Vienna

The first picture is St. Stephan's Cathedral, in the absolute center of Vienna and the one thing that most symbolizes the city. The cathedral has a long history, most recently restored after extensive damage in World War II. It began as a Roman basilica in 1137 (none of which remains), with rebuiding and remodeling over the years following fires and wars. The present building originates from 1359. Down in the subway station outside the cathedral there's a foundation of an older church, displayed where it was found while building the subway. St. Stephan's has one large tower, which you can climb, the latest on my list of towers I've climbed in many buildings all over Europe.

Leading away from St. Stephan's on the Graben (literally Ditch Street), one of Vienna's pedestrian streets in the center, is this Plague Monument, built at the end of the 17th century to commemorate the passing of the plague. About a block beyond this on the left is the Pension Nossek where I stayed during my visit to Vienna. It's an old hotel that appears to have been a very nice hotel in it's day. Now it's still a nice, if older, place to stay, in a very convenient location.

Encircling the old town, with St. Stephan's in the center, is the ring, a wide road that passes by many other of the city's famous sights, including the opera. I attended a performance of Andrea Chenier at the Opera the first night I arrived simply by showing up at the standing-room entrance on the side a while before showtime. If you don't mind standing through the long performance, this is a good low cost (and if you don't have advance reservations probably the only) way in. The house was completely full. It's a very stylish affair, everyone is dressed up in their very best. I wore the best things I had with me, but was still under-dressed compared with most everyone else. Even the standing-room (you do get a padded leaning-rail) attendees were very well dressed. The Viennese dress very well for other things too, such as musical performances and even going out to restaurants. I hoped to get into a music performance the next night by simply showing up, but it was sold out so I ended up doing some shopping instead, buying and writing my Christmas cards for the year back in my hotel room.

I rode completely around the ring on a streetcar to see the other sights, and also stopped at a few of them. This is the Hofburg, a large imperial palace of the Hapsburgs. Shown here is the semicircle of the New Imperial Palace, a new wing built around 1900. Other parts of the Hofburg are the Imperial apartments, Treasury, and Spanish Riding School, all of which you can visit. I attended the Spanish Riding School's morning training session, even though my guidebooks didn't recommend it especially highly, because I thought it would be a change of pace from the other things I'd been seeing. It turned out to be not very interesting. Yes there were horses, each one training independently, mostly just walking and sometimes practicing a few fancy steps, but with no music or coreography or anything else. Lots of other people apparently didn't find it interesting either because more than half of them left before the session was over. I recommend you don't waste your time on this and spend your time seeing other things. If you can get to a real performance that might be different, but the training session really isn't much to see.

Right across the ring from the Hofburg are the Art History (Kunsthistoriches) and Natural History (Naturhistoriches) museums. I spent a lot of time in the Art History museum. It has large collections of old Egyptian, Greek and Roman objects, but it's largest exhibits are paintings by many of Europe's old masters. When I was there they also had a special exhibit of gold items. It's in the same league as the Louvre, but not as large (but if you add in some of Vienna's other museums, there would be even more to see than what the Louvre has - Vienna has LOTS of museums).

Well outside the center of the city (I took the subway) is Schönbrunn Palace, much like Versailles is a large palace outside Paris. Indeed, the intention of building this was to out-do Versailles. There's the main building, like Versailles, and also like Versailles there are large, and I do mean large, landscaped grounds with fountains, reflecting pools and extensive gardens. Schönbrunn also has a zoological garden and even a small area of fake Roman ruins (when I was there, being restored as explained in the sign: The Roman Ruins are being reconstructed... Gee, if they reconstruct them, they're not ruins anymore, are they?) Anyway, to give you an idea of distance, you can barely see St. Stephan's Cathedral's high roof and tower above the right corner of the main part of the palace.

I took the tour of the palace, choosing the unguided tour over the guided tour (on the unguided tour, you get a handheld device that gives you narration as you go through - the same equipment used at Stonehenge in England). They get lots of visitors here, and this equipment is part of their "Computerized Visitor Flow Control System", as the brochure so aptly put it. I was here in November 1996 on the opening day of the Christmas Market (Weinachtsmarkt) at the Palace. This was nice - hot Christmas punch and spiced wine, and lots of little booths with all kinds of crafts and things for sale. I bought a few things, including a ceramic Christmas stocking that I put in my coat pocket for safe-keeping, hoping it would survive unbroken on my long trip home. The next morning, going through airport security in Germany, I forgot about it until the security official, using his metal detector wand, found that I had something in my pocket. He seemed quite interested to see what this was, perhaps because of it's shape. As I unwrapped it, I realized that a Chistmas stocking is shaped a lot like a gun. Well, once I got it opened up and showed him what a nice Christmas ornament I had, he seemed quite relieved, then looked at my passport and said "ah, American....", as if to say "who else but an American would be walking around with a Christmas ornament in their pocket", and let me continue on my way.

At first the Christmas customs in Austria didn't seem much different than in America, until it came time for some "special visitors" to show up. No, it wasn't Santa Claus, his elves or reindeer, or anything else I could identify. Instead, the market was visited by about a dozen assorted monster-like characters! They didn't say a thing, but they all wore cow bells on their backs which clanked as they walked through the crowd, grabbing at and chasing after the children! I finally got the story on this from someone at a university in Leoben...

"December 6 is the feast day of Saint Nikolaus. Tradition has it that on Dec. 6, good children are visited by St. Nik and given presents of fruit and nuts (food that, in former times, was quite difficult to get in December). St. Nik is from who the North American Santa Claus has descended. This is where the evil monster comes in: he is Krampus...the devil himself! Because St. Nik is such a generous soul, he also makes presents to Krampus...of bad children. St Nik puts the bad children in his sack, after all the fruit and nuts have been distributed, and delivers it to Krampus. On the eve of December 6, Krampus visits the villages to remind children that it is a better decision to be good than bad."

Graz

Be careful trying to tell time with this clock! Think it's 8:20? No, it's really 3:40. This is an old clock, originally built with one large hour hand. Later they added a smaller minute hand, so the hands are opposite of what you usually expect. Those "gag" clocks with the numbers and hands running backwards are easier to read than this!

This is the Hauptplatz, the center of Graz, at the base of the hill near the clock tower. The building you see is the city hall.

The Hauptplatz is in the center of the old part of the city, exemplified by old streets such as this, the Sporgasse, which leads directly into the Hauptplatz.

There are various things to see here, such as the arsenal, today functioning mainly as a museum of old weapons, but actually this building was a functioning arsenal many years ago for the same weapons you can see today. This includes swords, pikes, suits of armor, pistols, muskets, etc., over 32,000 pieces in all. Unfortuntately I didn't get in, it's not open in November when I was there. I did however get to see part of its collection, on the TV show Good Morning America.

Something else that might be interesting in this area is an open-air museum, a collection of old buildings brought to show the old ways of life. Unfortunately I didn't see this either, because it wasn't open in November.

But there are some other interesting things that I was able to see, including a couple of old churches, and an unusual double spiral staircase from 1499 (part of Friedrich III's residence, the rest of which is gone).