Vienna May 22-24, 2001
We arrived in Vienna about 4 on the 22nd. There had been much talk about the difficulties on the border since it is now the border between Eastern Europe and the European Common Market. Well, it was all talk, we took the bus through the first border (Hungary) with a wave, and stopped at the Austrian border long enough for our guide to get off the bus and get on the bus. So smooth sailing, but we'd all had enough bus, so were happy to get out.
| Marnie and I opted out of the evening concert and chose to walk to a "close" restaurant right by St. Stephen's church. Since we'd been on the bus all day, it was a nice walk, but it wasn't close. The church is shown on the right (you might guess from the sunlight that I took the picture the next afternoon). |  |
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The inside of St. Stephen's is absolutely gorgeous. The left is a view towards the main alter. My picture of the side alter was blurred, so you only get one. We were lucky in that a docent was practicing her organ (or maybe they make a point of having music during the day) so we had accompaniment while doing our viewing. (This picture also if from Tuesday afternoon). |
Tuesday morning we got our escorted tour of Vienna. The highlight of the tour is the summer palace which was constructed in the country so it would be cooler, but is no longer in the country. This palace is an intentional Versailles take off (but they ran out of money, so stopped at 1400 rooms instead of the Versailles 4000). We could take no pictures of the inside, but here's a neat picture of the outside. This picture is from the garden side. The other side looks pretty similar, but has tents for visitors in the way.
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The name of the palace is Schönbrunn which translates literally as beautiful fountain. The origin predates the palace, but for the reason, they clearly had to build a beautiful fountain there. This is actually at the back of the gardens, so those in he palace looking at the gardens can see it clearly. |
The winter palace is larger, but then, that shouldn't be a surprise since it was the working location. During the summer, the emperor usually commuted from Schönbrunn to the winter palace every day (so he asked to have the buildings on the street rebuilt to look better. Neat idea, but WW I got in the way, and afterwards, since Austria shrunk a whole bit, there wasn't the money to proceed. Below is a picture of a portion of the winter palace, currently the national library.
| After the plague went through Vienna like a hot knife through butter twice, the Emperor decided that city walls were not a good idea, so had the walls removed and a circular road replaced them. This road now has many state buildings on it like the Parliament building on the right. |  |
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Just a little farther onlong the ring road is the Rathaus (we'd call it City Hall). You can see they are setting up tents in front, probably for the holiday tomorrow (we miss CristeHimmelFahrt (Ascension day) thank heavens) |
| Just behind our hotel is this church. It's called the Votive church (Votive meaning "promise"). Seems that after a very serious period of trouble, the then Emperor gave the land to the church and paid to build the church in thanksgiving for the Lord saving them from the trouble. He said that during the troubles, he'd asked God to save the nation and that he'd made a promise if they came out of it. |  |
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On Thursday, we got on the bus early (8:30, terrible isn't it) and took off for the monastery at Melk. This monastery was built in the 800s and was given by the then Barons to the church to establish a place of learning in their village. |
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The monastery is only a few meters (mostly vertical) from the Danube. This picture is taken from the parking lot of the dock for the boat we were about to take. Interestingly enough, while we took a 1 1/2 hour ride on the Danube, the fastest way to get back on the autobahn was to come right back to Melk. |
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There are lots of castles on the Danube that still stand. This was the first one we came to, and probably the best preserved. The second one was renowned as belonging to robber barons, and the back wall was about 300' of vertical rock. They were reputed to invite their enemies to look at the rose garden which was in that corner, then push them off. |
| We got off the boat in Dürnstein. Well, at least most of us did. Here's a photo of Mark heading down the river and at the edge of the bank, you can see our tour guide Johan trying to make 41 count to 42. |  |
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Dürnstein was a really neat village, but we didn't get to see much of it. From the pier, this is the picture you get. We had to walk about 1/2 mile to the car park and get on the bus. The bus couldn't go through town as the streets are too narrow, so they actually dug a tunnel under the town to get to the car park. |
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