Free Day

I planned to go to church today with most of the group to the Beethoven-written mass, but I slept too late. Oops. I’m kinda disappointed about that since I’m here in Vienna, but I guess I needed it, because I was OUT.

I opened my window to check the temperature before I left, and it felt warm, so Corin and I decided to leave our sweatshirts in the apartment. Oops again. Windchill here is almost as ridiculously awful as it is in Austin. At 2, Billy took us out to Zanoni & Zanoni on Kartnerstrasse for his birthday to get some double-scoop gelato. While we were eating, we noticed a "teddy bear museum," which was basically just a glass box with a ton of different teddy bears in different scenes, none of which are cute & cuddly. My favorite depicted a bear with red eyes drunk driving and killing another one (how morbid...for a TEDDY BEAR). We got several laughs out of seeing these ridiculous awful things the teddy bears were doing, and imagining them coming to life when nobody's looking.

Anyway, Tobi met up with us a few minutes later and most of the group went to a futbol game with him. And by most, I mean all but 4. Corin and I had no idea that practically everyone had decided to go to the game when Tobi had mentioned it a few days before. I certainly wasn’t willing to pay 24 euros for a sports ticket for a team I hardly knew, but obviously only 4 of us felt that way. As soon as the big group left and the 4 of us realized we were the only ones left, David quickly took off to “walk around” alone, and Jonathon decided to go to the Albertina Museum. Corin & I felt a little lost for a few minutes, as we slowly walked back toward Stephansdom. What were we going to do in the middle of Vienna for a whole day? First world problems, eh?

We stood on Stephensplatz for a few minutes until I realized that we really only had to look around us and be spontaneous. So, we went in Stephensdom! The inside is just as spectacular as the outside, if not more. Every stone that makes that church is intricately carved. I kept taking pictures and gawking around me, but the old church never got old to look at. There were gates to keep people from waltzing down the middle of this ancient place. So only the sides were open to actually walk down. There were at least 10 altars apart from the high altar (but in the same room…weird), many with their own set of pews and worshippers. I can’t imagine trying to attend church while thousands of talking, picture-taking people shuffle through your sanctuary. Definitely got several of those characteristic German glares from some of the old people who were in the pews I walked by. But still, being in that place was a beautiful experience. As goes with gothic architecture, people’s eyes were naturally drawn up by the great red-wood-like stone columns that disappeared into the vaulted ceiling __ meters above our heads. As we walked out, Corin described it as a very “humbling” experience, and that is the only way to sum it up.

Wandering aimlessly toward IES, St. Peter’s Church caught my eye, so we went there next. I actually may have liked this one better, because it was off the touristy track, and it was more of a renaissance baroque church. Lots of intricate carving in this place too, but in mostly marble and gold instead. This church was more of a cylindrical room instead, and it was much lighter. When we walked in, the doors were actually closed instead of being held open specifically for tourists. The ceiling was one of the main things that definitely set it apart from Stephansdom though. Peterskirche has a HUGE painted ceiling. I think the biggest reason I liked this one so much more was because no matter what you looked at, everytime I looked again, there is something new to see that I hadn’t caught before. I stared at the beautiful realism-style ceiling (representing the different levels of heaven, I believe. I will need to research this more for next time I go) and craned my neck back for a little bit, until I noticed that they had a large picture of it at eye-level for people to look closer at. My camera died here (sad trombone- I forgot to charge it after Team H-Town’s concert last night!), but I am sure I’ll be back at some point during this trip. In fact, I think it might be in our class schedule. I know Stephansdom is, but Corin and I will just have had a head start. Also, we’ll be going up in the south tower (the bigh one) of Stephensdom when we go with the group. Corin and I didn’t do it today though, because it costs money to get to do that (or to explore the catacombs underneath, which I would love to do.)

We walked out of Peterskirche and noticed that there was a statue of a gladiator-like man on the outside to the left of the main entrance wielding what appeared to be a giant golden saw. Interesting.

Anyway, we left Peterskirche and wandered back toward the city center slowly. We stopped for a couple minutes to look at the Anyway, we left Peterskirche and wandered back toward the city center slowly. We stopped for a couple minutes to look at the Pestsäule, which is a sculpture Emperor Leopold I had erected as thanks to the Gods for ending the Black Plague.

Corin had no idea what to do next, So I suggested we go walk around the Prater (the thing I researched for Viennese research project). It reminded me of the State fair, except it was free to get in. Most of the rides we saw were 4-4.5 euros to ride, and there are some we do plan on coming back to ride. We’re broke, so we didn’t do any of them today. There was a hang-gliding roller coaster and a racecar rollercoaster that looked fun, and a cool thing where you are put into a life-size plastic sphere that is waterproof. Maddame Toussads may be fun to do too, but it’s probably expensive, so we probably won’t. We wouldn’t know a lot of the celebrities anyway.

I don’t know if we will ride the famous Wiener Reisenrad, a big, very old ferris wheel. It is kind of the heart of the Prater (although they’ve built a more modern ferris wheel to accommodate people who don’t want to pay extra to be in one of the antique closed-in cars.), but the price may deter us. I would definitely like to try at least one of the famous restaurants there - Sweizerhaus or Salmucci. Not a good place to be at night though. The Looney Tunes is to Six Flags as theis REALLY creepy gnome-like thing is to the Prater. Even in the daylight, he reminds me of Chucky.

We also saw what may be the smallest nation in the world (I feel like someone somewhere has probably beaten it though, or tried very hard to). The Republic of Kugelmugel is a spherical building with windows that was declared by the artist and inhabitant, Edwin Lipburger, to be an independent nation in southern Vienna. He decided to split because the authorities told him he could not have a spherical house (it was against code) His address? “2 Anti-Fascism Square”). His house was taken after he started printing his own stamps, and he would’ve gone to jail for it if not for a pardon from the president of Austria. They put his house in the Prater with a barbed wire fence around it to show that it is indeed separate.

When we didn’t feel like there was anything else to do at the Prater, we decided it would be a cool idea to try and find the stadium even without a tour guide. I mean, we had quite a bit of time left to kill, so why not? We went to the very ambiguous U-bahn stop named “Stadion.” Hey, whaddya know? There was a stadium there! We got off the train and went over towards it to listen to all the crowd cheering. Oh wait, just kidding – it was deserted. There was literally not one other person we saw anywhere near this stadium. So we did the next best thing by hopping on the U-bahn and seeing what would happen if we rode it all the way to the end of the line. Apparently nobody else does that,because we were the only people on the train for the last several stops. We came up and saw that at the end of the Purple line there are…apartments. Cool! So we hopped back on the go the other way and when we connected with the red line we decided to take that out to the very end, at which we found…an U-bahn station! We decided to stop at this point, because we were getting sleepy on the empty trains in the middle of nowhere, and I needed to charge my camera.

When we got off at the Margartetengürtle stop by the apartment, we noticed that all the people from the game were getting off at the same time, so we just came up behind and joined their group. When they asked “wait, were you at the game?” We both said yes. I think they’re still clueless, because they keep talking to me about how impressed they are with the fact that I only had a t-shirt & shorts on (apparently the stadium was VERY cold). Past then, the night wasn’t really very interesting. Ryan mixed ground beef, potatoes, and tomato sauce in a pan and heated it up for our dinner (apparently it’s some special family recipe or something. SUPER complicated…I’m thinking his Dad came up with this one). Everyone else in the apartment went to bed early and I guess I should soon. We need to be at class at 9:30! Oh yeah, I forgot I was in school. J