Thursday, 24 December 2015 (Christmas Eve Day)

We’re getting late starts each morning.  The time change has us still awake at 1:30 a.m. and still in bed at 10:30 a.m.  Considering it starts getting dark at 4:00 p.m. this time of year, we really need to get up earlier to start our days.  Today it was nearly noon before we finally made out the front door.

This guy is selling roasted chestnuts and potato “chips” — roasted spiral potato slices on a stick.  He’s there when we leave our apartment in the morning (well … noon) and he’s still there past 8:00 p.m.

Isabella coming out of our building.  We exit into this covered walkway with a small Christmas market.

A lot of people were buying their Christmas trees today.

We began our day figuring out how the Vienna subway system works – with our destination being the Kunstmarkt – art marketplace.  The subway system here works just like the one in London, although it’s unclear where the tickets are supposed to be collected.  We bought tickets but never saw a place to scan them, so we didn’t.

While Adam was buying the tickets at the ticket vending machine, I noticed the kids giggling by the drinks vending machine a few feet away.  Isabella said, “Mama, they sell pot tea.”
“They sell potty? What?”
“No — pot tea.  Weed tea.  As in marijuana. They have a picture of the leaf and everything.”

By this time we’d walked out of the vending area and over toward the train platform.  I said, “It can’t be tea made of marijuana.  It was probably a picture of a dandelion leaf or something.”  The kids don’t know anything about plant leaves and to them they all look pretty much the same.  Holden said, “No, it was definitely marijuana.  It even said ‘cannabis’ on the label.”

So, back we went to the vending machine.  Sure enough, there was cannabis tea in a can like Red Bull.  We didn’t buy any.  I looked it up when I got back to the apartment — it’s called C+Swiss and according to wikipedia: “is a hemp based icea tea which is legal in the United States. C+Swiss contains 0.0015% THC and is environmentally friendly.” According to general internet users, it’s a disappointment and doesn’t taste very good.  We may have to buy a can just to see what it’s like.

Once we got to the art market we found out that it was closed for the weekend – we’ll have to return some other time.  I peeked in the windows and didn’t see anything as good as the Polish watercolor guy, so my hopes for finding the next Van Gogh have been dashed a little.  We’ll still go back after Christmas and paw through the bins.  They have most of the paintings stacked like vinyl records.

[photo below] Cool Fin de Siecle designwork near the Naschmarkt.

We decided to walk the long way back and just see what we ran into. We stopped off at the Naschmarkt – about 1.5km of stalls selling all sorts of food goods – fruits, vegetables, meats, spices, etc. The market has been in the same location since the 16th century.

Spices, salts and herbs from all over the world.  I bought a bag of garlic sea salt and a bag of Viennese salt, probably harvested from the alps but it doesn’t say on the package.  The salt itself is very coarse and dark grey.

Some of the fruits and vegetables were exotic.  Holden really wanted to buy a dragonfruit, but we didn’t want to carry it around all day.

Still debating on where we could put it and who would have to carry it.  In the end, nobody wanted the responsibility.  Carrying a bag would mean not being able to put your hands in your pockets and it was quite cold.

We found a nice cafe for lunch and had the best meal of the trip so far.  The waiter remembered to bring Josie’s meal, too.  She had a much better day today.

We walked and walked for what felt like forever, just taking in all the new streets — and then suddenly realized we were very near our apartment.  We’d been headed toward Mozart’s house but all thought it sounded like a nice idea to pop back upstairs first to rest our feet for a few minutes.  Once all the shoes were off, Holden and Josie decided they didn’t want to go back out to see the Mozart house and opted to stay home.  Isabella still wanted to go, so just the three of us went.

St. Stephen’s Cathedral again. Mozart’s house is right off the St. Stephen’s square.

Isabella bought a little leather-bound handmade notebook for one of her friends.  Even the paper inside is handmade.

A few more shots of the shops and Christmas markets around St Stephen’s square.

[Photo below] Mozart’s apartments on the 2nd and 3rd floors.  

This museum was a disappointment.  We were hoping it was going to be like the Charles Dickens house in London, furnished fairly close to how the Dickens family would have had it so you can get a sense of what their daily lives may have been like.

