Wednesday, 30 December 2015

Today was a much better day as far as Holden was concerned.  We got to do everything we set out to do, satisfying his desire to have things go according to plan.

First, a couple shots of our apartment’s “lobby” in the mall.  This view is directly adjacent of our entry door.  The chocolate shop is the on the left where that lady in black is tidying a table.

The front doors (brown ones) into the elevator area for the private apartments.  The computery-looking thing on the left is an ATM, which has proven handy.

Today turned out to be fantastic, in spite of crowded conditions at the venues we chose.   Schönbrunn Palace is the place we visited a couple days ago but were chased away by the massive crowds.  This time we arrived earlier in the day and the crowds were just as bad (if not worse) so we figured we had to just grin and bear it if we wanted to see the palace at all.  It is, after all, the most visited location in all of Austria.

Adam:  Schönbrunn Palace is a former imperial summer residence of the Habsburg family. The palace was first started in 1638 but was remodeled and expanded in the 1740s – and that is largely the version that we can now see.

Our tour took us through 40 rooms – total size of the palace is 1441 rooms. Photography inside the building was strictly prohibited… which means I had to be sneaky with my wide angle lens and a series of coughs and deceptive misdirections to sneak just a glimpse of the splendor indoors. This place is well worth a visit for anyone wanting to come – on the order of Versailles or Windsor.

[Excerpts from the palace tour guide, in blue text]:   This first room is the billiards room, just off the room where the personal guard of Emperor Franz Joseph was stationed to keep watch over the entrance to the emperor’s apartments.  The billiards room served as a waiting room for people attending an audience with Emperor Franz Joseph.  The billiard table, which belonged to Franz Joseph’s grandfather, Emperor Franz I of Austria, was used by the army officers to pass the time.    

The Walnut Room.  This room gets it’s name from the precious walnut panelling … It was in this room that Franz Joseph received individuals who had requested an audience…. Franz Joseph would receive up to a hundred people in a morning and was famous for his phenomenal memory, never forgetting a name or a face.  These audiences lasted for a few minutes and were brought to an end when the emperor inclined his head slightly. 

Franz Joseph ascended the Austrian imperial throne when he was only eighteen.  He dealt with a phenomenal amount of work each day: starting before 5 o’clock in the morning, he spent the day at his desk.  He even had breakfast and lunch served to him at his desk.  This was how the first public servant of his state, as he liked to describe himself, spent most of his time. 

Salon of Empress Elizabeth [below]. Elizabeth was considered to be one of the most beautiful women of her time, and was well aware of this.  Her beauty regime and sporting activities to preserve her slender figure dominated the empress’s daily routine, with the care of her magnificent ankle-length hair occupying several hours a day.

(Note from me:  Franz Joseph was lauded for his work ethic and memory, while his wife was valued only for her beauty.  In the guide’s description of a family dining room, it notes “The emperor sat at the centre of the table, with the empress opposite him on the rare occasions she was present. As Elisabeth often fasted in order to preserve her slender figure she seldom attended family meals.”  I find this incredibly sad. In the photo, you can see a mannequin dressed up to look like her, complete with her long hair.)

Hall of Mirrors;  “In 1762 this room saw the first concert given by the 6-years-old Mozart to the empress.  After the performance, according to his proud father, ‘Wolferl jumped onto her majesty’s lap, threw his arms around her neck and smothered her with kisses.'”

The Rosa Rooms, named for Joseph Rosa, the painter of the landscapes that hang there.  They mostly depict scenes from Switzerland, the ancestral seat of the Habsburg dynasty.

The Great Gallery, which was used by the imperial family for balls, receptions and banquets.   The frescos are by the Italian painter Gregorio Guglielmi.

[Below] Napoleon Room:  Once the bedroom of Maria Theresa, Napoleon resided here when he occupied Vienna — twice; once in 1805 and again in 1809.

Maria Theresa was an interesting character.  In all of her portraits she looked like a fat old grandma, but she was in a lot of ways the real mover and shaker for the Habsburg family during her time.  She had 16 kids, 11 of whom survived into adulthood.  Through brilliant diplomatic maneuvers, she managed to marry 7 of them into other royal families across Europe.  She was known as “Europe’s mother-in-law.”  She was Marie Antoinette’s mom … it blew my mind that Marie Antoinette grew up in this palace, in some of these very rooms.  (It was only their summer home, but still!)

