Day 8: Vienna

Day 8:   Vienna

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Amalyra pulled in to Vienna late in the afternoon yesterday.  By then, Roger was feeling OK to go out to the Mozart/Strauss concert.  Everyone dressed in their finery for the occasion – I had very neat casual but certainly not the glittery jackets and stiletto heels that some of the women wore.

The bus took us past the city while it was still lit up – around the Ringstrasse: the road which has been built over the original city moat.  It rings the main part of the city – what was all there was

 to the city really in the days before the city wall was taken down in the 1600s. Since then, of course, the city has greatly expanded, so that the Ringstrasse seems to form a road around the very centre of Vienna.

(I realise that I am telling many of your who read the blog stuff that you already know full well, but it is my diary of the trip and if I don’t record these details, I will forget them.)

The concert was held in the summer palace of the Lichenstein family. Now I don’t know if I am really dense or if something in my education has been sadly lacking, but I had always associated palaces only with royalty.  It wasn’t until coming to Vienna and learning about the many palaces that there are, or were here, that I have realised that those families who were disgustingly rich also built palaces. The two names that keep popping up in Vienna talk are Habsburg and Lichenstein.  Habsburg, we have learned were the royalty, with Marie Theresia being the Austrian equivalent of Queen Victoria.  Around a century before  Victoria, ruled here for 40 years and had something like 18 children.  She was the mother of Marie Antoinette, so obviously not all of her children died in glorious old age.  Apparently the Hapsburgs felt themselves to be so precious that they had a policy that the males should marry within the family and so maintain the wonderful Habsburg line.   Well, the obvious result of that was not only many still births but also a succession of very ugly Emperors with huge protruding jaws.  Maria Theresia who was the last of the Habsburg line, obviously escaped these terrible consequences of inbreeding (although I don’t know that she was particularly beautiful), was a very powerful ruler and is very much honoured by statues and monuments. 

Back to the concert….

As I said earlier, it was in the summer palace of the Lichenstein family – not royalty this time, but very rich and powerful.  It is they who own the country of Lichenstein and they have this palace in Vienna as their summer palace and also to house their huge collection of art:  Rubens, van Gogh and the like.  Apparently they have just paid several million euro for a cabinet which is inlaid with precious stone and that is housed at this palace.  The concerts, which I imagine are held there every night, are obviously one way of raising funds towards the upkeep of their empire.  Having said that and sounding rather too cynical, I must say that we thoroughly enjoyed the concert.  It was an orchestra of around 20 pieces, the Vienna Residence Orchestra.  Each of the members is a soloist in their own right, so you can imagine how they made their instruments sing.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching the conductor, who conducted the whole program without a note of music infront of him.  He ‘played’ the orchestra, just as if it was his instrument and was a delight to watch.   The concert was held in what must surely be a ballroom – up a magnificent marble staircase and in a richly ornate ‘room’ about the size of a house.  We were not allowed to take photos, but it was yet another example of baroque architecture, with frescoes on the ceiling and wonderful ‘marble’ columns – except I am pretty sure they are actually highly polished, coloured concrete.

It was snowing when we arrived and we had quite a way to walk from the bus to the palace entrance.  Not having our boots on, we were both a bit hesitant on the slippery surface, and we must have looked like a couple of old crocks, not casually strolling hand in hand as we often do, but tightly gripping each other’s hand like we will probably do when we are 90!

Today Roger stayed on the ship for a rest day and I joined the group going to the city for a guided tour.  It was really just a repeat of what we had seen last night, except this time in the daylight.  All the wonderful buildings were amazing of course, but I have to admit feeling a little underwhelmed by Vienna.  Could I already be getting a bit over wonderful  buildings???   We still have Istanbul, Rome, Venice, Paris, London and Amsterdam to go!!!   I think  though, that it is just that in Vienna, it’s not just a wonderful building here and there – they are everywhere, almost on top of each other.  The guide said that apart from the commercial buildings and apartments, almost every building is a concert hall of some sort.  They also have hundreds of coffee houses.  He said that if there is a building which has to be turned into something else, as was the case with the stock exchange when the computer age hit, they will most probably turn it into either a concert hall or a coffee house.  

The two Christmas  markets that I went to in Vienna were most disappointing  They were more like trash and treasure markets and didn’t have the lovely hand made things that I have found elsewhere.

We have just returned from dinner – yet another scrumptious one, but I couldn’t eat anything and Roger ate very little.  There is a new theory about the virus.  Apparently the doctor who attended one of the passengers last night told him (the patient) that there are thousands of cases in this area of Europe and he reckons there will soon be tens of thousands of cases.  Obviously someone brought it onto the ship and it spread from there.  It’s a real hoot – the topic of conversation with every group of people is who has had it, when they got it, how long they have slept for and which particular version – just vomiting or v & d. 

This being the 2^nd last night, they had a special captain’s cocktails beforehand and the captain invited several people to his table.  There were great celebrations and the atmosphere was wonderful.

Well, I’ll just add today’s photos and happily fall into bed.   We will be in Budapest when we wake up.  We will have the last of the guided shore tours and see the last of the Christmas markets.

A nice thing that happened today was that a lady selling beautiful jewellery visited the ship.  I had been given some money from one of my student’s parents to buy something for myself to remind me of their son.  I bought a most beautiful 24ct gold necklace with that money.  It is so heavy that I will have to wear it rather than put it in the suitcase for our plane trips!

Photos are of the Lichenstein palace where we went for the concert,

 one of Mozart’s various residences while he lived here,

and the Christmas market infront of the massive rathaus (Town Hall).