In this case, the apartment is almost completely empty.  Mozart only lived there for 2 1/2 years and there are no written descriptions of how he had it furnished.   They don’t even know for sure what he used each room for.  One of the rooms, for example, said that historically it was where they figured he had his study, but recently have decided it was more likely to have been his bedroom.  Other plaques said, “This was probably a guest room” or “It’s assumed this was his living room because it’s the biggest room in the apartment.”

They did have some handwritten sheets of his music and some of his letters, which was really neat to see, but in the end you left without any real sense of what his life was like while he lived there.

A couple more shots of the buildings along the pedestrian area near our apartment.

After dinner Holden and Josie, once again, opted to stay home.  Isabella, Adam and I went back out just to see what was still open on an Austrian Christmas Eve.  The whole city was lit up and beautiful, although most of the shops and Christmas booths were closed.  A few of the fancier restaurants were open and they were packed.

St Peter’s Cathedral was open.  They were preparing for Christmas Eve services so we just took a peek and left.  Tomorrow night (Christmas day) they have an 8:00 p.m. organ performance accompanied by a soprano.  Adam and Isabella may see if they can get in to see that performance.

We wandered further than we expected we would …

… and ended up back at the big Christmas market furthest from our place.  It was still very much open and hopping with activity.

Some of those gorgeous glass Christmas ornaments.

Adam and I finally got around to trying the “punsch” for sale all over the city.  It tastes a lot like hot apple cider, although there are no apples in it.  Weihnachtspunsch – black tea, red wine, rum, sugar, lemons, oranges, cloves and cinnamon.  It was quite sweet and I ended up drinking most of it.  Adam doesn’t care much for sugary drinks and he hates tea.  The alcohol content (in this one, anyway) was so low I offered to share it with Isabella but she took one sip and declared it “gross.”  More for me!  It even came in a ceramic souvenir mug you get to keep.

Isabella chose this candied apple as her treat instead.  She thought it was going to be sticky, like a caramel apple, but the candy coating was rock hard.  It was basically an apple suspended inside a lollipop.  She had to lick a hole through the candy shell to get to the apple.

Even the trees in this neighborhood are decorated and themed.  This one was covered in hearts.  Another had guitars (which Isabella insisted were actually cellos and she may have been right), one had candy canes, etc.

Vendor selling fancy French soaps and assorted bath products.

The guitar/cello/giant violin tree.

Fog was starting to set in, which gave the church a misty, watercolor quality.

In what turned out to be the best part of the day, Adam’s camera malfunctioned and we don’t have any photos.

We were all in bed when every church in the city started ringing it’s bells.  I went up to our rooftop deck to see if there were processions of people or anything going on, and was treated to a magical view straight out of a storybook.  Every church and historical building as far as the eye could see was lit up and all the advertising signs and ugly modern stuff was turned off.  A misty fog made everything look like it was glowing.  The Opera House adjacent to our building looked like a jewel and we could see all the people dressed in their finery walking around. It was a painting from 1800 come to life.

I went back in to get Adam and the kids.  We all stood outside in the freezing cold in our pajamas, mesmerized.  Then, on the stroke of midnight, all the lights went out and the bells stopped ringing.

Friday, 25 December 2015 (Christmas Day)

We slept in again and got another late start, which is unusual for a Christmas morning.  That is generally the one day of the year the kids wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to go long before the crack of dawn.  We’re not giving each other gifts this year because this trip itself is pretty much the gift.  I guess the kids figured sleeping in was a better use of their morning since there weren’t any packages to tear open.

I made scrambled eggs, potatoes, onions and mushrooms for breakfast.  It’s the first meal I’ve cooked in this apartment and I ran into the same trouble I always do in AirBnB rentals — terrible cookware and knives.  I understand why they all have such awful kitchenware … the good stuff is expensive and people would either ruin it or steal it.  (If I were letting strangers stay in my place, I’d equip it with cookware from the equivalent of Walmart, too.)  It does make for some improvising in the preparation of meals though.

After showers and getting dressed, we headed over to the Albertina Museum – something open today.  Every other tourist in the city had the same idea. The place was crowded.

