Christmas Markets and Festive Atmosphere

Vienna transforms into a winter wonderland during the holiday season, with Christmas markets dotting the city landscape. We explored markets at various iconic locations such as St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Rathausplatz (City Hall), Schloss Schönbrunn, and Schloss Belvedere. Each market featured rows of wooden stalls selling ornaments, handcrafted gifts, and warm seasonal drinks.

The markets feature countless stalls serving Glühwein (mulled wine) in decorative mugs, which visitors can keep as souvenirs for a €5 deposit. The hot drinks were perfect for when walking around in the cold. There’s also food like Kaiserschmarrn (like a fluffy shredded pancake with sugar and jam), hot dogs, and chimney cakes.

While many stalls offer Christmas merchandise, we discovered that most vendors source similar items (likely outsourced). However, we learned of an artisanal market featuring exclusively local craftwork, though we weren’t able to visit it during our stay.

We heard about a market that exclusively sold locally made items, though unfortunately, we missed the chance to visit it. Another notable scene was the line of people outside Stephansdom, awaiting Christmas mass, reflecting the importance of the cathedral in Vienna’s holiday traditions. Despite this, the atmosphere remained lively

Museums and Palaces

Vienna is known for its rich collection of museums and palaces. Among the highlights of our visit was the Albertina, though art museums are not my usual preference. A more engaging stop was the Schmetterlinghaus, the butterfly house, located near the Hofburg Palace. This greenhouse contained numerous butterfly species that fluttered among tropical plants, including banana trees. The butterflies flew around at their leisure. Some would land on the leaves, or even on the walking path, so we had to be careful as we walked.

One of the more memorable moments was witnessing a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis. However, the warmth inside contrasted sharply with the cold winter air outside, making heavy winter clothing less comfortable during the visit.

The Schatzkammer, Vienna’s imperial treasury, presented a vast collection of jewellery and regalia from the Habsburg era. The treasury holds significant historical pieces, including the Imperial Crown of Austria and the Royal Scepter, reflecting the power and influence the Habsburg dynasty once held. The collection includes the largest emeralds in the world.

At Schloss Schönbrunn (a UNESCO World Heritage site), we took a guided tour through Maria Theresa’s private quarters, which are only accessible with a guide. Maria Theresa, the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions, was a pivotal figure in European history, known for modernizing the empire and her diplomatic maneuvers, including the marriage of her daughter Marie Antoinette (one of her 16 children) to Louis XVI of France. Schönbrunn, often likened to Versailles, served as a summer residence for the Habsburgs and features intricate Rococo interiors.

The Kapuzinergruft, the Imperial Crypt, provided a sobering experience as we explored the tombs of the Habsburg family, including those of Franz Joseph I and Maria Theresa. Franz Joseph, who reigned for nearly 68 years, oversaw significant political changes in Europe. The crypt narrates the legacy of the Habsburgs, a family that ruled Austria and much of Europe for centuries.

Culinary Experiences

Vienna’s culinary scene combines traditional Austrian dishes with influences from neighbouring regions. We sampled Flammkuchen, a thin flatbread from the Alsace region topped with crème fraîche instead of tomato sauce. The local Schweinsbraten (roasted pork) came served with Knödel (potato dumplings). This hearty dish involves slow-roasting marinated pork until tender, and the dumplings soak up the rich gravy, creating a filling and comforting plate.

Wiener Schnitzel, one of Austria’s most famous dishes, did not particularly stand out to me. I found the Japanese variation, tonkatsu, to be more enjoyable.

Flight Home in Comfort

The return flight offered a chance to experience business class. Upon boarding, sparkling wine was served, and throughout the flight, options for higher-quality food and drinks were available, including steak, cheese plates, smoked salmon, and Johnnie Walker Black.

The seats reclined fully, providing a more restful sleep, and the thicker blankets added to the comfort. Skippable ads during in-flight entertainment and access to the lounge with additional food and beverages rounded out the experience, making the flight much more enjoyable.

