Vienna: The Second Day

After the first full day in Vienna, we soon realized that Vienna has a lot of museums and a lot of history—almost too much to handle. We woke up early once again, and since we were leaving that night to go to Budapest, we had to make our way to a train/bus station to drop our luggage off in lockers. I asked that morning where we could do so, and they directed us to the proper station. The only problem was, and we had figured this out the night before, was that our subway line was under construction between two stations. Living in New York, this kind of thing happens every so often in Queens or Brooklyn, and it is a huge pain. This is what happens: the stations are closed for the stations under construction, everyone is forced out of the subway, and herded like cattle across the street to a bus station, where busses are lined up waiting to pick up the people and take them along the subway line. Now, here we are, eight international people, with luggage, at 8:30 AM. We get to the bus station, just to find that there is only one bus to take over 200 people along the under construction subway line. So instead of cramming us (and our 100 kgs of luggage) onto the first bus, we waited for the next. And wait, and wait and wait. About 40 minutes later the second bus arrived, after another subway had come and dropped even more people off at the station. By now we were waiting in line, behind a nun and next to a special type of person. I have a weird thing about these "special" people because it seems to happen to me often. I have two memorable experiences with them and here's what happens. These people are total strangers that I encounter in my life randomly giving me a special memory. They either do something weird, act strangely, or somehow attract my attention enough to make me notice them. Then, I forget all about them and continue on with my life, just to randomly run into them again in the street! Well, the previous day on the subway, we noticed this strange lady with brightly colored, half-sleeve/half-glove on her arms. I think she wore a hat, she had some weird bright sweater on, a colorful print skirt, and some weird spandex leggings on. She looked like Mrs. Peacock from Clue or something. Anyway, we smiled at her strangeness and moved on with our lives. Then at the bus stop, who do we stand in front of? Mrs. Peacock! Crazy!

Anyway, when the bus arrived, we took it one stop, had to transfer back onto the subway (a different line) and we finally made it to the train station to lock our luggage. Then the day began. We arrived at Upper Belvedere, an old palace that had been turned into a museum. After Albertina the day before, the museum was not so interesting for us. Although there was a Monet and Van Gough, we were not so interested in the other paintings throughout the museum. There was a lot of art about battles and wars by the Austrians, and the palace itself was very beautiful. Again, it was 11 AM and scorching hot and we were already tired, but we knew we had a lot to see before we left for Budapest, so we continued to go on. We returned from Belvedere to the city center where we split again to eat lunch. After lunch, we found our way to Mozarthaus, the apartment building where Mozart lived. Mozart lived in Vienna along with many other famous artists and musicians. It was here in Vienna that Mozart played as a child to the royal Hapsburg family in Schöbrunn Palace and here, in the Vienna Opera House, that his famous opera Don Giovanni played for the very first time, performed by Mozart himself. The house had been turned into a museum, probably a tourist trap, so we decided not to spend the €9 to enter and just move along with our sightseeing. This time, me, Ekta, Harrison, and Tete went to the Opera house for a tour. It was a beautiful building, grand and ornate. The back half of the building had been destroyed in the second World War, and was rebuilt in 1950 or so, and the opera house reopened in 1954. The opera house itself is still an active building. They have no acoustic equipment, like speakers or microphones, so every artist must sing loud enough for all 2200 audience members to hear. For this reason, they change operas every day and show about 5-6 different operas a week. Furthermore, they keep their sets in a separate location and the sets are transported every day to the opera house. This is only for performances and doesn't include the work necessary to do rehearsals and such. The backstage for the opera is over 25m deep and 25m high (that's like 75 feet high) and it's huge. The opera house employs over 5,000 people, including stage crew, actors/actresses, and office workers, so you can imagine every day, the hundreds of people who come to the opera to make it perfect. The opera is open every single day of the year, except for Christmas Day and Good Friday. It was beautiful and awesome, and I loved the way they rebuilt it to imitate the original style of the opera house. The front part, and the oldest part of the opera house held the Imperial Box, where the royal family (and now honorary guests) can sit to enjoy the show as well as the original entrance and foyer. The newer part has the actual box seats and a huge iron curtain to hide the stage, decorated in golden yellow that is 9 tons heavily. It was completely worth the €3 for the guided tour and one of the best parts of the day.

From the Vienna Opera House, we decided to go check out the Vienna Parliament building. But before we made our way over to the building, we decided to stop at one of Vienna's most famous churches. Karls Church (Karlskirche) is a magnificent church that has beautiful columns outside and I wish we could have gone in, but it was something like €6 just to go inside. Sorry, I don't have a job yet and churches should always be free, so we didn't go in. When we arrived to Parliament, we didn't want to go inside, so instead we just looked at the building. Vienna must have been preparing for an AIDS benefit concert or something, because the park in front of the building was full of stage preparation equipment and large banners and red ribbons. The Viennese Parliament also had a large red ribbon across the front pillars of the building, so we took our pictures and headed to the park to relax for a little break. We've gotten quite good at sleeping in public parks lately, so this was no different. We watched the pigeons and tried not to think about the heat. After Parliament, the girls were tired and we only had a couple hours until we had to head to the train station to pick up our luggage and make our way to the bus station.

The girls decided to just find a McDonalds (clearly our favorite restaurant) and Harrison and I made our way to the Museum Quarter. The Museum Quarter in Vienna is kind of like the 798 District in Beijing. It's an area in Vienna dedicated to artists of all types. Although there was a lot of fashion oriented exhibitions, there were also some contemporary art installations and really cool pink benches that everyone was on lounging around. Harrison and I walked around a little bit, found nothing too interesting except preparation for a concert or something in the main square of the MQ. We looked at the schedule, and although they have a lot of events, they were all planned for the evenings or other days. We made our way back to the subway and found a McDonald's on the way. We made it to the train station to pick up our luggage a few minutes until 6 PM and found the other girls waiting for us…except for Jolin and Ekta.

This situation is always happening to us. Waiting for Ekta, Ekta getting lost, Ekta getting locked somewhere, Ekta is always missing! So we waited…and we waited…and with each minute, we began to wonder if they were lost, and if we were going to make it to the bus station in time for our 7 PM bus to Budapest. Finally, at 6:15, they came to the train station. By now, Aysegul had gone to the bathroom and Ana was buying some snacks at the store, so we had to wait again. And finally when everyone was back, we began to make our way to the bus station. Luckily, we made it to our bus station in 30 minutes and had about 10 minutes to spare. No running to the bus today = today was a good day.