Vienna, Day 2

 

Mark, Cindy, Bill

This is the last picture of the day -- sampling Viennese street food.  Various sausages in giant loaves of bread.  A contraption that looks like a ski boot warmer pokes a hole in the bread, longitudinally; it was filled with mustard and ketchup and the grilled sausage, and the little cap of bread that was removed by the hole-poking device is stuck in, on top of the bread.  Yes, we ate the meat and yes, it was good, and yes, we all ate the whole sausage.  The 'boys' also ate all the bread, but it was just too much for me.  

Lots of great things to see -

• Mark wanted to see the Lipizzaner  horses at the Spanish Riding School.  We got seats in the royal box for a practice session.  Interesting!  
• We took a tour of the catacombs under St. Stephen's cathedral.
• On to Cappuchin Crypts to see the coffins of the skeletons of more recent Hapsburgs. Amazing.   
• Headed after that to the Jewish Museum that pokes a little into the Jewish history in Vienna prior to WWII, but details it afterwards.  Very Interesting.  

Here are pictures;                                            

  Best fire extinguisher stand ever -- in the Jewish Museum.

A seder plate fashioned after the Vienna metro system

A menorah set in a Little Red Riding Hood scene.  These didn't sell well in Europe, evidently because it is associated with the Brother's Grimm, German folklorists.

Andy Warhol paintings of famous Vienna Jews -- Einstein and Freud among them:

One of the Hapsburg sarcophagi

A detail:

This is called, in English, the Arthur clock -- it spans the street between two buildings belonging to the Arthur Insurance Company.  In German, called the Ankeruhr Clock.  It is an Art Nouveau mechanical clock built in 1914.  12 historical figures rotate slowly around the front. Just after 12:15pm when this snapshot was snapped! 

Inside St. Stephan's.  No pictures were allowed in the catacombs. Interesting place though -- Some very early Hapsburgs have been buried under the alter of St. Stevens for almost 700 years.  In less important areas are the remains of coffins that were made of wood, with only disconnected bones left in piles, and a room full of black death victims who were hurriedly buried.  The catacombs extend under the plazas next to the cathedral, too.  

At the Spanish Riding School

The Spanish Riding School  is in the Hapsburg's Palace, adjacent to Michaelplatz.  

We bought tickets for seats in the Royal Box to see a practice session with the horses. This is the arena, a  UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is quite formal and fancy!   Here's the arena.

There's no pictures allowed in the arena when the horses are present, but here's  a screen shot from their web site.  If you are interested in the horses, see the PBS Nature program:  Legendary White Stallions. 

We haven't gone in yet, but we surely will try to -- we'd be in good company.  A copy and paste from their website:  This famous traditional café with its 130 year history was first opened in 1876 and at the turn of the 20th century it was a popular meeting point for leading lights in the world of art, literature, politics and science such as Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, Peter Altenberg and Leo Trotzki..

Voyaya