See more of Vienna here

Bastogne

The Battle of the Bulge (known in German as the Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein – Operation Watch on the Rhine) was the last major German offensive in the western front during World War II. The Germans attempted to use this offensive to break the Allied offensive on that front and force the western allies to negotiate a peace treaty. The territory taken by the Germans during the offensive resembled a “bulge” on the map, hence its name.

During the battle, Bastogne was surrounded by German forces, and when the Germans asked the Americans in Bastogne to surrender, Brigadier General McAuliffe famously answered “nuts!” to the German request.

We stayed overnight in the same farmhouse which served as the former field headquarters of the legendary American 101st Airborne Division during the battle. The staff there mentioned that the same family still owns the farmhouse to this day and that some of them had perished in concentration camps during the course of the war.

They even decorated in the interior with old helmets and ammo boxes.

I wouldn’t consider the place in the middle of nowhere, but maybe trying to find it at night isn’t the best idea.

Just look for the tank turret out front I guess!

We tried going to the Bastogne Museum, but little did we know that the Bastogne War Museum was closed between 20. January 2020 to 19. February 2020. I knew it was low season, but I didn’t think it was so not busy that the entire museum would be closed for a whole month! The only exhibit we got to see was the East Germany open air exhibit outside showing off art painted on the tank, slabs of the Berlin Wall on old Trabants.

Nearby the museum was the Mardasson Memorial, a monument dedicated to the American soldiers who fought the Battle of the Bulge. Inside the memorial, carved panels tell the story of the battle.

The weather really cooperated with us today! We had clear blue skies all day, and got to see the the thin layers of morning frost over the vast farm fields.

Liège

The weather didn’t cooperate for long though because it became like this on our way to Liège…

The thing that surprised me about Liège was how seedy it was. We were hanging out around Place St Lambert, and it felt like people were subtlely eyeing us from the side of the street. In once instance, the moment we turned corner, a man glanced at us and immediately started walking in our direction. I glanced at him some more and eventually he went away. Yeah, we didn’t stay long in Liège.

I think one way to explain why it was so seedy was that Wallonia was no longer Belgium’s center of industry like it was in the late 19th and early 20th century. As the industry went to neighbouring Flanders, the local economy suffered.

Drielandenpunt

Next up, Drielandenpunt, the triple point between Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium. It’s also simultaneously the highest point in the entire Netherlands, a miniscule 322.5m above sea level.

Aachen

Not far away from the Drielandenpunt, was the westernmost city in Germany, Aachen. This is where 31 Holy Roman Emperors were crowned. Charlemagne (his bust pictured below) himself had his imperial medieval residence here.

The Aachen Cathedral shown below was the burial location of Charlemagne. The chapel shown in the middle is the location of the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperors. Despite the name, the Holy Romans Empire was neither holy nor Roman, nor an empire.

As a “holy” empire they weren’t exactly unified by religion. It wasn’t solely catholic and had a significant population of Protestants.

It wasn’t really Roman since for most of its history it didn’t rule over what the Roman Empire ruled over (although it did for a time) and its centre of power was ultimately in Germany. Arguably, the Byzantines or the Eastern Roman Empire was the true successor to the Roman Empire. They were a part of the Roman Empire when it fell and it continued the empire in the east until it fell in the 15th century to the Ottoman Turks.

Technically, it was an empire (at least officially) for a time, until their defeat in the Thirty Years War (1618 – 1648), which resulted in the kingdoms within the empire effectively receiving independence from the empire.

For lunch, I finally got the chance to eat Eisbein (bottom dish), a pork knuckle! It’s simmered for several hours in broth and served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes! If you like meat, this is the dish for you. The above dish is a schnitzel – thin slice of meat (thinned via pounding) that’s breaded and fried.

Bonn

From Aachen, we drove to Bonn to meet up with a friend, who moved to Bonn from Taiwan to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering. We were so full from lunch, we only had a small snack for dinner at a local pub.

Since it was a Bavarian pub, it sold Bavarian specialities like weisswurst (shown on bottom – literally white sausage). It’s a sausage made from veal! The bread in the basket is a very delicious German pretzel. It’s got a nice cripsy outside flavoured with salt with a soft inside.

