Austria

Since Jay and I had little in mind as “must sees” for our Europe trip, much of the trip planning was based on the “familiarity principle”: “I’ve heard of that city, it must have something to see, let’s go there!” Austria certainly fell into that category; there was nothing specific that drew us to the country, just a vague sense that people sometimes go to Austria, so there is probably something there.

We spent one day in Salzburg and two days in Vienna and in the end Austria exceeded my expectations. We easily could have spent more time there but I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that there are just too many things to see in the world to squeeze everything into one trip.

Salzburg

Salzburg is tourism machine. From what I can tell, it is famous because of Mozart and the publicity gained from the Sound of Music and not much else. But the city takes these stereotypes and milks them to the end. According to our hostel’s front desk, the Sound of Music has nothing to do with Austria (though it was really filmed there), yet it is everywhere. The film is in pictures on every map and billboard, in all the shops, on special tours (there is a full-day tour that takes you around to all the filming locations while playing the soundtrack) and playing every night at our hostel (it used to be on loop—the employees eventually put their feet down). And then there is Mozart—his two houses (birthplace and family home) are major tourist draws in the center of the city and Mozart has his own truffle, available everywhere. I have no idea what Mozart has to do with truffles and neither did the shop keepers nor the internet. I guess a chocolate company just dedicated a line of truffles to famous Austrians and Mozart was the most popular, so then all the other chocolate companies started copying it.

Mozart wants you to buy a truffle.

Even with all that crazy tourist pandering, Salzburg must be one of the prettiest cities in the world. The setting is beautiful, again with green hills, jagged mountains and clear rivers. The city itself is hard not to love: compact, well-maintained and full of delightful old architecture that was not destroyed during the war. Salzburg looks as if it was designed in anticipation of postcard pictures. No mater where you are, one click of the camera will capture more than one beautiful historic site.

Mountain view from the top of the fortress

Old town view from the hike to the fortress

From front to back: Mirabell Gardens, Franzikanerkirche, Peterskirche, Hohansalzburg Fortress

Walking around Salzburg was the best part of the visit (in addition to watching Sound of Music in the hostel) and the background music provided by the many talented street performers made it even better. The Mozart museum and fortress tour were unmemorable.

Vienna

I had absolutely no idea Vienna was so important to European history! This blog post is already too long without including a history lesson, so just trust me on this one: Vienna=Big Deal in Europe, seat of the Holy Roman Empire, Hapsburgs, seat of the First German Reich, homeland of Hitler, cross-road between East and West Europe, etc, etc. Walking around the city, I was struck by how many different cultures were represented within Vienna and perhaps it is that amalgamation of many European cultures that makes Vienna so unique and appealing.

First, Vienna has a famous Spanish Riding School. Why is there a Spanish riding school in Austria? Because more than 400 years ago, a Spanish king ascended to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire and brought the Lipizzaner horses with him as a prized possession for his new court. Soon it became clear that importing horses from Spain was not a practical financial plan and two breeding grounds for the horses were established. Though time has moved past the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian monarchy, and neither of the original breeding grounds is still on Austrian land, the Spanish Riding School is still going strong as a private company, and is a huge part of Austrian culture. The main school, of which we took a tour, is in the center of the city within the Hofburg Palace complex and there is a training center and breeding ground in the countryside. At any given time, there are about 110 stallions in the program that are carefully bred from six different blood lines (descending directly from the original royal horses). The horses rotate between training in the country (“vacation”), performing in the city, and touring around the world. Each horse specializes in only one trick of the special tricks that the riding school performs. All the tricks are based off natural male horse behavior, but these horses perform them perfectly. Three involve the horse doing things on just its back legs, like hopping, and three involved the horse doing jumps and things with the riders directing from the ground. 

I can't get it to rotate right, but turn your head to see the horse tricks!

