MOAR!

Yesterday was pretty nice, though busy. We took some tours throughout Vienna proper, and got to run amok in the city for lunch. We got a quick peek at some of the palaces in the area (outside only). The layout, as mentioned in my previous post, is quite interesting. All the buildings are multiple stories, but keep to the original aesthetic styles. In WWII, Vienna suffered from multiple bombings and lost about 30% of their buildings. When they were rebuilt, they kept in line with the original architectures, making it still feel like a very old city. Side note, the Viennese are squeezing every possible coin out of Mozart's long decomposed corpse. EVERY BLOCK had a "Mostly Mozart" store. They were peddling all sorts of poorly fashioned crap plastered with Wolfgang's face. It was the equivalent to Classically styled 7/11's. I hadn't looked, but would not be surprised if they had Mozart Slurpees. We visited the Cathedral in town, dedicated to St. Steven. It wasn't the largest in Europe, but it was pretty huge. What was interesting was the fact that the Northern tower was never finished. The Southern tower was beautifully gilded and gloriously tall, but the north tower only made it about halfway up before they gave up and capped it with an Eastern-European styled dome. We snuck up towards the front of the church and performed a German rendition of Holy, Holy, Holy... then snuck out, given the fact that we never cleared such an impromptu performance with the clergy. After lunch, we visited Sch(umlaut-o)nnbrunn castle, the summer estate for the Hapsburg family. (Past tense, of course, they kinda stopped ruling after WWI and all....) It was impressively large with some very beautiful rooms. Among my favorites were the rooms for the Emperor Franz Joseph. They were quite simple and functional, compared to the opulence of the rest of the estate. Apparently, he did an incredible amount of work, and fancied himself a servant of the people; so he kept his personal effects to a minimum. Ack, I'm the only person left here at breakfast, and I've got to be in the bus in just a couple of minutes. I'll try to get some pictures up later, I know I promised.... sorry. I'm off to the Esterhazy to sing. More to come later.