After dinner, we explored the city a little bit and visited the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven. The house is one of the few remaining middle-class homes of the era.

Bonn is also the world headquarters of an amazing brand of gummy bears – Haribo! It was founded by Hans Riegel in Bonn, hence the name Haribo. People who hear about Haribo for the first time usually think it comes from Japan, and are almost always surprised to find out it’s German! The outlet store not far from Bonn city centre has a MASSIVE selection of all sorts of Haribo variants! It’s got gummy bears, sour worms, licorice, and more! I definitely recommend the gummy bears (of course), the frogs, coca colas, and the Phantasia pack!

That concludes our 7th day. The next day we’d travel to more German cities – Cologne and Düsseldorf.

Photos:

• Bastogne
• Liège
• Drielandenpunt
• Aachen
• Bonn

As usual, food was the goal. Miso-Katsu, a kind of Japanese schnitzel with with miso sauce, is a specialty of Nagoya. Yabaton was the name of the restaurant and it is one of the most famous places in Nagoya for Miso-Katsu.

Nagoya also has the largest planetarium in the world at the Nagoya City Science Museum. And they have palm trees! We went to the planetarium show too, and they showed us how various constellations and planets looked in space, but unforunately, all the explanations were in Japanese. Still, it is worth a visit for those who enjoy stargazing.

Some crazy stuff they were able to do with bubbles too.

And I found the dome and helix fossils. I just need to go to the lab in Cinnarbar Island… Now I am wondering if the museum people put those two fossils together on purpose.

I wanted to walk inside this tornado so badly.

Another specialty of Nagoya is Hitsumabushi, which is grilled eel on rice. Probably many non-Asians may think that this is weird to eat, but regardless it is very very good, but expensive. According to the local culture, there is a “standard” way to eat this. First is to eat a quarter of it as is. Second, is to add various spices like green onion, and wasabi to it and eat another quarter. Third is to mix it with the given broth and eat another quarter of it. Lastly, it is to eat the last quarter with the favoured method of the three.

In the downtown district of Sakae, I saw a Ferris wheel attached to the side of the building. I should get one for my house too.

Not sure if this is a thing in Nagoya, but someone had the great idea of mixing melon in their spaghetti batter. Step 1: Make spaghetti with melon batter. Step 2: Add whipped cream. Step 3: ???. Step 4: Profit! Apparently, the kiwi one was better, according to a friend.

Another speciality of Nagoya is Tebasaki, Nagoya-style fried chicken wings. I believe it is deep fried with a coating of sweet soy sauce. It tasted okay, I guess.

Not exactly a specialty of Nagoya, but this is raspberry Kit Kat. It is not good. Don’t try it.

As expected, epic food often makes appearances in my travelling

Links to photo albums:

• Nagoya
• Nagoya City Science Museum

Using the Germanwings “Blind Booking” promotion, which randomly (kind of if you don’t know how to work the system by seeing which flights are full) selects a destination from a predetermined list for passengers at a fixed price.  Using this promotion, we got to fly to Vienna.

We were even planning to go to Budapest as a day trip from Vienna, but that turned out to be too expensive, and that there was plenty in Vienna to see.

Flight to Vienna

While waiting for our flight at Stuttgart International, we saw two double sized Foosball tables set up to go along with the Women’s World Cup Soccer.  By double sized, I mean that instead of only four rotating sets of players per side there were eight per side.  They took up so much space that one had to quickly hop to the other size to control the other set of players.

We played this for a little bit until the rest of our party arrived.  Once everyone arrived, we went to get our boarding passes and then to the security checkpoint.  One thing that really surprised me there was that the airport security wasn’t very strict at all.  All I did was go through the metal detector and got my backpack checked by the X-Ray.  They didn’t open it up/search it or anything like that.  They didn’t do that to anyone.  They didn’t check my bag for liquids either.  People could easily smuggle prohibited items on the plane.  Once we passed the security checkpoint, we waited until we could board.

