The Austrian Life

The Austrian way of Life:

1) They don't yodel...sad. I have yet to hear yodeling. I don't understand why people don't yodel in the city.

2) Men really wear liederhosen and it's completely acceptable! There is actually grand ball called the Hunter's Ball once a year where everyone wears traditional Austrian clothing, i.e. Liederhosen and Dirndls (the cute sheep herding dresses for girls). Yes I will be going dirndl shopping.

3) It seems that all Austrian men wear speedos, no matter their size. scarring.

4) The Kebap. So instead of hot dog stands, in Austria they have Kebap stands. Kebap is I guess the type of meat (lamb I believe?) cooked (on a giant spit, we're talking like 4ft here) and used to make falafels and sandwhiches. They're on almost every street and taaasty! I will be a regular at the Kebap stand next to school.

I don't really have any good pictures of the kebap yet because i've been to excited/busy when eating them

 5) Incredible Churches are Everywhere! 70% of Austria is Roman Catholic and hundreds of churches are scattered all throughout the city. There are often organ recitals that take place in the churches and on most sundays you can find a church with an orchestra and choir that performs a mass written by handel, bach, etc. during the actual service. Pretty cool!

St. Stephen's Cathedral. Located in the heart of Vienna. The entire city was built in a circle around this church and no building in Vienna is allowed to be taller than it. It's absolutely breath taking. 

 

The organ inside St. Stephen's 

Below is St. Peter's. Very close to the center of the city and has the most ornate alter I have ever seen. Even more gold than St. Stephen's inside.  

6) Just like Ithaca, Vienna is gorgeous! Instead of waterfalls there are fountains and parks everywhere! This is a park close to school that I like walk through when it's nice outside. 

 

7) There are often horse carriages in the middle of the street just about every day. And the drivers are always wearing top hats and traditional clothing. Mr. Collins would approve! 

8) The quality of food and water is in general way better than in the U.S. The whole city of Vienna has extremely clean water that comes straight from the Alps! You can drink it right out of the fountain or sink and it's very good for you. The food is just incredible. They use less preservatives so everything tastes better. Especially when you eat out. Which I have done a fair bit of :)

9) The air however is not so nice. Everyone young and old smokes so I am unfortunately a second hand smoker now :(

10)  Das Kaffeehaus. As I mentioned before, the coffee house is just a part of daily life. They are abundant and wonderful. It's where everyone goes to socialize. And of course any cafe you walk into has incredible looking dessert. I will have dedicate an entire blog to just food at some point. It's even a bigger part of my life here (if that is possible) than in the states. yikes?

One of the most well-known Cafe's in Vienna. Very touristy but just lovely. My apartment went out the first weekend for our first real Cafe experience. So classy.

       
                          

I got Apfel Strudel of course!

My Liebhartsgasse apartment-mates!

11) Beautiful people. Living in an expensive of course yields lots of nice looking people however, I have noticed that the true Austrians are naturally gorgeous. Lots of times blonde haired and blue eyed and are dress ever so fashionably. I have some work to do and dearly miss my sweat pants.

12) There are tons of streets/cafes/buildings/younameit named after famous composers!

13) PDA is acceptable to a disgusting degree. Dear fifteen year old couples, I don't want to see you making out anymore! Actually even older couples make out while waiting to cross the street too :p

14) There are either very tiny dogs or super super fat (I mean barely able to walk) dogs. I saw two golden retrievers the other day that probably weighed more than I do.

15) The public transportation is so efficient and so easy. I actually have confidence that I will not get lost!

16) Austrians love their shoes. Everyone has fantastic footwear and the heels well...I think these pictures speak for themselves...

 

To my high- heel wearing aunts, let's see you wear these!

Schoenbrunn, Just another palace.

Palace on Palace on Palace! Seriously, the Austrians really know how to live it up. Okay so last weekend I also went to Schoenbrunn which is the Hapsburg's (the immediate family) SUMMER home. As you can see it is massive, I can't fit it all in the picture because it also wraps around the sides. And I don't know what on earth they did with all of the rooms inside but it's AWESOME. So far, the biggest palace I've seen. It's a golden yellow color because Empress Maria Theresa (the woman on the giant statue in the museum quartier picture) really liked that color. So naturally, the rest of the city followed and began building yellow buildings/apartments. There aren't as many any more because they've been painted over obviously but it all makes sense now why there is so much of this color. 

