Donnerstag, 8. Dezember
Wien
Today we went to the Leopold Museum, which is an art museum in Vienna's museum quarter. It was pretty neat; they had stuff from the turn of the century until today. Lots of stuff that we've been discussing in class from the Secession, like Klimt and Schiele and all them. Over this trip, I've discovered that I really like Klimt's stuff. They had copies of the paintings he did for the University, who then rejected them, which is one of the big things that spurned him onto starting the secession movement (they are copies because the originals were burned in WWII). Those were really neat. I also really liked the secession posters, and it was pretty funny--they had a little game you could play in the exhibit of "fits, but does not belong"--basically find the things of the same style but not the same era. Next to the secession posters, they had some hippie posters for concerts--very similar font, very similar style of art. Pretty cool.
One of the floors of the museum was devoted to Egon Schiele and those inspired by him, and I walked through that floor a bit quicker. There was some really bizarre stuff there that was probably made to make people feel uncomfortable. I find Schiele's work (for the most part) really disgusting and off-putting, and just in general don't really like him. Some of the stuff he inspired was interesting (if slightly disturbing) though. There was one room that was covered in foam and had whispers about various things coming from the walls. Overall though, the museum was pretty neat. I liked the way it was set up; it led you through the era chronologically, and it was of a manageable size, not too huge.
When I was done with the museum, I walked across the street to the Adventmarkt between the two twin museums--the museum of art history and the museum of natural history. It was a pretty standard Christmas market, nothing too exciting. I did get something interesting for lunch there though. I got a crepe, and asked for Schinken und Käse (ham and cheese), and the lady asked, "Schinken Käse Mais?" (ham cheese and corn?), and I looked at the menu again and realized that those aren't just lists of possibilities but options for specific crepes, so I decided to try it. I've seen the Viennese put corn on a couple of things you wouldn't really expect (i.e. pizza), so maybe its a good thing. In any case, my ham/cheese/corn crepe was pretty tasty. Interesting, yet tasty.
I decided to amble my way back to the hotel instead of taking the U-Bahn, and found another Christmas market on the way. It was pretty cool, very artsy. It seemed like more handmade things than some of the others (though all the markets have many many handmade things). I got some Glühwein in a ceramic handmade mug (like it was spun on a pottery wheel), which was pretty neat. There were so many things that I wanted to get but would never be able to take home. =( I've been having this problem a lot while here.
Later on, we all met up together to go to a Heurige, which is a type of restaurant normally found in wineries. It's a very homey kind of restaurant, where you get a bunch of food to eat family style and enjoy it with delicious wine. Dr. Rotenberg had told us that we'd have to work a little to get there, because you always have to work a little to get to a Heurige, but I don't think he expected us to work as much as we did. We took the U4 to its end station, and from there we were supposed to take the 39A bus. Unfortunately, without realizing, we got on the 38A. Then, Dr. Rotenberg said we should get off, but then Dr. Souchuk thought it was two stops more. We got off two stops later, and then we were going to walk back those other two stops. It was then that we realized we had taken the wrong bus altogether, and so we just walked there (probably about a 20-30 minute walk?) instead. We were about 45 minutes late for our reservation, but that was not too big a deal, as there was lots of space in the restaurant.
Regular visitors to a Heurige generally will go up to the "buffet," which is like a deli counter, order all of the salads and things they want for their family, pay for it at the counter, and sit back down with their food. However, since we were a large group, the waiters just brought us a bit of everything. There was ham, pork roast, potato salad, carrot salad, green beans, pasta with mushrooms, pasta with olives, root vegetable (I don't remember what it was called, but its an Austrian dish), Knödel (dumpling)...lots of variety and so much food! The wine we drank was a Riesling, which is a drier white wine, and it was quite tasty. Apparently its the custom to put more and more soda water in your wine each time you refill your glass so that you can make it through the evening. As I only had two glasses, I didn't bother watering it down. It was good as it was. After we were all done eating, we got a plate of varied cookies to share, which were also yummy. The way back to the U-Bahn took maybe five minutes tops, compared to the 40 minutes it took to get there. But at least the longer journey was before we ate, so we had time to warm up and eat all the calories we had just burned off. All things considered, it was a pretty good evening.