Seeing the school was so cool. My favorite things were (a) the “horse walk” they have in the summer ring, like a giant revolving door they can program to walk horses in a circle at different speeds and changing directions. (b) Getting to sit in the VIP seats of the performance ring. And (c) seeing the horses up close in the stables. The horses are so beautiful, small and round and white—almost the opposite of the aesthetic ideal for a horse in the American West.  The horses are born black or brown then turn white after the age of four, but the few that don’t turn white are thought to be good luck and are always kept around.

Performance ring from the VIP seats

No pictures allowed in the stable, but I caught the horses en route to the performance

The second place you really see the blending of cultures is in the buildings on the Ringstrasse, the road circling the city center along the old city walls. These buildings were all built in the mid-1800s, but each was built in the style that reflects the time period famous for the function the building serves. So for example, the city hall is built to promote self-determination and thus is designed in the Neo-Gothic style of the 1400s. The parliament is built to promote intelligent discourse and thus is designed like a building in ancient Greece. Pretty cool idea, and architecturally a lot more interesting than a whole bunch of 19^th century buildings together.

City Hall

Parliament

Some other highlights of Vienna were the St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the Schönbrunn Palace, and the music museum (Haus der Musik). The St. Stephen’s Cathedral is both an impressive building and an impressive story. Parts of the cathedral look just like the cathedrals we’ve seen in every other city. But then the roof is completely unique. It is made of 200,000 clay tiles laid mosaic style into patterns and pictures. Apparently the roof is very steep to shed the massive amounts of snow Vienna gets and if the roof was tiled in one color it would make the cathedral feel oppressive, so they made pretty patterns.

The story of St. Stephen’s during WW2, however, is not a happy one. The cathedral escaped Allied bombing unscathed, because the Allies at that point were not carpet bombing but strategically targeting things like bridges and other infrastructure. At the very end of the war, the Austrians were sure the Russians were coming to destroy and loot the city, so one night, the Austrians looted their own city, including the shops surrounding St. Stephen’s and then set them on fire. The ash and fire blew over to the Cathedral, destroying the roof, and the windows, and a good portion of the structure. But the Russians never came and the war ended. Immediately after the war, St. Stephen’s Cathedral became a symbol of Austrian guilt, both of their greed in looting their fellow countrymen and also of falling in line behind the Third Reich so easily. The city rallied around the reconstruction of the Cathedral and the process was a key factor in revitalizing the culture and infrastructure of the city. But the guilt of that time is still felt whenever an Austrian passes St. Steven’s.

The Schönbrunn Palace was the summer palace of the Hapsburg family who ruled most of Europe for most of history. It contains 1,441 rooms and 500 acres of gardens. We took the “Grand Tour” through 40 of the rooms, each of which has a different character. I loved that the Palace was not fixed in time (in contrast to the Neushwanstein castle) and you could see how it changed according to the style of the times and the preferences of the monarchs.

Schonbrunn Palace

The Haus der Musik was our last stop in Vienna. After the incredibly dry Mozart museum I went to in Salzburg, I was a bit skeptical about the Haus der Musik but I wanted to give appreciation of Viennese musical history a second shot. Luckily, the museum was much better than the Mozart one, though the exhibits were still pretty hit or miss. The first part of the museum is dedicated to the Vienna Philharmonic, where we watched some videos of old performances (including the Star Wars theme song!) and I learned that conductors actually do more than just make funny hand movements—they control the speed and volume of the different sections, mostly through improvisation. The largest part of the museum was dedicated to the science of sound. It was very strange. Lots of fun interactive things to do, but not all that educational and at times downright confusing. The only thing I really learned will not be a shock to anyone—Jay does have much better hearing than the rest of us: he could hear up to 15,139 Hz to my 13,123 Hz. The last section was the best, going through the great Viennese composers (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss and Mahler). I didn’t realize that before the Viennese Classical period of Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven, all music was composed for God or King. 1780 was the first time music was composed for mass enjoyment instead of reinforcing social structures. That’s my new cool fun fact from Austria.