Wien, continued

One of my favorite scenes from the Belvedere in Vienna. How times have changed...

Day 3, July 11: The Belvedere grounds and upper palace, the Justiz Palast, the Kunsthistoriches Museum, and the Wiener Staatsoper.

We walked from our Pension through the not-quite-yet open Naschmarkt...

...past the Karlskirche again...

...past the 1945 Soviet war memorial...

...with graffiti memorializing Alexei Navalny...

...to the not-quite-yet open lower Belvedere palace, with artwork in front by Urbana IL native Dan Graham.

Round and Around, 2019

We had breakfast across the street while we waited for the museums to open.

Given that the gardeners are now lawn-Roombas, it's no wonder that some of the shrubbery was trimmed...

...and some was not.

From afar, the upper Belvedere appears majestic...

...but close up, we saw the entire front was covered with a printed plastic image of itself for renovations. I was an impressive cover up!

We explored the art museum in the upper palace. Here's a photo of tourists doing what I would have been doing had there not been so many tourists.

Some of the character busts by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt:

Some of the ceilings were art too:

The medieval religious art in the upper Belvedere palace demonstrated that while Verona artists were still dabbling in smiley and frowny faces, the Viennese artists (or at least collectors) were a zillion skill sets ahead. Presumably that's what these folks were reading about on the cell phones: 

The Belvedere grounds are guarded by a dozen sphinxes.

After visiting the Belvedere, we swung by the Justiz Palast to admire the beautiful interior architecture.

They had an exhibit on the administration of justice--and the lack thereof--for war criminals in Austria and Germany following WW2. Some successes, lots of failures. 

Because it was stinky hot outside, we continued to tank up on museums. Given the choice between seeing the ~29,500 year old Venus of Willendorf at the imposing Natural History Museum vs. the Arcimboldo fruit and veggie portraits across the imposing Maria-Theresien-Platz at the equally imposing Kunsthistorisches Museum, we opted for the latter.    

In theory, the Egyptian antiquities in the extensive collection were purchased, not stolen.

Likewise this lion from the Babylonian Gate:

We actually laughed out loud when we turned the corner on the stairs and saw this view. More grandeur than we had already come to expect.

One of the snazziest cafes in Vienna is in the museum. Having already shelled out an astonishing 40E for coffee and cake at famous Cafe Demel the day before, we passed.

Arcimboldos:

One of my favorite curatorial decisions was this trio of adjacently hung Salome-with-John's-head-on-a-platter. Compare and contrast.  

From there, it was back to the Pension to shower and dress for a second night at the opera. 

Our seats weren't quite as good this time, but on the bright side, we sat in the correct seats.

Day 4, July 12: Taking things down a notch in the burbs.

Overwhelmed by the intensity of all-gorgeous-all-the-time, we took a train out to the suburb Ottakring on our final morning there, as friends had recommended visiting the 1907 Kirche am Steinhof, a Jugendstil church designed by Otto Wagner, mainly to be used patients at the adjoining hospital complex. The church was intentionally designed to accommodate the needs of patients with physical and mental disabilities: no sharp protrusions on the pews, a sloping floor so those in the back could see more easily, a holy-water system to reduce the spread of germs (although ultimately rejected by church officials). After the German annexation of Austria, many of the adult patients were sent to concentration camps, and young patients quickly filled their places. During WWII, 739 children were tortured and murdered in the children's ward of the hospital. The hospital grounds now include a memorial, and the hospital is still in operation.

Memorial. The posts represent euthanized children; each has a light on top.

The church:

Afterward, we decided to walk all the way to the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers, Schloss Schoenbrunn, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. En route, it occurred to us that we might be near the Manner Waffel factory--and indeed we were, but the interwebs said they didn't offer tours.

The face of disappointment

We also passed this building. It was another very hot day, but we didn't stop because a place that can't spell "popsicle" correctly surely isn't a place to eat one.

Here we are, at last, on the grounds of Schoenbrunn, admiring the Palm House...

...and the castle...

...and the Gloriette up on the hill. Of course we had to walk up...

From the Gloriette, looking back down toward Vienna, we observed that the Gloriette and the palace aligned with a long road back toward town, but we couldn't quite make out why the road curved. So of course, we walked down, all the way to the curve in the road, to find out, and learned there wasn't any obvious reason.

Having barely used our mass-transit passes, we hopped on a train back to our Pension and then took another walk to kill time before heading to the train station.

Before heading out, we stopped (for the second time in three days) at the best gelato spot in Vienna, which just happened to be a block from our Pension.

After three sweltering days in Vienna, clouds and cooler air swept in as we waited for our evening train. Thunderstorms followed us to Salzburg and onward to Bayern (cuz typisches Bayrisches Sommerwetter), where storms and accidents elsewhere on the tracks caused delays. Eventually, our train backed up and dumped everyone out in Rosenheim, where assorted other trains were also dumping folks, with no information about whether any trains would be running to Munich that night.

When life gives you late-night lemons, musicians make lemonade:

Eventually a train showed up to take a circuitous route to Munich, and everyone crammed in.

Here's a photo of S ~1:00 a.m. waiting for the S8. "Where'd you get the fan?", someone asked. "Vienna!" he replied (because it was 95oF in the shade every day, and even high-ceilinged thick-walled Pensionen get hot). Not the answer anyone in rainy Bayern expected that night. 

We watched the mice skittering around on the platform while men peed on the tracks (the latter being the consequence of charging Euro-less people a Euro to use the restrooms in the train station) until the S8 arrived to take us back to Steinebach.