Exterior view of only part of the buildings.  This place is HUGE.

Your basic “backyard”: Neptune fountain down the path and concluding the the “Gloriette” (1775) at the rear of the grounds.  We are contemplating altering our summer plans to come back in July when everything is warmer and green.  We’ll have to wait and see if another big trip is something we can work into our budget and schedule.  It’s nice to dream and talk is cheap.

Kids standing on the palace steps looking out over the grounds.

After visiting Schönbrunn Palace, we headed towards the zoo (also part of the Palace grounds) — and ran into the Palmenhaus Schönbrunn:  a hothouse/greenhouse first erected in 1882. It now houses more than 4500 species of plants.

Inside the Palm House.  It was warm and humid in there (and frigid outside) so glasses and camera lenses immediately fogged up.  

Holden looking at the fish species in one of the water lily/plant planters/tanks.

This was one of those rare days when the kids thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company.  They usually squabble like pigeons fighting over stale bread.  I don’t know why today was so special, but I’ll take it.  Everyone woke up on the right side of the bed, I guess.

Leaving the Palm House …

 … and entering the Desert House (Wüstenhaus Schönbrunn) – a greenhouse with plants and animals typical of the world’s desert environments.  This greenhouse had quite a few animals in it, so it was my favorite.

In what turned out to be the coolest activity of the day, they had a tank of Doctor Fish (Garra rufa) in the Desert House.  Visitors are invited to stick their hands in the tank and let the little fish eat off all their dead skin.  It’s creepy and weird and also weirdly sweet — you feel like the fish are doing you a favor by cleaning you of all your grossness, just as you feel you are doing the fish a favor by feeding them.  It’s a relationship and transaction that is in perfect balance, which is hard to find in life.  This was really, really special.

We finished the afternoon with a visit to the Tiergarten – the Vienna Zoo – and the oldest zoo in the world (opened as an imperial menagerie in 1752).

Much of the original architecture of the zoo still exists.

The underside of a sturgeon.

You can get close to the animals in this zoo.  There is a very thick pane of glass between the lions and the humans, but they are right there.  

The kids cracked up over this sign [below].  They observed that a few someones in the past must have done something horrible with a selfie stick in order to have it specifically forbidden in sign form.  No feeding the animals and no climbing the fence are obvious enough, but I can only imagine that in this selfie-stick scenario a few seals must have stolen some iPhones.  My thinking is that if you stick your phone in a wild animal’s habitat at the zoo and the animal steals your phone, you deserve it for being such an idiot.  As my dad used to say when I did something stupid and had to live with the consequences, “Some actions naturally provide their own punishment.”

On to the elephant enclosure.  We’ve all seen elephants before, but Adam captured my stunned face when I noticed ….

… a baby elephant nursing.  What luck to be here today!  This sweet baby was in a pen with what I believe were three adult females.  The two in this photo were both taking care of the baby.  I assume the one nursing it in this photo is the biological mother.  A much larger elephant with fairly impressive tusks (and therefore male?) was in another area, closed off from the baby.

The kids having fun on some elephant sculptures specifically put out for kids to sit on.  Who says entertainment has to be electronic?

One last shot of the palace as we were leaving. The sun finally came out and the sky cleared up.  Tomorrow is supposed to be clear and the coldest day yet.

We spent most of the late afternoon in the apartment.  4:00 p.m. in Vienna is 7:00 a.m. in Tijuana.  Adam needs to spend several hours each evening working, once the factories back in the San Diego/Tijuana start their day.  I generally use this time to do laundry, tidy the apartment, make dinner, and work on this blog.

We’ve had to skip our 1980s Wine Time movie ever since the Christmas holiday in the States ended and people went back to work.  Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, though, so Adam will get another couple days of very light work and we’ll be able to spend more of the early evening playing again.   We’re all really grateful, though, that his work can be done by email, Skype, and phone calls … it makes trips like this possible.