Freitag, 9. Dezember
Wien
Our initial plan for today was to go to the art history museum, but that was abandoned for Schloß Belvedere instead. Schloß Belvedere was the palace of Prince Eugen of Savoy, who saved the Austrian Empire in a few key battles, so he was granted the best real estate with the best view (which is what Belvedere translates to) in the city. It has expansive gardens, and is a really pretty castle. Inside, it's a big art museum, which houses (among other things) Klimt's The Kiss. It was really neat to see in person, along with many of the other works within the castle. In addition to the two rooms of Klimt works, upstairs, in the impressionist section, there were a few Monets. There was also another exhibition interspersed throughout the museum, which was called INTERVENTION. It had modern-day artists who were inspired by works in the Belvedere, but twisted them a bit. I really liked the stuff from Marianna Gartner (here is an example of one of her paintings).
After Belvedere, we walked to the Stadtpark (city park) to compare the different garden styles of Belvedere (very geometric, many straight lines) to that of the Stadtpark (very organic and curvy). As Dr. Rotenberg explained, Belvedere had the "Catholic," aristocratic type of gardening, keeping everything orderly, ruling over nature, whereas the Stadtpark was the "Lutheran" approach--letting nature be nature, keeping it for the people, approachable for everyone. Apparently you can do pretty much anything you want in the Stadtpark...last time Dr. Rotenberg was here in the summer, there was a couple having sex in the bushes, and he was watching all the old people sitting on the benches chuckling and chatting about it. This is probably not something that would be tolerated in the states. Both parks were pretty in their own ways, though the Stadtpark was more comfortable to just take a stroll. It also wasn't overrun with tourists (though there were some Japanese people taking funny tourist photos by the flower clock in the park) like Belvedere was.
Next, Michelle, Bria, and I walked around the city to find places that Klimt hung out at--the Universität für Angewandte Kunst (University of Applied Arts), where he went to school, and the Burgtheatre (court theatre), where he painted murals on the ceiling and the grand staircase. Unfortunately we could not go inside the theatre to see his paintings, but I got a picture of the outside of both places. The assignment was to pick someone from our book, A Nervous Splendor, and take pictures of places related to them in Vienna. I had originally wanted to pick Crown Prince Rudolf, but there's basically nowhere in the city other than the palace that has anything to do with him, so I chose my second favorite figure from the book, Gustav Klimt. I really liked how he hated all the fakeness of the Vienna high bourgeoisie, and went against the grain to eventually form the Secession.
After our Klimt adventures, Bria and I went to Cafe Tirolerhof, and while we were sitting there, Brendan and Michelle walked in and joined us. It was a pretty standard Viennese cafe, though the waiter was really rude and kept ignoring us. It was really difficult to get his attention to take Bria's order (she hadn't known right as she sat down, which was what originally made him not like us), and almost more difficult to get him to come to our table so that we could pay. Eventually we were able to pay, so we proceeded to our next place (also for an assignment), a pastry shop called Demel. We were supposed to sit there for a while, but after attempting to navigate the place for a bit, we decided that it was impossible. It was so packed with tourists it was ridiculous. It was probably the most touristy one we've gone to, and that's saying something since they were mostly touristy. So instead, we all just got our pastries to go and ate them in the hotel lobby. I got a Fächertorte, which had a layer of poppyseed, a layer of chestnut mousse, a layer of apples, bits of cherry, and a flaky crust. The motley of flavors was confusing, yet delicious. After that pastry, I wasn't hungry for dinner, so I just hung out at the hotel for the evening.
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I will continue this update later, but right now I have to get ready to go to a Viennese University class and then the opera. Busy day!
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