assignment: pastry shops.
We have to go to four of the best pastry shops in the city, order a pastry, and people watch. Sounds awful, right? At Gerstner, the pastry shop we went to today, I got a Mohntorte (poppyseed torte) and a Melange (Viennese specialty coffee...basically coffee and milk I think. Like a latte). The Mohntorte was really delicious; I had been craving poppyseed strudel for a while, and though this was not the same, it definitely sufficed. We could not do much people watching, however, as our assignment said to ignore the tourists, just write about the Viennese, and our pastry shop was basically all tourists. After we were done with our cakes, we headed back to the hotel to debrief with the class.
That evening, Dr. Rotenberg was going to take any of us that wanted to go to a Czech restaurant, but after we got there (and it was a long walk), we found out that they were full for the whole evening. Hungry and bummed, we started walking back and the group eventually all parted ways, some getting street food from the subway, others heading for some kind of restaurant, and I headed towards a Christmas market (of course). I tried some regular Punsch (mit Eierlikör), and didn´t really like it, but drank my €3,50 worth anyway. It was getting late, so a lot of the stalls were starting to close, so I didn´t end up getting food at the market. Instead, I went to a Wurstl stand and got a hot dog with Bratwurst (they were out of Scharfewurst). I don´t remember if I´ve described a Viennese hot dog already, so I´ll explain it now. A "hot dog" is just their way of presenting the meat, not a style of sausage. They take a baguette, stab it on a stake, squirt in some ketchup and mustard, and slide your sausage of choice into the hole. In general, quite tasty, and much better than an American hot dog. This one was not as good as some others I´ve had, but it was still pretty good.
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Well, that´s it for now. Tonight we are going to a Heurige, which is basically a wine restaurant, if I remember correctly. Should be pretty cool.
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