This month, the Albertina is exhibiting a special collection of Edvard Munch.  I didn’t realize The Scream was a wood print and there are several different iterations of it.  This is the one they had on display.  You can see in the photo below that Holden and Josie didn’t bother to look at it, even though so many people were trying to get photos of it that a huge crowd had formed.  People were queueing up and taking turns.

My favorite piece was this painting of a horse done by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.  He was only 17 when he painted it.  The description next to the painting reads in part:

“Due to his long sick bed in 1878/79 because of complicated bone fractures that eventually led to the deformation of his legs, Toulouse-Lautrec started drawing at an early age.  … Encouraged by his father’s passion for hunting and riding … Henri initially mostly drew dogs and horses…. This painting was made in 1881 at the Chateau de Bosc near Albi, where the artist frequently spent the holidays.”

Poor Toulouse-Lautrec was born into a noble family but suffered some sort of bone disease that stunted his legs.  The trunk of his body grew to normal adult proportions, but his legs remained weirdly short.  (He was only 4’8″ tall.)  He developed an affinity for drinking and prostitutes, which eventually led to his untimely demise at age 36.  He died from complications of alcoholism and syphilis.  His signature drink was a cocktail made from equal parts absinthe and cognac, and he had his cane hollowed out (which he needed for walking) so he could fill it with booze and never be caught without.

The Albertina was originally a part of a late 17th century palace built for royalty. One wing has been preserved with original rooms and furniture from the period, as well as the most significant pieces of art in the collection – originals by Da Vinci, Dürer, Rembrandt and Bosch.

I think the wall coverings are all made of silk cloth, but I’m not sure … these rooms didn’t have signs with English so I did a lot of guessing based on the few German words I recognize.

The floors were the most exquisite I’ve ever seen.  They are wood inlay, each room with a different design.  Most of them were covered with rugs to protect them.

Holden and Josie once again sitting on a bench instead of taking in their spectacular surroundings.  You can lead a child to great works of art and culture, but you can’t make them look.

The painting Young Hare is a 1502 watercolour and bodycolour painting by German artist Albrecht Dürer.  The hare is the unofficial mascot of Vienna and we’ve seen it throughout the city.  

View of the horse carriages from the steps of the Albertina.

On the way to the cafe for lunch, we walked down a new street and found several art galleries and antique shops.  They were all closed for Christmas so we’ll go back in a few days.

Then we suddenly found ourselves passing by the stables were they house the Lipizzaner Stallions of the Spanish Riding School.  This city has a delightful surprise around every corner.

Cafe Griensteidl – one of Vienna’s original (19th century) cafes – and open today for our lunch.  We had a fantastic meal here.  I ordered gnocchi in a pumpkin soup that was so good I’m going to try recreating it once I get back home.

After lunch we hired one of the carriages to take the five of us on a 30 minute tour around the city. The kids had fun bundling up under the blankets and seeing the sights in style. Isabella looks like she would rather be just about anywhere else, but she insists she was so taken by the scenery and the clip-clop of the horses — the whole sensory experience, really — that she was completely lost in thought.  When the ride was over, all three kids wanted to immediately do it again.

As for me, I realized while we were riding in the carriage that all this time walking around the city, I haven’t been looking up to truly appreciate the buildings. Everyone has a tendency to look down while walking, so you see mostly what is on street-level. (Navigating through crowds of people, too, you have to watch where you are going.) The carriage ride gives you a chance to sit back and look UP, and it’s well worth the price. You get an entirely new perspective on the city. Streets we’ve been walking through several times each day suddenly looked completely new.

By this time it was after 4:00 p.m. and I wanted a chance to relax a bit before I had to get started on dinner.  It was also starting to get really cold.

We went back to the apartment for a few hours.  I baked chicken tenders with butter and garlic, new potatoes and carrots with butter and garlic, and brussels sprouts with butter and garlic.  When you don’t have an extensive spice rack at your disposal, you can work miracles with butter, garlic, and salt.

A view of the Opera House from our deck.  The fog rolls in each night and gives the city a mystical quality.

