Day #21: Vienna

After waking up early and checking out, I caught the 7:08am train to Vienna. Arriving at 10:30, I dropped my bag off at a hostel before catching a U-bahn (subway) train downtown.

Starting off at the Vienna State Opera building, I did a self-guided tour narrated by my traveling companion, my Rick Steves guidebook. I did a loop around the old town, going past the big cathedral, the main shopping street, a few monuments and memorials, and ended up at the Hofburg palace.

I did make one detour at Cafe Sacher. A little explanation is needed for this detour to make sense. Back when we lived in Alaska, my mom was a secret shopper for a grocery store chain call Carrs. She was given a store to go to and to send in an evaluation of the store based on several different criteria (friendliness of personnel, cleanliness of store, etc.). I always tagged along, so that she could ask the questions and then I could unobstrusively catch the nametag of the employee she was talking to. At the store that was Mom's main store, we always stopped by the bakery and always ordered the same thing (after asking for a sample!): a sacher torte. It is a chocolate torte with a layer of apricot filling in the middle. It might not sound good, but it was delicious! After we moved away, I have been unable to find a place that sells it. So, it was a big deal when I discovered it was invented in Vienna and I would be able to have one. And yes, it was (almost) as delicious as I remembered it.

That led to an afternoon of touring through the imperial palace. Remember that up until World War I, Austria was the seat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that stretched over much of eastern Europe. It was a real powerhouse thanks to the deft marrying off of members of the Hapsburg family. So this was a pretty big and fancy palace.

The palace consisted of three different museums: the royal dish museum, the Sisi museum, and the Imperial apartments. I'll give a little bit about each.

The dish museum, unsurprisingly, consisted of many of the dishes the royal family used. Interestingly, up until the 18th century, proper noble families dined on silver plates and saved porcelain for soup and dessert. Then, tastes changed and porcelain became acceptable for all courses of the meal. Also, there is a particular way that the napkins are folded on the plates. But it is only done for formal state dinners (when hosting a monarch or head of state) and only two people know exactly how it is done.

The Sisi museum chronicled the life and times of Empress Elizabeth, who lived in the late 19th century. Elizabeth, or Sisi as she was called from childhood, was renowned for her beauty, her 20 inch waist, and ankle length hair. She hated court life and withdrew from it after her 30th birthday. She eventually became estranged from her husband and died after being stabbed by an Italian anarchist. This has led to some people calling her a fore runner to Princess Diana.

Finally, the imperial apartments showed how the Emperor and Empress lived. It was, of course, remarkably ornate and beautiful. But my favorite set of rooms was a back set of servants quarters that had floor to ceiling wall paintings of tropical scenes. You really felt you were on a beach!

After that, it was off to the royal treasury to see an impressive collection of crowns and jewels, which were spectacular.

Finally, I ended my evening with the opera! While tickets had long since been sold out, they sell standing room tickets 80 minutes before the show starts. I was able to get a ticket and was in the cheap seats up at the top of the opera. I did not know what they were going to show before I went, so it was a real treat when it turned out to be Mozart's the Magic Flute, one of his most successful operas. It was a little tiring to stand all that time, but they had a railing to lean on and the performance was well worth it.