As I said in the last post, we woke up early to go see Schönbrunn Schloß (Palace). It wasn’t too far a walk, but it wasn’t very clearly marked where it would be. It was even off the city map the hostel gave us. We eventually found it after crossing through a park.
The building itself was large! The color a bit ugly, but nevertheless impressive. We walked in to see if we could check out the interior, but you had to pay an obscene amount of money for “Tours” or “Passes”. Nicole and Jeremy didn’t have long to stay and the gardens were free so we did those instead! I am glad we did! Again, rooms are rooms. Oh, royalty slept in that bed, eh? I could show you the bed I sleep in for 15 Euro too! I’m definitely well-known, I promise.
If the building was large, the gardens were mammoth, huge, titanic, gargantuan! I have no idea how many acres the gardens, pathways, fountains, and other buildings encompassed other than just “a lot.” We took our time walking to the Obelisk fountain, Neptune’s fountain, and some other ones before heading up a hill to this other building. I am still not quite sure what its purpose was, but it was cool. Maybe for banquets back in the day? It had huge, Austrian coats-of-arms statues on it. There was also a second level to it, which of course you had to pay to visit. We could see over a nice portion of Vienna just from where we stood on the first level, so we didn’t go up. The view was really impressive though! You could see the palace (now a bit smaller) along with the gardens with the rest of western Vienna as a backdrop. It was a great vista with the city, clouds and mountains to be seen!
After seeing that it was about time to head back because Jeremy and Nicole had to leave. We walked back and along the way picked up a tasty danish treat for “take away” (how they say “to-go”) at a Bäckeri and walked back to the hostel. Then we said to Jeremy and Nicole, and they left for the airport to continue the next part of their journey.
We also ate a few sandwiches we made of the stuff we bought the other day at the Spar. The garden at the hostel is really fantastic! It was quite, nicely decorated, and a protected from any winds that might arise. Very pretty! Then we napped for several hours in our beds.
Chuck woke me up and we decided to head out to see some paid sights. We even used the public transportation this time, because they were on the completely opposite side of the city. It still took us nearly 45 minutes to make it over there, but it was probably still a good deal faster than walking. We took the metro as well as the tram to get to KunstHausWien. It’s this ecclectic building with art exhibits. The building is actually very cool because the person who built it was artistic and environmentalist. There are plants all over: the electric lines are covered in vines, trees grow along stairwells, the roofs are actually covered with soil and plants instead of tar or shingles. They only had one exhibit at the time, because they were in the process of switching the second exhibit, but it was okay because we got there around 5:30 and they closed at 7:00.
The exhibit we did see was Hundertwasser. He’s a modern artist who was fairly accomplished. He not only did paintings but also graphic art, eco-friendly-and-pretty architecture, proposed flag designs for countries, and designed stamps for countries in the UN. Some of his stuff was a bit off the wall, but I connected with quite a bit of his pieces. My favorite was “The Occidental”. I would actually like to see if I could get either a print or one of the 238 real edition versions. All in all, I would recommend this to anyone, particularly those who like modern art.
After the KunstHaus, we walked to the Haus Der Musik (Music House). It was a 5 story exhibit that combined music, technology, science, and history. Some exhibits were of Mozart, Bethovan, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and others were intereactive learning experiences! Some of the exhibits were really cool but a lot of them had the potential to be awesome but came off lackluster because of either really out-dated technology, broken or unresponsive controls, or just lack of cohesive, continuous flow through the exhibit. One of my favorite parts was at the beginning when you hear some spacey sounds and then you find that the speaker is actually this blue piece of plexiglass right in front of you. Touch it and it’s vibrating and creating the sound you hear! Wicked!
We then took the metro toward our hostel and walked to Mozartstube, a restaurant right down the street. Chuck and I both got Wurstknödel mit Sauerkraut (Dumplings filled with meat and set on top of sauerkraut). The dish was huge! One dumpling would have definitely been filling. The price was actually pretty good though! The place itself was definitely interesting. It’s open from 6pm to 6am, and had a lot of antlers and pictures of patrons enjoying themselves on the walls. We didn’t run into any rude waiters there, which was nice, although I did order a Coke, just to make sure that when I did ask for water later that we wouldn’t be harassed. I don’t usually like Sauerkraut but I did manage the meal and it tasted decent enough. I’m still not a fan of it, but I didn’t let the little issue ruin the meal. It was a good Austrian meal! Too bad they didn’t have appel strudel there, or it would have been even more Austrian.
After that we headed back to our hostel and went to sleep. Of course, everyone else in the room was already asleep… well except for the people right next to us. One of whom was click-clicking away on his cell phone. I really wish he would have just left the room if he was going to be emailing/texting/whatever. Oh well, I fell asleep soon enough.