11/10

This morning Matt knocked on our door and told us he was having chest pains and wanted to go to the hospital. Since Kelty is the only one of us who speaks good German, she needed to go with him to the hospital. She, Gabe, and Matt went and the rest of us had breakfast and took advantage of the good internet at the hostel. 

When they got back from the hospital a couple hours later, they told us that the doctors didn’t think Matt’s chest pain was a problem, but Matt still wasn’t feeling great, so he decided to rest a little and I gave him my ipod so he could get in touch with us if he wanted to meet up with us later.

So we set off. We wanted to go to the military museum, but only had a general idea of where it was at. We took the subway there and started walking through what seemed like one of the more rundown areas of town. As we were looking for the military museum, we just happened to pass a huge palace. One of the signs outside of the castle gate said something about Gustav Klimpt..apparently the members of our group are slightly more cultured than me because they had been talking about this famous artist several times since we started traveling together. 

His most famous painting is called “The Kiss”, and we just happened to have found the art museum in Belvedere Palace called the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, where this painting was housed. So we went in!

We ended up spending about three hours inside, looking at art. It was so crazy to see paintings that even I recognized from the pages of my history books from elementary school! One of the ones you might recognize is the original painting of young Napoleon on his horse heading off to battle. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but here’s what it looks like from the internet:

Klimpt was the most popular portion of the museum. He’s famous for his use of gold in painting. Here’s his most famous painting that we got to see:

This is the backyard:

And the building from the back:

After the museum, we grabbed some pizza for lunch. Here's a sign we passed on the way there. We though it was funny:

Since Vienna is famous for its cafes, Autumn and I had been wanting to make sure we got to go enjoy a cup of coffee and a piece of cake at one of the cafes, and we wanted to make sure and see the rest of the main city of Vienna. The rest of the group really wanted to fit in the military museum, so we decided to meet at five next to the Austrian National Library since it has internet. There are so many cafes all over the place with free internet access, so Kelty gave me her ipod touch since I had given mine to Matt and we knew if there were any problems, it would be easy to get in touch with each other that way.

I wish I could’ve seen it too, but I’m glad we split up because Autumn and I got to see some pretty cool stuff too, and it was fun to spend the time with just the two of us.

First, we went back to the main city by train and walked through some of the more busy streets, looking for a nice café. We ended up going into Motzart’s Café (I think. Maybe Beethoven’s? I don’t know, one of the famous composers who was in Vienna for awhile.) across the street from The Albertina, and cattycorner to the opera house where we saw the ballet.

I wish I had pictures of the café to put up, but I didn’t get the ones from Autumn’s camera. Maybe I’ll update it later, but the café was gorgeous. All the waiters wore suits, the ceiling was all pretty and decorated with that white swirly old-fashioned stuff. We felt like little girls, all giddy, trying to be sophisticated, haha.

We each ordered a coffee and a piece of cake and shared everything. Each coffee came with a tiny little cup of cold water which is SUCH A GOOD IDEA! If I ever open a café, I’m definitely doing that=P

 It ended up costing us more than anything else we did the whole time we were in Vienna, but we figured nine euros for a really good piece of cake and a cup of coffee in Vienna was worth it for that experience. (Plus, I mean really, if that was the most expensive thing we did, I’d say we did a pretty good job:)

We ate and drank really slowly to enjoy the experience to its full potential, then headed off to explore a little more before it was time to meet.  

We walked the busy streets, looking into all the shops and famous buildings. Ran following the sound of trumpets to find a Viennese band playing Christmas songs next to yet another exotic Christmas market. We went to the main shopping street where all the really expensive clothing stores are, and went into a dress store where we found a three hundred Euro ugly shirt, and were too intimidated to touch any of the actual nice dresses to see their prices. We walked up the store’s granite spiral staircase that wound around a chandelier of strands of crystal beads that hung from the ceiling to the floor. On the second floor was one of those classic nice dressing room places with couches and martinis on the tables from the last guests, and all the dresses were intricately beaded and everything, it was crazy! I think if we’d have been dressed a little nicer and had more time, we’d have seen if they’d let us try something on, but we needed to keep moving.

Since we were a little whimsical after our fairytale café experience, we had a nice arm-in-arm walk through the romantic streets of Vienna, planned a future perfect engagement date in Vienna with prince charming, beginning with a ride in one of the horse-drawn carriages we passed along the cobblestone streets. We skipped through castle courtyards, made up stories about who might be living in all the lighted castle windows we saw around us, and laid down next to a statue in the middle of the little promenade outside the library to wish upon a star because it gets dark so darn early here. (Yeah. We did that. It was just one of those moods. And we were in Vienna, which has its own sort of magical atmosphere in a cute, fantastical way. Like what Disneyland feels like at night, only real..And I was with Autumn, so there’s your little sneak peek into her crazy, awesome personality=) 

When we got to the library at five, none of our group was there yet, so Autumn and I had a nice little bathroom break complete with country music and drinking water out of the sink like the civilized people we had already proven ourselves to be.

