Danube Bike Tour Day 25-26: Vienna
Posted by Cassie, November 27th, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
We spent the morning at the Habsburg’s summer palace. It started off as a “simple” hunting palace, but Maria Theresa had it completely redone in the rococo style to rival the palace in Versailles. They had the most complicated system for touring the palace. They had four different tours with different prices. The 20 room tour was 9.50 euros, but you could see an additional 10 rooms for only 12.50 euros and so on. Once we had selected the number of rooms we wanted to tour, we also could only enter the palace at the specific time stamped on the ticket. Fortunately, we were there during the off season, so we only had to wait a few minutes before we could tour the palace. We did the tour of the imperial apartments, and they were incredibly fancy. The Habsburgs spent a lot of money on the palace. The walls and ceilings were covered in gold leaf. Each room had a ornately decorated ceramic stove for heating. The stoves were refueled by servants from behind, so all the walls had passageways behind them for servants to keep the rooms heated. It was interesting to see Franz Joseph’s rooms. He prided himself on his simple lifestyle and his strict discipline towards serving the empire. His rooms were plainly decorated with only a simple bed and desk. However, it seemed contradictory that he was still living in an enormous, fancy palace.
The summer palace also was surrounded by a large set of gardens, so we walked around in the gardens for a while. While we were walking around, the sky started to clear up, and the sun actually came out! It was sunny for the rest of the day, and the temperature reached double digits for the first time in days: 12 degrees Celsius. It was the nicest day in a long time.
We climbed the tower of the St. Stephans Cathedral. The top of the tower was like the Belfort tower in Bruge. We were not allowed to walk around the outside of the tower, and we could only look through the small windows on each side of the tower. Nevertheless, the view from the tower was neat. Vienna was a big place! The city went on as far as we could see from the tower.
After climbing the tower, we got ice cream for the first time in days. We celebrated the warmer weather with three scoops of ice cream. 🙂 We wandered around the city for the rest of the day. We stopped by the large fountain by the Belevedere Palace, and while we were there, we saw two balloons similar to our trash bag balloons released from the statue by the fountain. Their design was similar to ours, but they used tissue paper instead of a trash bag. They seemed to have a different type of fuel, too. One of the balloons went really far until we could no longer see it. The other balloon didn’t do as well, and it got stuck in the tree and burned the tree a little bit. We were surprised that these people released these balloons in the middle of big city considering they are a fire hazard if they get caught in something. When we did our trash bag balloon, we kept control of it with a kite string.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Yesterday, the weather had been nice, but today it was rainy and cold. It was a good day to spend inside of museums. We went to the Hofburg palace to tour the imperial apartments. First, we had to figure out which of the many doors went to the imperial apartments in the enormous palace complex. We finally found the entrance to the museum. 🙂 The museum began with the Habsburg silver collection, which consisted of room after room of tableware. The Habsburgs had an obscene amount of tableware. When they traveled, they brought their tableware with them since they wouldn’t have sufficient tableware where they were going. They had big carrying cases for the tableware. The most interesting part of the silver collection was the exhibition of the foot washing ceremony. Before Lent, the emperor would wash the feet of 12 poor old men, and the empress would wash the feet of 12 poor old women. The symbolism of the ceremony was that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Each person was also given 30 silver pieces, the same amount Judas received for betraying Jesus.
The next section of the museum was dedicated to Empress Elizabeth, or “Sissi”. It detailed her life from her carefree days growing up as a Duchess in Bavaria to her life as empress of Austria and her assassination. Apparently, Sissi was very shy and timid, and she was not well-suited for the duties of a being a public figure. She resented her lack of freedom, and she disliked all the attention she received. She mostly left the politics to Emperor Franz Joseph, but she did intervene when Hungary was struggling for independence from the empire. She was influential in convincing Franz Joseph to sign the agreement creating the dual monarch of Austria-Hungary. This was a substantial change in Franz Joseph’s policy towards Hungary. The Hungarian rebellion was brutally repressed, and Franz Joseph had paintings of the defeat of the Hungarian armies in his meeting room in the summer palace.
Once Sissi’s only son committed suicide, she started wearing only black and became completely withdrawn from court life. She became more melancholy and depressed and talked about the end of her life. She was assassinated by Italian anarchist while she was traveling. She was only stabbed once in the heart by a small file. After being stabbed, she actually boarded the boat that she had been waiting for before she was stabbed. The boat left shore with Sissi on it, and it only returned to shore later when they realized that she had been stabbed. She died shortly afterwards.
Hofburg palace
Vienna was the home of an amazing artist/architect named Hundertwasser. We went by the Hundertwasser Haus built by him, and it was one of the coolest buildings I have seen. Hundertwasser disliked straight lines, and he said, “Straight lines are godless.” His buildings were full of curvy lines. Hundertwasser was very opinionated, and he believed in getting back to nature in the way we live. The Hundertwasser Haus had trees growing from the windowsills. We also went to the Hundertwasser museum, and the curvy floors were the coolest part about the museum. Hundertwasser said that straight floors are for engineers, not people, and it wasn’t natural for people to walk on straight floors since nothing like that occurs in nature. He had an awesome futuristic architectural design for a city where all the houses were halfway underground with green roofs you could walk on. There was also a stream running through the city that you could paddle a boat down. It seemed like a wonderful place to live.
Hundertwasser Haus
Awesome curvy floors at Hunderwasser museum
No visit to Vienna was complete without a ride on the Giant Ferris Wheel at Prater Park. We thought it would be neat to go on the ferris wheel at night to see the lights of the city, but Vienna does not have a lot of city lights that you can see from the ferris wheel. However, it was neat to see the lights of the Prater Park amusement park rides. Prater Park used to be the Emperor’s hunting grounds, but the Emperor turned over the hunting grounds to the citizens of the city. It has been a popular place for people of Vienna to relax and have fun ever since then. However, everything at the Prater Park was overpriced. We were thirsty and got a completely overpriced Coke at the gift shop. They had Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, and it was 7 euro for a pint, which is about $10.50!
Prater Giant Ferris Wheel
View of amusement park roller coaster from ferris wheel
View from ferris wheel
We had a long walk from the ferris wheel back to the hostel. Biking shoes are not comfortable for long days of walking. The soles of biking shoes are stiff for comfort during biking, but they do not provide any cushioning for walking. My feet were so sore from walking around Vienna for two days, and I was ready to get back on my bike so I wouldn’t have to walk around in my bike shoes. 🙂
Print
