We had a great time! We walked around the biggest street market in town, the Nachsmarkt, and saw all kinds of bizarro fruits and vegetables I've never seen before. We went downtown, and walked around the inner stadt, and saw the Stephenplatz, and the Hofburg. After that, it started to get pretty windy, so we ducked into a Heuriger (which basically serves traditional and local Austrian food and wine), and sat for several hours drinking and eating. It was very cool. The restaurant comprised of cellars that went about 3 floors beneath street level, and parts of it dated back to 1100. In the whole empty establishment, we sat in a booth that had a loose brick behind it, and it had a plastic bag full of notes written by other people who had sat there over the years. It made me feel very romantic, and some kind of sign that we were meant to be here...or something:)
After that, we visited a few different bars. It was raining very hard, and we escaped the rain into one of the first bars we saw, which ended up being run by Yugoslavians. That was the most German I had been forced to speak, and somehow we were able to have about a 5 minute conversation before my German skills ran out, but I still left feeling better about my limited German. They had a pretty nifty band playing traditional Yugoslavian music, with keyboard, guitar, accordian, and singer, and they were all pretty good musicians.
The next day we watched a racing thing that Benn is into, called Formula 1. I hadn't heard of it before, but it's basically super fancy Nascar:)
We had some schnitzel, then went to the Schonnbrunn. It was toward the evening when we got there, and we sat on the hill and watched the sunset over the city. It was delightful. And beautiful. And the gardens are kind of creepy after dark.
Monday we went to Haus Der Musik, and did the tour. They had some really fantastic displays on the Vienna Philharmonic, and original scores that Beethoven, Schubert, Mahler, and Mozart (among many other) composers wrote. I love seeing the actual manuscript with the frustrated scribbles and markings. Seeing those things makes a composer seem more a real person, and not some fact I learned about in school. They also had a really cool display about how sound works, and lots of interactive sound displays. It was very cool.
We also saw one of the apartments Mozart lived in while he was in Vienna. It was a pretty good location, so it was during his "successful" years that he lived there. Apparently he wrote The Magic Flute there, so there was a big display about that. And, if he didn't have so much gambling debt, there wouldn't be nearly as much music from Mozart. Good thing for gambling! :) The displays were a little weak, but it was more about imagining Mozart pacing around the same place you were that made it cool. Another humanizing composers moment.
All in all, that about sums up the weekend. It was great to see a familiar face, and have a relatively relaxed visit with Liz, which didn't usually happen in Idaho. So, while I am so far away from all the rest of my family and friends, I am comforted in the fact that Liz is only a 2 hour flight away.
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