We waited til 5:30, but there was still so much we wanted to see, and we knew we weren’t gonna have much more time, so we sent Kyle a message with Kelty’s ipod and left the gang a note in the key hole of the big locked library door so they’d know where to meet us, and walked toward the giant, magnificent City Hall via the second big garden in the middle of Old Vienna.

It was dark, but the streetlights made everything really pretty and we were in a very touristy area next to the streets, so we felt pretty safe. We saw some Greek Goddess temple replica in the middle of the park, then took pictures next to a pretty rot iron gate on yet another beautiful building, then crossed the street to City Hall. 

The building itself looks like a Cathedral, it’s just gorgeous and so intricate-looking! The pictures don’t really do it justice:

We walked through all the little wooden buildings where they were setting up for their Christmas Market out in front. The Christmas tree was being decorated, and when we climbed the main steps of the building, all up and down the porch were little wooden dioramas depicting different Christmas scenes. 

We climbed up on the wooden benches outside the actual building and looked through the windows and everything inside was all decorated with wreaths and lights and all. It even looked like they had built wooden frames inside, as if there would be a live nativity scene. It’s crazy that it’s just the beginning of November and already they’re getting this prepared!

After exploring and admiring the building, we sat down to rest. Across the street was the other pretty building with the rot iron fence where we’d taken pictures, so we had a nice view. We were only there for probably ten minutes before our group came walking through the Christmas market buildings and Autumn and I felt rather clever for our ingenious National Treasure-like means communication:) The gang looked pretty tired.

I really liked spending more time with Autumn, not just because she really does just have a bubbly, joyful personality, but also cause we can keep up a quick pace and see a lot more. The rest of the group is more interested in stopping every once in awhile, but we wanted to make sure we got to see everything there was to see.

It was nice to be back with the group though, and share stories both ways. Even though everybody was tired, there was a cathedral about two hundred yards away (dad=P) that Autumn and I had been admiring from the steps of City Hall, so we convinced them to go see it with us. Not that it was hard to convince them or anything, everybody was pretty willing to work with everybody else, like I said – awesome laid-back group. Here are some pictures we took on the way there:

Front of the Austrian State Opera:

This is the outside courtyard of the Hofburg palace all lit up at night on our way to the cathedral:

Anyways, the cathedral was incredible. It was about 6:30ish by this time, and things start closing earlier here, so we assumed the church would be closed. We took some pictures outside, and were about to walk away when Erik actually tried the door and it was open! We went inside and it was absolutely breathtaking. Once again, the pictures can’t capture it cause the lighting wasn’t great, but it really was just overwhelming:

After the Cathedral, we found free wifi outside a bar and checked in with Matt. He said he wanted to meet up with us, so we took the subway from where we were, grabbed him at the main front stop in Vienna, and went to the big shopping street where Autumn and I had seen the dress store before. Everyone was hungry and wanting to save money, so we had dinner at MacDonalds. 

I forget what building this is, but it's pretty:

On the subway to pick up Matt:

We had decided earlier to see a movie, so using our student ID’s, we got six Euro movie tickets to see Skyfall. We. Saw. James. Bond. In. Vienna. What??!! Haha, it was great, the theater was really nice and it was even in English!!

Afterwards, we were all really tired. Gabe had a sore knee and Erik wanted to go home with him, so Matt, Kelty, Autumn, Stephen and I went to see the most famous cathedral in Vienna, Stephensplatz. If you look at the pictures from yesterday at the first palace we went to, Schonbrunn Palace, you can see its steeple on the skyline:)

The cathedral was under construction and not quite as magnificent from right next to it as it looks from far away, but still very cool. Autumn and I decided that we’re gonna get up early tomorrow and attend mass there before our train leaves. The timing will work out perfectly=)

Just as a side note, I mentioned in an earlier post that the guys in Fischbach are really shameless about honking and whistling at us on the streets. In Vienna, it was so much worse. I can't tell you how many times I looked up and saw a guy checking either me, Autumn, or Kelty out. Maybe that's not surprising, but as a sheltered girl from Auburn, it was a little disturbing. 

By the end of the weekend, I was literally making eye contact with these guys and gesturing with my arms to try and communicate a universal "What're you looking at?" and they just looked at me, blinked, and went right on looking me up and down like it didn't phase them at all!

Here's a picture of one of them when we were heading back from the cathedral. 

Tonight is a late night and everyone in our room seems past the point of exhaustion, so it’s that silly, sleepy phase in our room right now. Autumn’s skyping her best friend Courtney and complaining about having to share a room with poor Stephen, who’s actually been really good about everything. Kelty and I are laughing and observing, as usual:)

It’s been a successful travel weekend, hopefully we’ll all make it home without turning into zombies and killing each other on that eight hour train ride:P I guess we shall have to see…

Psalm 40:5
Many, LORD my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.