Around 7:30 p.m. we headed back out for our evening stroll.  Holden was starving (even though he had dinner) so we stopped at Nordsee, a fish-and-chips take-away restaurant.  It was so cold outside that all of us ended up eating some of Holden’s piping hot snack just to warm up a little.

The porta-potties are making their appearance in preparation for the massive crowds of New Year’s Eve partiers expected tomorrow.

We found ourselves back at the world’s prettiest grocery store and this time it wasn’t so crowded.

Part of the cured meats department.

The tea and imported candy department.

This is the strange fruit I bought:  a Buddha’s Hand.  It’s a fingered citron originating in either the Far East or China.  I thought it was going to be like a lemon, but it very much was not.  The inside is solid white pith with no juicy part and no seeds.  I’d intended to take the seeds home to try to grow my own tree, but no such luck.  I read on the internet (after I’d already purchased the fruit) that this plant can only be grown from a cutting.  If I want one, I’ll have to find a nursery that has some.  The fruit is highly fragrant and mostly used in perfumery, but the “fingers” are also candied and eaten as a treat.  The skin makes a great zest, as well, that people say has a lot more complexity and floral notes than regular lemon.  It did smell heavenly.

The equestrian accordionists.  Everyone needs a gimmick, why not this?

Josie dropping some coins in their tub.  She’s blurry because she was bashful and wasted no time in tossing the money and then scurrying back to the safety of her family.

Thursday, 31 December 2015 (New Year’s Eve)

This morning we went to a kids’ attraction called Time Travel Vienna.  It was pretty cheesy, but the kids enjoyed it.  They use animatronic puppets, a 4-D movie, a simulated bomb shelter, and various other gimmicks to get kids interested in the history of Vienna.  In terms of getting the kids to pay attention, it was successful.

Adam:  The general theme was a brief history of Vienna, from the Roman times to the present. It was mostly hokey, but had some interesting facts presented. The most interesting (to me) was for us all to get packed into a WWII air-raid bomb shelter. (The actual location, underground did serve as a bomb shelter during the war). It was the first time I’ve had to hide from Allied bombing raids. The bombs exploded outside and the shelter shook and rattled to simulate what it might have felt like.

Today was the coldest day yet.  We passed by Cafe Griensteidl (where we had lunch on Christmas day) and the line wasn’t very long, so we stopped in for an early lunch.  We were glad we did, too … by the time we left, every cafe (including this one) had lines out the door.  People were stuck waiting out in the cold.

Adam:  This shot is for Arge – the Bundeskanzleramt (Federal Chancellery). It is in here that Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated as part of a failed coup attempt by Nazi agents in 1934. His successor Kurt Schuschnigg maintained his regime until Adolf Hitler’s annexing of Austria in 1938.

We spent the early afternoon in our apartment, drinking hot beverages and resting up for going back out later.  All five of us headed out around 3:00 p.m. to inspect the festivities and gauge how crowded everything was going to be.  Authorities in Vienna have issued warnings that people with claustrophobia should avoid coming into the city center because of the crushing crowds so we weren’t sure what to expect.  The crowds definitely were the worst we’ve seen, but you could still walk around comfortably.

They were selling the alcoholic punsch again, this time in souvenir pig mugs.  Neither Adam nor I wanted the punsch, but Josie was desperate to have the pig mug so we bought some anyway.  This one had a higher alcohol content than the Christmas punsch did.  We offered the kids a sip, just to taste it.  Holden and Josie both declined after they saw Isabella’s face when she took her sip. (An FYI that Isabella loves pointing out: the drinking age in Austria is 16.  Isabella is a couple months away from her 16th birthday, so not quite yet technically legal, but nobody seems to care one wit about checking IDs. “Everything in Europe is so much cooler than at home!”  She hates the taste of alcohol and is way too Puritanical in her personality to actually drink, but she loves knowing that she could if she wanted to.)

People dancing a waltz in the square.  The guy is wearing a lucky pig hat.

Things getting crowded.

It is REALLY cold today.  Holden and Josie both hated the crowds, were uncomfortably cold, and wanted to go back to the apartment.