We basically just walked around the grounds of this palace for a few hours because it is so massive, it takes an hour to get from the front of the palace to the end of the 'backyard' grounds. And as necessary, there are statues, fountains, flowers, and precisely trimmed trees that go on and on and on :)

This is a view of the 'backyard' and up on top of the hill is a random giant structure (no idea what it was used for) called the 'Gloriette'. It's now used as a cafe of course.

The Gloriette

You can't not eat at the Gloriette because after you finally make it up the hill, you're pretty tired and need to eat. I had a raspberry spritzer with sorbet. Way too expensive but worth it. 

View of the city from the Gloriette

View of Schoenbrunn from the backyard

Ello! On our way back down the hill to Schoenbrunn there was a chap and a big crowd taking pictures so I thought I should too. 

At first we thought it was a wedding but quickly realized it was just re-inactors of the Hapsburg family. This is probably the closest I'll ever get to royalty. 

And no trip to Austria is complete without a picture with a live Mozart statue. However, I don't know if it was worth it. I am laughing/creeped out because this statue man was a creep and wouldn't stop stroking my arm. PDA is much bigger here in Austria but no thank you Mozart. I probably shouldn't have said I was from America. 

Living the posh life of a true arteeest!

As they say here at IES, I've been 'squeezing the juice'. Each day I do something new and I've already seen so many incredible things.

 The first museum I went to was the Art museum in the Museum Quartier. It just so happened that one of the art history teachers from IES (my study abroad program) was giving the tour and is one of the world's biggest art historians right now. no big deal. And her father was the most renowned art historian in the world for like 200 years. So we got in for free and she was awesome. This little tiny old lady that knew everything about every painting and taught us how to really look at art. The museum was built to fill in free space that used to be open so invaders would be easily seen when coming to attack the city. Seeing real paintings from the Baroque era was just incredible. Some of them were huge and almost took up the entire wall. I only spent two hours in there and there's so much I didn't get to see! This is a view of the museum from the outside:

The statue of Empress Maria Theresea in the middle of the museum quartier, one of the grandest rulers of the Hapsburg Dynasty

Next comes the bus tour I went on this past weekend. It was about 3 hours and first we traveled outside of the city up to the top of a mountain to see an incredible view of the city. It was absolutely stunning and I definitely plan on going back because they have all sorts of hiking that goes through vineyards and of course there are plenty of cafes on top of the hill too. 

View of the city with vineyards and the Danube on the left!

Next, we went to an area in the city that is famous for its architecture. The guy who designed the buildings thought all of the buildings in the city looked too much alike and were quite boring so he decided to go with a more natural style. The ground is not paved over and straight, but brick and curvy just as the ground was in its orignial state. Even inside buildings. There is greenery inside the buildings and it's pretty neat. The first owners of the apartments he built also got to help custom design their places. Pretty sweet.

Finally, onto the upper Belvedere. This palace was built I believe for a prince related to the Hapsburgs as just a summer home. It's now a museum of paintings. 

Not too shabby eh?

View of the grounds outside the Upper Belvedere

A few days after this tour we went inside the Upper Belvedere which is as I said, an art museum. It was also incredible. Inside were some statues from the Medieval Era (they were the original works of art from the time!), Monet paintings, that painting of Napolean Bonaparte on his horse that's always in history books, and of course 'The Kiss' by Gustav Klimt. I don't know a lot about Klimt but that he's a very famous austrian artist known this painting and a few others. I had seen pictures of it before but seeing it with my own eyes was really something. I love the painting and knowing that it's world famous and that I was looking at the original was awesome. 

I could spend an entire afternoon looking at Klimt's work. 

A small picture of the grandeur inside the Upper Belvedere. Quite a fancy ceiling. In this particular room was also where leaders from Russia, France, England, the U.S. who each had occupied a section of Austria after the war, decided that Austria could be its own Republic. Pretty epic. 

Illegal Picture from inside the Museum. It was innocent however, I don't think the stern security guard thought so. Sorry Mr. Angry German Guard



A memorial to Anton Bruckner. He died in a little house right next to the Upper Belvedere.

I think the pictures say it all, Vienna truly is incredible. There is so much to see and learn and it's wonderful living in a place where the arts are so appreciated and valued! And this is only the beginning!