Ringstraße Tour and Orgel um Drei

One of the main tours in Wien is the RingStraße Tour. To take this tour, all you have to do is wait at any station along the RingStraße until a yellow Straßenbahn shows up. Then you get on, pay for your ticket, take the headphones, and listen to the audio guide as you travel along. The RingStraße was commissioned by Kaiser Franz Josef and was built over the old city moat. Thus situated, it provides the perfect way to get a quick overview of the Old City of Vienna. It takes about a half hour, and you see many sights. Some of the main ones are the Austrian Parliament Building, the Old Vienna Stock Exchange, the financial center of the city where many banks and insurance companies are based. You will also see the oldest church in Vienna, a cathedral built in the early Romanesque style. There are many other sights on the tour, but I wouldn't want to give everything away :)

Later Wednesday (yes, we're still on Wednesday), we went to an organ concert at three o'clock (hence the name "orgel um drei"). It was in another beautiful cathedral, perhaps the most opulent I'd seen up to this point. The gilded sculptures and moldings were everywhere! Unfortunately, the organist could only use a few of the pipes, because most of the organ needed restored :(  But the music was still quite good.

 

The Old Vienna Stock Exchange

The oldest church in Vienna

Palachinken: A traditional Austro-Hungarian food that we had for lunch on Wednesday

The program for "Orgel um Drei"

The main organ loft in the church where we heard the organ concert. This part of the organ is under restoration. You can see a small amount of the gilding in the church here.

Vienna: Der Stephans Dom

For an encore to Schloss Schönbrunn we visited the largest cathedral in Vienna, the Stephan's Dom. This cathedral, built in the Gothic style in the early 1300s, stands on the ruins of two earlier churches. Originally, the cathedral would've had four towers of equal size, but only the south tower was finished. This tower is 137 meters tall, and the bell that is in it weighed 20,130 kilograms. This makes it the second largest swinging bell in Europe after the bell in the Cologne Cathedral. The most unique feature of this cathedral is its roof, which is composed of 230,000 glazed tiles.

In this photo you can just barely see the start of the tiles that form a mosaic of the Imperial Eagle of Austria.

Another interesting fact about the Stephan's Dom is that it was instrumental in Vienna becoming its own diocese and thus getting out from under the authority of the Bishop of Passau. In 1469 the Pope canonically established the Diocese of Vienna under a bishop appointed by the emperor

Interior carving on one of the pillars

The organ loft

Der Südturm (the South Tower)

View to the west of Vienna from the South Tower

Vienna: Schloss Schönbrunn

1,441 Rooms
40 Rooms

The first number is the total number of rooms in Schloss Schönbrunn, and the second number is the number of rooms shown during the Grand Tour, which is the short tour of the Schloss. This tour took about 2 hours. It was impressive! It is hard to imagine the scope of the entire palace. Schloss Schönbrunn served as the summer residence of the emperors of Austria since 1569, when emperor Maximilian II of the Holy Roman Empire purchased the land and built a palace on it. It was continually added on to for the next century. The grounds are also home to a large zoo and many beautiful gardens.

The rooms inside are over-the-top opulent, which I guess is to be expected of a palace. But if you were wondering where all the gold has gone, just visit any palace or cathedral in Europe. The amount of gilded wood and stone carvings is overwhelming! And its not just the gold, on the walls, the floors, even the ceilings use many different exotics woods, most often rosewood. One room, called the Rich Room, was paneled floor to ceiling with exceptionally rare pieces of rosewood. Inset in the walls were rare Mongolian paintings set in gilded and lacquered frames. The Great Ballroom was covered in white lacquered panels with gilded trim and large murals. On the ceiling were three large murals depicting various aspects of Franz Josef's rule. Perhaps the most stunning room though, was the Mourning Room. This room was commissioned by Kaiserin Elisabeth after her son Rudolf died. The walls and ceiling are covered with black lacquered panels set within gold trim. The floor was dark red rosewood. The effect was stunning, especially after so many rooms done in white or brown themes.

This is the left end wing of the Schloss. 

A view from the rear balcony looking out over Schlosspark Schönbrunn.

A portico at the other end of the park.

Part of the grounds, notice how the trees are pruned flat on the top. In other places in the park they are trimmed to form arches, or shaped to form walls.

A view of the main Schloss looking at the back of the building.

Vienna: The First Day

Last week was our class trip to Vienna (I keep wanting to type "Wien" instead of "Vienna", so apologies in advance, they are the same city). Anyway, the trip started out just fine, we caught our train at our little, one-horse train station and were on our way to Neumarkt-Kalhalm, where we would switch trains. We knew we only had eight minutes to make the change, but we figured it was a small station and we would have no trouble. Well, when we get there we find out our next train is delayed for an hour. The delay was due to someone not getting off the tracks in time and the tracks needed to be cleaned up (didn't want to imagine what exactly this meant). This meant that we would miss all of our next connections. So we got on our train and took an alternate route. Our last train was a double-decker train, quite comfortable, which is good, because that was a two-hour trip. 

We made it to Vienna a couple hours later than we planned, but no worries. We checked into our hostel, and then wandered along Mariahilfer Straße, which is the main shopping street in Wien. We also visited the Museum Quarter. Later the evening we went to a pizzeria run by Italians, which meant that the pizza was absolutely amazing!! We each ordered a large pizza, and even though it was a very thin crust, that is still a lot of pizza! Our rooms in the hostel were on the top floor, which meant climbing 105 stairs (yes, I counted)! That was good exercise...maybe a bit more than I wanted :)  More coming soon, with pictures!

Alpenzoo: Longer Version

Okay, now that I'm back at Bogenhofen for a day, I'll write a bit more about the Alpenzoo. For starters, this is one of the main tourist attractions in Innsbruck. The zoo showcases many animals who represent the main species that you can find in the Alpine habitat in and around Innsbruck. As with many zoos, it also serves as a conservation center. One of the main creatures it serves to protect is the Northern Bald Ibis, which is extinct is Europe, but still survives in Africa. The zoo serves as a breeding center, as well as supervising introduction attempts in Austria and other countries.

As for showcasing animals representative of the Alps, the zoo does a superb job of this. Animals such as the Eurasian Brown Bear, Lynx, and mountain goats are shown in there natural habitats. Magnificent birds, such as the Golden Eagle, Lammergier, and Eagle Owl make you feel glad that you're not any lower on the food chain. The zoo also contains an aquarium with many different fish, frogs, and other water-loving creatures. There is also a terrarium that, in warmer months holds various lizards and snakes. I was surprised, I'm not used to thinking about reptiles living in an area with such a cold climate, but while we wandered around the zoo, I saw two different wild lizards!! 

According to the Alpenzoo's website, the zoo displays 20 of the 80 mammal species, 60 bird, 11 reptile, 6 amphibian, and most of the Alpine fish species. 

And if you ever get tired of looking at the animals, there is always the scenery!