City of Strauss and Mozart. DAY 16 MARCH 3: VIENA

I want to start my post by congratulating this wonderful hotel with being so wonderful! The “Vienna Pyramid” (Lord knows why they named it that) is just the cat’s pajama’s. I mean, indoor swimming pool and Jacuzzi?Awesome. All nude sauna? Even better; I’m short-sighted, haha!

What a fantastic day. I take absolutely no credit for making it fantastic, that was all Vienna. Indeed, Vienna is  a rather attractive city, like any old city is, but it is not as crowded as Rome, nor as over populated by tourists as Paris, and yet it has retained some of the charm of the previous century.

One of its most excuisite architechural pieces is the Leopold Museum, which stands right across the Natural History Museum in Marie Theresa Square. The Leopold Museum, built in classic Roman style, with large pillars and sweeping staircase, (which made me get excercise, damn them) houses art works by a few famous artists. I must say, I did not recognise any of the pieces they had, but the atmosphere is wonderful nonetheless; the rooms are large with old-school high ceilings, and when one walks through them a scent waifs up to your nose, like the smell of an old house, or wooden furniture, or the smell of “posh”. The main reason for my visit there today was that they had installed some installations that made it possible to reach eye-level with the images that were painted right up near the ceiling by none other than Gustav Klimt, one of my favorite artists. Done with Klimt, I galloped through the art collection, and flew across the square to the Natural History Museum, where they had dinosaurs! It was the first time I’ve ever seen the skeleton of a dinosaur, and it is truly magnificent. It’s not as large as one expects, though. There were a ton of kiddies around, making the atmosphere into something akin to an amusement park, or birthday party. Either way, they made it fun, by giggling and roaring at the T-rex.

Quickly I made my way from the Museum Quarter to the St. Stephen Cathedral, where I met up with Jen and two other girls from the tour, so the four of us then went off for lunch at a classic Austrian restaurant, where they served me a schnitzel bigger than my plate! I ate half of it and the rest I kept for dinner tonight (yeah, saved money, wooh hooh!). We broke up again after lunch, which is when I wandered through the streets, looking into the shops and stopping at a grocery store just to quickly buy fruits and snacks for the road tomorrow (otherwise I have to buy food at service stops and they are too expensive).

Back I went to the Museum Quarter, where I caught up with more people from the tour. We waited for the bus, which took us to a Schnapps tasting. Oddly enough, in German one spells it “Schnaps”, someone was a little drunk when they did the translation, man. The guy who hosted our tour was the great-grandson of the original big boss, and a very handsome man indeed, (which explains why the girls enjoyed the tour), and very funny (which is why the guys enjoyed it). After a little bit of background and history we were free to do some tasting. Now, before you can say “what is schnapps, that’s for kiddies”, you have it all wrong. Schnapps here is hard stuff. And I even got to taste Absinthe for the first time in my life (not much of an experience if you ask me. Didn’t see any green fairies).

We took a quick loop around the city to the palace where we jumped out and snapped a few pics like the lame and lazy tourists we were, on the bus again and back to the hotel.

Tomorrow its the road again, and this time we go to Prague… Can’t wait!

 

Learning from history. DAY 15 MARCH 2: MUNICH TO VIENNA

“History does not repeat itself. It rhymes”.

Those are the wise words of one Mark Twain. I wonder, after what I have seen today, how anything could rhyme with the austrosities committed in German concentration camps during WW2.

Mauthaus, a Concentration camp in Austria. Plain buildings set on top of a cold hill, which overlooks the valleys and town below it, mist rolling in, blocking out the sun and setting a cold chill in the place. It was an amazing experience; a “lifer”, but that is not to say that I enjoyed it. On the contrary: I looked through a window and saw in the room on the other side drains set into the floor to drain away blood… I broke down.

We watched a video before we went into the camp itself; it showed interviews with a camp-inmate, an eye-witness and lastly an American soldier come to liberate the camp. That last one was the hardest part to watch: watching the old man breaking down while he tried to describe the horrors that he encountered when he and his fellow soldiers came in. The man, this old, strong Texan, broke down, and was speaking in a high squeeky voice, trying not to cry any more. It was too much for most of us. He told of how the victims were so thin, so underfed, that they were too weak to eat and that the U.S. troops had to watch as many died even after their oppressors had fled.

Ai, mankind is a horror. I wonder why it should be possible that we can do the things we do. On the bus back I sat numb. I had no words. I was totally silent, nothing but shock. The images of those poor bleak dead faces, their mouths wide open, as if even in dead they shout, scream.

I can’t write anymore. It is too much, I am trying to be strong, but the experience was too overwhelming. The camps are a testament to the power people have to do bad, and a warning.

On a far lighter note, let me tell you all that we have arrived in Vienna, and that after arriving we went to the beautiful Rathaus basement, where we had dinner, after which we went to the Opera house for a Mozart/Strauss concert. It was so charming. I wished my father was there, he would have loved it. I think of my family often on this trip, but today I thought of my father especially, not only with the concert, but because I knew that if he had been with me at those camps, he would give me a hug and comfort me. I realized today that we need our family in our lives if only for the fact they sometimes they know exactly what to say or not say, to make you feel better.

A whirlwind day, so positive and so negative. But, it was worth it.