I was going to post at the end of our Saturday adventures, but it was a very long day and I was exhausted, so warning: this will probably be a very long post filled with many pictures because I’m re-accounting the entire weekend.
This weekend we continued exploring Vienna and booooy is there a lot to do here. Update: My German hasn’t really improved. I’ve become more confident saying “thank you” in German, and that’s about it. Oh, and I understood when the lady’s voice on the subway system said “Exit right.” I was too proud of myself.
Saturday morning we left at 9:30am to walk down to the Hofburg Palace, the winter home of the famous Hapsburg family. We were all stunned by how beautiful and magnificent the palace is.
After exploring the outside, we began on the tour. The tour began with displays of ridiculous amounts of beautiful dishes and cutlery, showing the progression of how they were designed over time. Here’s some of the highlights:
Oh, and these mind-blowing centerpieces ??!!!?!
The next part of the tour explored the life of Empress Elisabeth, also known as Sisi, and the legends surrounding her. I won’t go into detail (look her up if you want to know more about her), but her life story is fascinating. She felt trapped and overwhelmed by political affairs, so her life was tragic in many ways. I was nearly in tears at the end of the exhibit. Next, we were led through rooms of the palace–primarily the quarters of Elisabeth and her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph I. It was a little crowded, but I was still stunned by the beautiful decor and history associated with this interesting couple.
Afterwards, we explored the “inner ring” of Vienna. When we exited the palace, we were suddenly surrounded by massive buildings and monuments. Here’s just one of them.
Oh, and some Roman ruins just casually buried underneath???
I was hungry, so I spontaneously grabbed some spaetzle from an outdoor food stand (it’s this sort of fancy and fattening German/Viennese macaroni and cheese) and we made our way over to St. Stephen’s Cathedral. I won’t even try to describe it. Just look.
Inside there were these rock sculptures hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the aisle. These are a sort of art piece called Sky of Stones by Peter Baldinger. They are to hang in the cathedral from Ash Wednesday until Whit Monday, representing Jesus as a cornerstone, or the community of believers as “living stones.” It was breathtaking.
We had intended on seeing the catacombs, but they were closed due to a special event, so we decided to split up to explore and see the catacombs Sunday. Val, Corrie, Kenzie, Mel, Rachel, and I were in search of lunch, so we ended up eating at a place right outside of a greenhouse full of butterflies. Naturally, after lunch, we went inside. We did not regret it.
We headed back to the hostel and stopped at our favorite little Turkish market down the road from us. We bought some various delicious looking breads, tomatoes, berries, chocolate, and aloe drinks for a little picnic outside. Mel and I were quite ambitious and bought a very large half of a very large watermelon. We went to the front desk and the sweet girl working there let us use one of her knives and a cutting board and we cut it into slices. And so, the picnic began.
I’ve really enjoyed times like these. None of us can use our phones much, so I find we all spend a lot of time talking to each other, and I’ve really been enjoying it. We might not be able to speak German, but I think we’re starting to adapt to European culture in other ways!
After our picnic we took naps and then got ready for the opera! We went to see Don Pasquale at the Vienna Opera House. Apparently, it’s pretty difficult to get tickets to see anything there, so we were lucky. We had “the best of the worst seats.” The opera house itself was unbelievable.
In order to see the performance from the “best of the worst seats”, you have to lean quite far over the railing. It got a little uncomfortable after a while, but since opera is in Italian, each seat had a little screen in front of it with subtitles in various languages. Sometimes I just sat back and listened to the incredible vocalists and read along with the subtitles. Although I was pretty out of my element, the show was still hilarious and I was amazed by the performers. It was exciting to experience a new genre of art I had never experienced before.
Us after the show!
After the opera, we were all starving, so we found a little restaurant right across the street from the opera house! The view…
And us! 
And that was it for Saturday! Now onto Sunday!
Sunday also began bright and early with a trip to another one of the Hapsburg palaces: The Schonbrunn palace. This was their summer home, and it definitely felt very cheerful and summery.
We also explored the gardens… (which were crazy expansive, and I’m sure we only saw something like a tenth of them).
We then took a short tour of this palace, which is similar to the tour of the Hofburg palace. This palace is a little more grand, though, and we were really in awe the entire time. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but I wish we could have. When we passed through the room that Mozart first performed in, Val and I both got chills and we had to stand and take that information in. We tried to imagine him, 6 years old, at his piano, playing in the corner of the room.
After the palace, we stopped at a cute cafe. We then decided to roam around and… got lost. But it was a great kind of lost in a very quiet, residential part of the city. Finally, at 3:30pm, it was time to see the catacombs underneath St. Stephen’s Cathedral! We were pumped. We also couldn’t take pictures there, but I snuck this one.
And Val snuck this one (check out her blog if you haven’t).
We passed through rooms containing coffins of many of the embalmed Hapsburgs, as well as urns filled with organs and alcohol. As we passed through dark, cold, underground tunnels, we learned by the tour guide that during the late 18th century, cemeteries were no longer allowed inside the city, but there were no rules made about having a cemetery underground. So, they moved the cemetery outside of St. Stephens underground. We then learned that the bodies of those who died due to the bubonic were buried there. Prisoners were forced to stack the bodies to make room for more bodies. We saw lots and lots of bones. And more bones. And skulls. And bones. I couldn’t grasp the fact that those bones used to be living bodies. Wow.
We returned to our hostel to rest for a bit, intending on going out again later, but Kenzie and I left to find a laundromat. And so ensued the laundry fiasco.
The laundromat was way further than the 7 minute walk google maps told us it was. We spent 30 minutes trying to figure out the machines, put our laundry in, stopped at a very hot and humid McDonalds for drinks, butchered our way through communicating with the employees, returned to the laundromat, stuffed our wet clothes into bags, and rode the subway back to the hostel. It was an adventure, and we were in desperate need of showers, but we were laughing about it the whole way back. Again, it’s unexpected times like these, although annoying and unfortunate, that I will remember most. We were out of our element and making fools of ourselves, but it was fun in a way.
To wrap up the day, we stopped at our favorite little market again, grabbed some snacks, had a picnic, and decided to stay in and rest.
Tomorrow we leave for the Retzhof castle to begin our workshop! Posts this week might be a little more boring, but I’ll talk about some workshop things for theatre people who might be interested ???
If you made it to this point… I love you. Thanks for putting up with my blabbering.
Brittney
happy hungry artist 