We boarded a small Airbus A319, which looked like it could probably only fit about 100 people on it.  I noticed that each passenger was given a barf bag (I’ve heard of people getting nosebleeds while flying, but not nausea).  On one side of the barf bag, there was a chart that showed at what levels of nausea would cause one to puke and the caption that was written for the top level was “the price of our competitors”.  I’m guessing that their price is so low that people will puke?  Either way, I thought it was pretty comical.  To be fair though, Ryanair typically has lower airfares in my experience (I hope I didn’t sound like I’m advertising these airlines).  The flight itself took only about an hour.  The plane went up to 28000 ft. briefly before having to descend again.

Food

Since we arrived in the evening, we got hungry pretty quickly after dropping off our stuff at the hostel.  We looked around for a restaurant to try some Viennese food.  Apparently, Vienna is known for their Wienerschnitzel.  With that in mind, that’s what we ordered.  Every single one of us in our group ordered that except for the guy who was vegetarian.

What puzzled me about that meal was that the restaurant served the schnitzel with rice.  I thought it would be served with something like potatoes.  I guess that’s the choice of the restaurant.  It didn’t matter to me though since I just wanted the schnitzel.  The schnitzel itself was basically a huge piece of boneless pork coated in breadcrumbs that was fried (not deep fried).  I thought it tasted good, but it wasn’t amazing to me.  Pork isn’t that high up on my favourites.

A Bit of Relaxation (Kind Of)

After our meal, we went to a park to relax a little bit by throwing a Frisbee around.  It was kind of strange to me since we hadn’t done any real sightseeing yet and it seemed as if the others went to Vienna to throw a Frisbee around.  They even went to the grocery store to buy a few six packs of beer!  We all had the impression that Vienna was a really classy city, but what we were doing didn’t really seem classy at all.

While we played Frisbee, we noticed an insane amount of flies, mosquitos and other pesky insects.  Apparently, the others encountered the same thing when they biked to Austria one time.  These flies flew around in groups and were so annoying, especially the mosquitos that kept buzzing around my ear.

Schloß Schönbrunn by Night

After about an hour of Frisbee, we walked a little further to the schloss.  The schloss used to be the imperial summer residence back in the day.  It is now one of the most famous monuments and one of the most visited attractions in the country.  Since we arrived really late, the schloss had already closed and the guard there told us to leave when we tried to enter.  We ended up taking pictures from the outside.  Since there was nobody around to take a group picture for us, we set up an improvised tripod using the box from a six-pack of beer and used the camera timer.

Afterward, on our way back to the hostel, we came across two guys from Prague asking us if the park was a good place to sleep.  We were all kind of puzzled since we figured everyone would just book a hostel or something like that.  When we mentioned going to a hostel, one of the guys just made the subtle finger rubbing gesture to show that it was out of their budget.  While talking to them, a friend of mine with a beer in his hand just said “na zdraví”, which meant “cheers” in Czech and the guy was really surprised that he knew it (we learned that from Prague).  We ended up directing them to the park and then went back to the hostel to meet up with another friend who was joining us later on.  He came by train since he decided to come with us after we had already arranged our transportation.  Once we met up, a few people in our group decided to go a bar and somehow ended up back at the hostel at around 3 am.

Wien Mitte

The next morning (glad I went to sleep instead), we took a trip to the city center, which is usually where a lot of the touristy stuff is.  One of our friends decided to take a nap at the hostel instead since he came back so late the night before.  The first place we went to was the St. Stephen’s Cathedral.  What annoyed me a lot here was that the cathedral was under maintenance.  The face of the cathedral we were supposed to see had a large construction cover over it.  The inside, however, was super nice.

After seeing the church, we just walked in a random direction until we saw something cool.  The worst part about walking that day was that the temperature was at least 30 degrees Celsius.  It was like walking around Las Vegas in the middle of summer (ok maybe not as bad).  I didn’t pack any shorts and ended up partially rolling up my jeans.  I even took some paper to make a fan out of it.