Around 7:00 p.m. we headed back out.  Adam and Isabella wanted to see if they could get in to see the organ concert at St Peter’s Cathedral at 8:00 p.m. and the rest of us wanted to walk around the city and see what was there to see. It was quite cold this evening, so we got out our gloves, scarves, and warmest coats.

The chestnut guy outside our apartment door always has a crowd.  He must make as much money during the Christmas holiday as he does the rest of the year put together.

Every corner you turn reveals magical sights like this one.

We ended up back at the Christmas market Isabella, Adam and I went to last night.  They were still open.  Holden and Josie both wanted to get candied apples after they saw Isabella come home with one yesterday.

Here is the full Christmas moon!  Mere moments after Adam took this photo, we looked up and the moon was gone.  Clouds rolled in and simply erased it.  We got really lucky with the timing on this one.

Found the candied apple stand!

Isabella wanted to try something new, so she chose this enormous pretzel covered in chocolate and almond shavings.

One last shot of the Christmas market.  We read that it was closing down after Christmas.  We were actually surprised it was still open this late … a lot of the markets had already been dismantled and New Year’s Eve decorations erected in their places.  I was surprised at that — it means some poor schmucks had to spend Christmas day working hard outside in the cold.  I assumed they would just do all that tomorrow, but no.

On the walk home.

Giant ribbon on the building outside our apartment.

We ran into the Polish artist again on our way home.  We ended up buying another 5 of his paintings, with the idea of giving them out as gifts.

I got to looking at them once we got them home and became convinced they were from a printer — they were just too perfect. I was mad and pretty sure the guy had lied right to our faces.  I spent a couple hours angrily googling “how to tell if a watercolor is original or a print.”  In the end, someone said a sure-fire way to tell is to wet a q-tip and see if any pigment comes off the painting.  A real watercolor will re-paintify and come off on the q-tip, whereas printed ink won’t.  I tested one of them and it was definitely real paint.

Then I felt bad for thinking evil, un-Christmasy thoughts about the Polish guy … yet I’m still a bit skeptical in spite of the kinda/sorta-scientific test I conducted.  I don’t know how anyone can paint that precisely and evenly with watercolors.  If something is too good to be true, it usually is. Here is one example:  just look at how well he rendered the horses.

Saturday, 26 December 2015 (St. Stephen’s Day)

Austrians celebrate Stephanitag (St. Stephen’s Day) the day after Christmas.  In England, they call it Boxing Day.  Apparently Stephanitag is nearly as big a deal as Christmas itself.

Adam made several trips to the grocery store this morning thinking they would eventually open – but they never did open. Much of the rest of the city was closed, too.  I ended up cooking a batch of potatoes, onions, sausages and our 4 remaining eggs to make our breakfast because we were out of cereal and milk.

Our first destination was to take a ride on the Weiner Riesenrad – the oldest extant Ferris Wheel in the world. Built in 1897, it is a popular tourist attraction and has appeared in many movies through the years – from Orson Welles to James Bond.  The Wheel is part of the Prater park, which is much more of an amusement park than we thought it would be.  The kids were thrilled.

Holden looking at the city from inside one of the old ferris wheel cars, which looked kind of like 1/4th scale old-fashioned train cars.

Some of the cars (pictured below) were equipped with dining tables.  People can have a romantic dinner if they wish.

Our public car was much less romantic.  They packed people in.

Isabella, Holden and me enjoying the sights.  Once again, Isabella insists she was having a great time, listening to her music and marveling at her surroundings.

Next up was a funky rollercoaster.  We’d never seen one quite like it.  All of the rides cost €4 each and we’d told the kids they could do ONE ride.  This is the one they unanimously chose.

Riders lay down in a prone position on their stomachs, like Superman flying.  You can’t see from the photo, but their legs are sticking straight out behind them.

Off they go!

Slowly up the corkscrew …

… and then it goes like mad.

We left Prater park to find a cafe suitable for lunch.  Then we walked a few blocks to see the Danube.  It actually was blue.

Back near our apartment in Stephansplatz they have their New Year itinerary posted.  Each of the yellow dots is a location that will have a different musical artist performing.  Listed below are the artists and their genre of music.