Adam didn’t have much work this afternoon because of the holiday, so we were able to resume our 80s movie Wine Time.  Today’s selection was National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) — the original.  The kids had never seen it and it’s been years since Adam and I had.  It was a little naughtier than we remembered (and naughtier than the others in the franchise) but the kids enjoyed it.  I usually see it on TV with those bits edited out; I’d forgotten they existed.  We winced a few times during this viewing and hoped the jokes were veiled enough that they would sail unnoticed over Josie’s head.

We decided to go back out after it got dark so Adam could take some night shots.  Isabella also wanted to see some of the live bands performing at various points throughout the city center.  Holden and Josie both decided to stay home, so just Isabella, Adam and I went back out around 6:30 p.m.

One of the bands along the way – each stage has a different “theme” or style of music highlighted. These guys were big into German-language Reggae. They just sounded angry the whole time.  The crowds loved them.

A shot of the lucky New Year’s pig mugs being sold all over the city.

There was loud music EVERYWHERE.  We could barely communicate with each other, no matter where we went. Since Isabella couldn’t do as she normally does and holler, “Daddy!  Don’t take my picture!” she was reduced to making faces so the pictures would be unusable.  Joke is on her.

We walked the entire New Year’s celebration loop.  There was a very strong police presence, but they were all full of smiles and managed not to seem scary and threatening in spite of the fact they were armed to the teeth and wearing bullet-proof full body suits.  The crowds are predominantly families with small children and elderly couples.  We figure the young hard-partiers will come out closer to midnight.  I was thrilled that nobody seemed excessively drunk and nobody was throwing up.  The atmosphere was festive and joyous without sinking in debauchery.

In the place where the biggest Christmas market is still going strong they erected a huge stage and had a U2 cover band.

The proprietors of this booth selling punsch in pig mugs went the extra mile and dressed up in old-timey costumes.

People were also consuming staggering amounts of sausage.  Everyone wants to eat and drink something hot.

Demel set up a booth selling their famous sacher-tortes, slightly modified to make them easy to eat as a to-go treat.  We bought three of them to take back to the apartment for later in the evening.

We were hoping that we’d be able to watch the fireworks displays from our roof.  Rarely does reality far exceed what you imagine is possible — we were stunned by the fireworks over Vienna.  The entire city lit up as far as the eye could see in every direction.

The city itself put on at least three professional pyrotechnic shows, and thousands of individuals set off fireworks from their rooftops.  It was so spectacular it nearly defied belief.  The only other phenomenon I’ve seen that captured the same majesty was brought on by nature itself, the aurora borealis in Alaska.  The fireworks were impressive in a different way, of course.  The unbelievable noise and camp-firey smell of cordite was part of the magic.

All across Vienna people were in the streets and on the rooftops, dancing waltzes and singing. At the stroke of midnight, all the church bells in the city rang out, too.

The Opera House displayed a huge countdown clock on their screen.  We could hear people in the street counting along with it in multiple languages.

 Photos can’t do justice to the majesty, pageantry and general atmosphere of tonight.  The sky was alive.  We stood on our roof spinning in circles, trying to take it all in.  

Adam:  The night ended with a fireworks show that will be remembered by us all of the rest of our lives. I don’t often succumb to hyperbole, but last night’s viewing was truly something special.

We took to the rooftop to see the entire city alight with thousands of individual fireworks events as well as some larger, more organized performances at some of the key touristy areas. The result was a constant and stunning show of fireworks everywhere you looked. People were shooting off fireworks from their rooftops – both far and near, so we had rockets shooting out over our heads, close by, and way off to the horizon. This show started around 7pm and didn’t quite end until sometime around 4 this morning. Clearly, the most intense period happened right after midnight.

At midnight, the booms and light were constant. The church bells through the city all chimed. There were klieg (search) lights waving around. Waltz music was being performed live next door and was piped by speakers throughout the city center. People were dancing waltzes in the street and rooftops every where you looked. Folks, this is how you celebrate New Year’s. Now, off to bed.

Finally – a video link here:  https://vimeo.com/150466024   Adam took this with Josie’s phone – the video is blurry and of poor quality – it doesn’t do the show justice but does give you a sense of the constant barrage of fireworks all over the city – and our spectacular 360 degree view of the entire show that went on for hours.

Happy New Year and here’s to a fabulous 2016!