One thing I noticed that was very common was that the locals here really liked wearing fedoras and giant hipster glasses (more prominent at least, but it’s not like they’re everywhere).  Even better was that they looked good in them.  It really added to that impression of classiness that we had from the beginning.  Even the H&M stores looked classier than the ones in Germany.  The way the Austrians spoke German sounded a lot nicer too.  It sounded more “clean” because they spoke slower and enunciated more unlike the Swabian German that I’m used to hearing.  Apparently, Vienna is tied with Vancouver for cities with the best quality of life.  I can see that.

Memorial for Mozart

Afterward, we headed to the Hofburg Palace.  Along the way, we came across a memorial to Mozart.  It was a statue of him posing majestically and in front of the statue was a garden with flowers arranged in the shape of a treble clef.

I guess when it comes to Austrian music, Mozart is a big deal since he was born in Salzburg.

Maria-Theresien-Platz

After we walked a little bit more, we reached the Maria-Theresien-Platz. This area contains two of Vienna’s major museums: the national history museum and the art history museum (more classy stuff).  While I was there, I took a picture of both buildings, but looking more closely at the pictures, it seems like the two buildings are almost identical.

At the center, there was a giant statue that basically acted as a giant shade and a lot people just crowded there.  It was reallyyyyyyyyy hot that day.  While headed to the Hofburg Palace, we came across a public water fountain, which gathered a rather large crowd of people.  The funniest thing about that water fountain was that it had the words “Wiener Wasser” (literally “Viennese Water” in German) printed on it.  Maybe I’m immature, but I still think it’s funny.  Maybe even funnier, the water from that machine tasted really good.

Hofburg Vienna

Eventually, we ended up the Hofburg Palace, the former home of some of the most powerful people in Austrian history, such as the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Currently, it is the residence of the President of Austria.  In contrast to the Schloß Schönbrunn, this was their winter palace.

Outside the palace, there was the Volksgarten for people to enjoy.  In the garden, there were flowers (typical of a garden I guess), and the Theseustempel, which was intended to be a replica of the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens.

After walking around this area, we reached the government district of the city.

The Parliament and Rathaus

Although we only walked by the parliament (why we didn’t spend time there I don’t know), I did manage to get a quick shot of the building.  Walking a little further, we reached the rathaus (city hall).  Both of these buildings had really impressive architecture.  Looking back at the photos, the Austrian parliament building bears some resemblance to the German Reichstag and the rathaus bears some resemblance to the Munich Rathaus.

When we were there, the city had set up a giant screen and a bunch of chairs for the open air theatre for opera and concert films.  We planned to check it out later, but we never got to that.  We also met up with our friend who chose to nap at the hostel instead of coming with us to see the tourist sights (sucks that he missed out).

The Burgtheater

Across from the rathaus, was the Burgtheater, one of the most important German language theatres (the ones for plays and not movies) in the world.

Near the top of the building, there were busts of famous playwrights such as Goethe and Schiller.  They even had a bust of Shakespeare, even though he wrote English plays.

Liechtenstein Museum

Our next destination was the Liechtenstein Museum.  Along the way, we passed the University of Vienna and the Votive Church.  Eventually, after walking several blocks, we reached the museum.

The museum mostly contained old works of art and also a really impressive horse carriage used by family members of the House of Liechtenstein.  Also in the museum was an old library.  The interior of the library looked like something out of Harry Potter – full of old books (but without the dust and the screaming people).

Somehow I don’t think I was supposed to take pictures of any of these things.  I took a close look at a lot of these books, and there were titles from a variety of genres like science and literature.

Mozart’s Requiem at the Karlskirche

Knowing that later in the evening, we would be going to see Mozart’s Requiem being performed at the Karlskirche, we went back to the hostel to wash up before heading out (we felt so sweaty and gross for pretty much the whole day).  While we waited for the others, we played a few games of Pool at the hostel.  Originally, the concert was supposed to be at the Vienna State Opera (at least that’s what the website said), so we were kind of disappointed when we found out that the performance would be at a church (even if it was near where Mozart died).

