Day Twenty Three

DAY TWENTY THREE

We woke early this morning to the continuous traffic noise in the middle of Vienna. Betsy is parked on one of the main city roads in Vienna and makes for an interesting cultural noise experience. Glenn could sleep through anything short of a nuclear explosion and I have my newly acquired IPod Earphones, so we both had a good night’s sleep. We had breakfast at the Hostel – an all you can eat Continental Buffet breakfast and then made our way by underground to St Stephens Cathedral.

The rain had stopped as predicted by “Q” and the weather was a warm 2 degrees – positive. This meant that Glenn only wore 4 layers of clothing this morning as compared to his usual 6 layers elsewhere in Europe. The trains in Austria are so easy to use and understand that in no time we were at the cathedral and admiring its beauty. The cathedral dates back some 700 years and is filled with numerous statues and artistic carvings that pay tribute to various saints.

We then planned to make our way on foot to the Hofburg Palace in Vienna but had to make a scheduled stop along the way.
Glenn had indicated his desire to visit the Lipizzans horses in Vienna and perhaps to watch a show. Now I know of at least three avid followers of this blog that love horses – Glenn’s Mom, Lee and My Pops. Well guys guess what; we went to see them exercise the horses in a palace listening to music by Mozart. I have to say that even though Glenn and I are not horse lovers, the experience was magical to say the least. We would have loved to have attended an official performance but they do not perform for the public during the winter months. The extent of training in these beautiful white horses is unbelievable and watching them trot sideways was incredible. Needless to say, Glenn felt so moved about the whole experience he has decided that he may well ask his Mom to teach him to ride when he gets back to SA. I have to say that throughout the entire spectacle we thought of you three horse lovers.

We stopped at the Café at the Spanish riding school where the horses are trained and had a Maria Theresa coffee – double espresso with Orange Liqueur and topped with fresh cream sprinkled with orange flavored sugar – Yum…

We left the church and proceeded by foot to the Palace district in Vienna. I use the word district because the Hofburg Palace complex in Vienna stretches some 240 000 square meters and has more than 2900 rooms. This was undoubtedly the most formidable and lavish palace complex we have seen yet.

We purchased tickets to view the Imperial Apartments’ of the Habsburg monarchy as well as the “SISI” museum – Elizabeth I as well as the Silver collection of the Habsburg monarchy. The Hofburg Palace was the residence of the Habsburg dynasty for over 600 years. The stately splendor under which the Austrian royalty lived was beyond belief and attested to the wealth and power of the Austrian rulers of their time. The bulk of the exhibition was dedicated to Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elizabeth – also known as Sisi.

The Imperial Apartments’ were restored to their original splendor and gave one insight into the lives led by the Emperor and his wife Sisi. Franz Joseph was a simple man and chose to live his life with little luxuries whilst his Empress enjoyed the finer things in life such as a personal toilet with Flush mechanism not unlike those in use today as well as a bath tub with running water – hot and cold.

The Sisi museum was dedicated to Empress Elizabeth and gave insight into her personality, her rebellion against court ceremonial and the way in which she strove to remain beautiful and trim. In particular it showed her obsessive dieting, sporting manias and her romantic poetry and melancholic behavior. The empress travelled incessantly and had the most incredible travel cases filled with Bone China, travel tea sets and even a specially modified rail carriage. The story of Sisi may be remembered by those loyal followers who watched the 3 part trilogy of her life as portrayed in movies made in 1956. The silver collection showed a level of opulence that words could never aptly portray except to say that one had to surmise that the collection on show in the palace museum would be worth Billions of Euro at the least.

For those history buffs among you, it was the son of the Emperor – Franz Ferdinand II – that was assassinated in 1914 that gave rise to the start of the First World War.

We then made our way back to Betsy for an afternoon’s siesta and got ourselves up and ready for a Sushi Dinner with Michael. For those of you who don’t know Michael, he and I went to high school together – yes we did have schools back then as well. Michael has been my good and close friend for more than 30 years and seeing him again tonight in his Hugo Boss suit, I can see now the error of my ways in choosing to become a bean counter and not a computer wiz like Michael. We enjoyed a super dinner of Sushi – at long last – and a lot of laughs and jokes around the dinner table. Michael has taken time off work to join us in Vienna tomorrow and we will all be taking the sights in together and meeting up with his Wife Verena and daughter Caroline tomorrow evening.