Wien, Österreich

Oh Vienna.  Such a lovely lovely city.  Like Moscow, we only had a day there (especially considering our flight from Moscow got delayed for 5 hours so we didn't get there til 11 pm) but we made the most of our time! We mostly spent it in the old part of the city where the streets are tiny (caues, you know, they're Medieval) and the cathedrals are huge.

For example: Saint Stephen's Cathedral!  

Check out those vaulted Gothic ceilings.  Holy crap.

And a sweet staircase.  But at this point, who's surprised this picture is included?  You shouldn't be.  I have an obsession.

That's a BIG organ.

And the outside! They're re-doing a lot of that so some of what you're seeing are huge tarps in place to not ruin the vibe of the cathedral during the construction.  Still awesome though! Also, notice our sudden change in apparel from shorts and t-shirts to long pants and jackets.  We went from 90-95 degrees in Moscow to 65-70 degrees in Austria, and were very excited to finally be able to wear most of the clothes we had brought with us! 

 

This is a monument to the 65,000 Jews from Vienna that were killed in WWII.  If I had a close up, you could see that the walls are made of books with the pages facing outwards, and that the doors have no handles--representing all of the stories of the people that were killed that are now locked away from us forever. It was a beautiful monument.

Another sweet cathedral! With minarets! We were a little confused cause usually that's a mosque thing, but hey, it's cool, so why not?

We went in a museum of the history of Vienna, and inside we found this sweet statue of Beethoven.  His face was so awesome, I couldn't help but imitate it!

We found Goethe on a little island in the middle of a quiet road, just chillin' there in his recliner.  Jesse decided to say hi, as well as to demonstrate why the toe of his foot was so shiny--because everyone touches it, and the oil from their hands makes the copper turn shiny again!

That's me, in front of a very whited-out Mozart.  There were lots of really excited Asian tourists in front of the statue so this was sorta the best it got. 

And this, friends, is the Rathaus (government building) where in our wanderings through the city we happened to discover that Vienna has a free summer film festival, and that this evening they were showing a live-filmed version of Rigoletto!  We had been looking for something to do so finding this was pretty much awesome--especially considering they just set up the huge screen right there on the front of that SWEET gothic building.  The opera itself was really cool--but only in Italian with no subtitles at all (so I couldn't even try to translate the German for Jesse and I) and it got preeeeetty chilly as the evening progressed, so we actually left somewhere in the beginning of the third act when it was getting pretty late and we were fairly certain there was going to be at least another hour of dramatic, soul-wrenching arias before we reached the end.  However, the experience was still fun!

And that, friends, is Vienna! Well...some of it at least :)