After we bought our tickets, we proceeded inside and enjoyed the design of the interior of the church.  When I walked in, I was totally surprised by how impressive the inside of the church was.  I did not expect something so amazing, especially the design of the altar.  The bright light around it made it even more amazing.

While listening to the concert and the sound of the violins, I felt a strong urge to take up violin.  It’s also something I always wanted to learn, but I wasn’t sure if I’d end up sticking with it.  The concert wasn’t quite as I good as I expected it to be.  I felt that the concert in Prague sounded a lot better, but it might have been because of the acoustics of the room.  The church we were had didn’t have very good room acoustics.  However, the singers sounded really good.  Despite that, the audience liked their performance a lot and clapped for a few minutes.  Some people even stood up and clapped.  After the concert, we came out in the middle of a thunderstorm some distance away.  I tried to take photographs of a lightning bolt, but I couldn’t react fast enough with the camera to get the shot (even on long exposure).

Wombat Hostel Bar

For some reason, when we got back to the hostel at night, we went down to the bar and started drinking.  Maybe it was because we wanted to take advantage of their amazing deal for shots – 1 shot for 1 euro.  We ended up having six shots in an hour – not counting the Jaegerbombs we had before that.  We ended up mixing a lot of different shots together like Tequila, Whiskey, Vodka, Schnapps, and Gin.  I forgot the last one.  Now that I think about it, the last one we had was Sambuca, which tasted like liquorice and it sucked, but I think the Schnapps were worse.

The coolest part about the Jaegerbombs was how the bartender arranged them.  He arranged the glass of red bull in a line while a shot of Jaeger sat in between two glasses.  He knocked over one shot into another and they all fell in the glass of red bull like dominoes.  After having so many shots among all of us, we could almost build a pyramid using only shot glasses.  We could have, if someone didn’t break one.  When the bartender saw us, he was really surprised at how many shots we had, but I think he just felt super uneasy at how we tried to build a shot glass pyramid.  At the end of all of that, I didn’t really feel dizzy – maybe the alcohol hadn’t got to me yet.  The others then decided they wanted to go out to another bar, but I declined and went to sleep instead.  I didn’t feel like coming back super late and not having energy for the next day’s adventure.

The next morning, I found out some of us came back at around 3, while others came back at around 4 or 5.  One of our friends didn’t even end up sleeping at the hostel and ended up sleeping outside at a cafe.  That was REALLY bizarre.  I would never do something like that.  Because they came back so late, some of them ended up missing the hostel breakfast and slept in until around 12 pm.

Those of us that had breakfast got to enjoy a great breakfast buffet.  The hostel had a sandwich maker so we stuffed as much stuff in our sandwich as possible and got the whole sandwich toasted.  I never thought cheese, salami, ham, cucumbers, and peppers in a toasted sandwich could be so good.  I think I had around 3 of them.

Schloß Schönbrunn by Day

Since we weren’t able to go to the schloss at night that day, we returned to the schloss after we had the breakfast at the hostel.  Just like the day before, the temperature was super hot (probably about 35 degrees or so).  From the outside, the schloss just looked like the same setup as the Neues Schloss in Stuttgart.  It had the same U-shape and the fountains out front.  However, we found that the schloss had a giant garden in the back, kind of like a smaller version of the one in Versailles.  It also had a labyrinth with walls of hedges and also had a zoo. 

Behind the garden, at 60 meters in elevation higher, there was the Gloriette structure. From there, we got a nice view of the whole city.  Inside the building was a cafe and it had really delicious ice cream (although it was kind of expensive).  Outside the building, a bunch of people set up tripods with their DSLR’s and everyone had these filters for their lens to tweak with the color of the photographs since the sky was so bright.

We could even go up to the top to get an even better view.  On our way up, we bumped into someone we knew from Bosch, but at the time I didn’t know for certain who that was.  It was only afterward when I realized it and by that time, it was already too late to say hi.  When we finished seeing the Palace, we took the metro to Danube Island (Donauinsel) for a bit of relaxation (hard to call it that when the weather feels like fire).