With the grocery stores closed these last two days, we’ve been stocking up on “Nachtschwärmer” (means either night owl or nocturnal reveler, depending on which you prefer) sold at a nearby kiosk. Cheap! Careful when asking for that brand by name in your local store.

While in the subway station today, we bought a can of the cannabis tea to try.  We haven’t had it yet, but here is the picture to prove I’m not making it up.

I cooked a repeat of our Christmas dinner (chicken, potatoes, carrots, brussels sprouts, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms) after wine time.

For our pre-dinner Wine Time entertainment we watched Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds.  It’s (based-on) a true story of a wealthy Austrian Jewish woman forced to flee the Nazis at the beginning of WWII.  She escaped to America and settled in Los Angeles, but the Nazis plundered her family’s Viennese estate.  They stole, in particular, a painting titled Woman in Gold by Klimt, which was a commissioned portrait of her Aunt Adele.  As an old woman, she sued the Austrian government to return the painting (among others) in 1998.

A lot of the scenes were filmed in Vienna so we wanted to watch the movie while we were here.  The infamous stolen painting hung in the Belvedere Gallery for years as the crown jewel of their Klimt collection.  We’re going to the Belvedere Gallery tomorrow.

It’s so much fun to be able to watch a movie/show and then immediately go tromp around the filming locations.  A couple years ago we spent Christmas in London near 221B Baker Street, so we re-watched all the Sherlock episodes and then dedicated a whole day to retracing Sherlock’s steps around the city.  It was fun!

Around 6:30 p.m. we headed back out for our evening stroll.  We took a different route this time to see if there was anything new, but struck out.  The buildings were impressive, as usual in Vienna, but there wasn’t anything going on.

We did find this statue of Johann Strauss.  He looks nearly identical to Mark Twain.  We’ve seen pictures of him in various places throughout the city and each time I think, “Why do they have a picture of Mark Twain playing the violin?”  Here he was, larger than life, in statue form.  We had to get a picture.

Back outside our apartment the Opera House is broadcasting a live performance so everyone can see it.  They are playing La Cenerentola (Cinderella) — sung in Italian and shown here with German subtitles.  We have tickets to this performance next week.

If you are willing to sit out in the cold, you can see a world-class performance for free.  Quite a few people were doing exactly that.

From our rooftop deck you can see the Opera House and the projection screen.  We could hear the singing from inside our apartment, which was incredibly cool.

Later in the evening, we learned that Vienna has received news of a terrorist threat (along with several other unnamed European cities) to take place sometime between Christmas and New Year’s.  That news cast a pall over our evening.

I spent some time looking up all the details I could find, which wasn’t much.  The main New Year’s celebrations are taking place in Stephansplatz, just a couple blocks from where we are.  The city is shutting down most of the subway system after 10:00 p.m. on New Year’s Eve so that anyone wanting to get to Stephansplatz will have to walk there.  The subway system will be reserved for the exclusive use of the police and ambulance services so they can get around quickly if necessary.  The police have announced they will increase security but so far will not cancel any of the events.

Excerpt from article in The Guardian:  Police in Vienna have stepped up security around the city after a warning to several European capitals about a possible attack between Christmas and new year. They said that the warning, about a gun or bomb attack, did not specify any targets and that authorities in Vienna did not intend to cancel any specific events.

The warning did give several names of potential attackers, the statement said, but an investigation into the names had not produced concrete results.

Christoph Pölzl, a spokesman for Vienna police, said: “We do not know if these people exist in real life, or if they are only names with no real person behind them. We have no evidence that they are in Vienna, and we have no evidence that they are even in Europe.” Pölzl refused to say which other European capitals had received the warning.

City authorities said they would increase surveillance of places where crowds are expected to gather, including transport hubs, and pay closer attention to suspicious bags or suitcases.

Anyway, this is sobering and unwelcome news.  The New Year celebrations in the city center begin at 2:00 pm. and go through midnight.  Our original plan was to go out early in the afternoon before people started getting drunk and rowdy, then come back to our apartment for a dinner in.  We expect we’ll be able to see several different fireworks shows from our roof balcony, so we plan to view the festivities from up there.  Unless further news about a more concrete threat surfaces, we’ll probably stick with that plan.