Donauinsel

The metro station here was in the middle of a giant bridge and when we walked out, we saw two people just sitting on the edge of it.  All of a sudden, one guy just jumped into the water and started swimming.  And then the second guy followed and made a giant splash when he hit the water.  It must have been at least 25 meters or something like that.

On one side of the shore, one could see the older part of Vienna and on the opposite side, the newer part.  There were quite a few high-rises on waterfront property.  On one shore, there was a set of trampolines set up over the water and that was really cool.  The whole area had tons of tropical themed cocktail bars and seafood restaurants.  That really gave the place a huge tropical vibe.  One of the things that people do in tropical areas is swim in the water and that’s what some of us did.  I didn’t though.  I don’t even know how to swim (I wouldn’t swim in a dirty river anyway).  None of them brought any swimming trunks or anything like that, so they just went in with underwear (kind of strange if you ask me).

While people swam, I walked around exploring the area and saw a TV tower.  Near the top, there was a walkway that protruded from the building and apparently it’s used for bungee jumping.  I don’t think I’d have the balls to jump off that.  After everyone finished their swim in the river (it was a little bit dirty too), we went to the Vienna State Opera.

Wiener Staatsoper

We arrived pretty late, so all the tours of the inside were already over.  We only looked around the outside and figured out what time the tour would be for the next day, which we did end up going to.

We also found out that the opera has a “summer vacation” in July and August.  The only shows there during the summer months aren’t part of the state opera and are just borrowing the location.

Sand in the City

Since there wasn’t anything to see in the evening, we ended up going to the Sand in the City, which was just a collection of cocktail bars and pubs in a place that had a beach feel (minus the water).  The whole area literally had sand all over and many people sat in beach chairs.

Also here was a shisha bar.  People got to take the hookah to their table and just smoked it until it ran out.  I didn’t know what shisha was at first, but I found out that it really is just flavoured tobacco inhaled through a hose from the hookah.  I figured I’d try a little bit.

It didn’t have the pungent odour of cigarettes and just had apple flavoured smoke.  I didn’t really like the taste, but I did learn how to blow smoke rings and that was the cool part.  It’s not something I’d do any again though.  Not long after doing the shisha, I must have had a strong allergic reaction to it.  My nose ended up being plugged for hours and I couldn’t stop sneezing even though I only had three puffs.  When I went to bed, my nose was still plugged.

Tour of the Wiener Staatsoper

The next morning, we went on a tour to the inside of the opera house.  The interior of the building had such an intricate design.  A lot of the design had a theme too.  For example, above the busts of famous playwrights and composers, was a painting of a scene from their most famous opera.  The interior could have looked even nicer, but parts of it were destroyed during World War II.

The tour guide showed us around most of the building too.  One room in particular, the Tea Salon, was a lot nicer than all of the others.  Apparently, the royalty used to use that room.  Nowadays, the room is used for super special occasions or when the media needs a really nice background to show when doing interviews for the opera. 

The tour guide also showed us some of the intermission rooms, which weren’t as nice since they were part of the reconstructed portion of the building.

While there, the tour guide explained to us the history of the place (which I don’t remember), and little factoids like how there’s an underground tunnel to the building that stores the costumes and how trucks deliver set pieces and other materials before shows.  Finally, the tour led us to the main auditorium of the opera house.

Apart from the movie theatre style seats, there were balcony seats all around on many different floors.  The tour guide explained how much different seats in the opera cost and apparently they can go up to tens of thousands of euros.  Behind each seat was also a display for subtitles, since the lyrics of the opera weren’t always in German.  Together, I think the capacity of the theatre could be about 2000 people, not counting the standing spaces.  We even got to go backstage to see some of the mechanisms on the stage.  The tour guide explained how the multiple platforms could move such that the stage scenery could be exchanged on the fly.  Coming to this place was probably the best part of the whole trip.

Flying Home

We ended up killing time at a park with the Frisbee before we had to go to the airport.  We didn’t do much else.  There weren’t anymore attractions that we wanted to see or had time to see.  When our flight came, we went on it and just went home.  We all pretty much had the disappointed feeling of “oh man, we have to go to work the next day.”

More photos here