Day 9 - Schloß Schönbrunn

Tonight's blog is going to be relatively short.  I only visited one place and only attended one concert.  The place: Schloß Schönbrunn The concert: Requiem by W.A. Mozart performed at Stephansdom.  

Folgen Sie diesem Link zum Fotoalbum

I left the hotel around 8:00 am, venturing out on my own to someplace I hadn't been before.  This is a first for me in Vienna.  I've wandered around the streets near the hotel and followed the instructions to get to the classroom, but until today I hadn't looked at a map (which is in German) and said "Was zur Hölle?"  It didn't look like that bad of a trip, so I found my way to the subway. This city has an incredible mass transit system, electric trams, multiple tracks of subways, and even busses.  You do not need a car to live in this city. I entered the Friedensbrücke station and I traveled all the way around the city to the Schönbrunn station.  It may not seem like a big deal to some of you, but at home I’ve become very dependent on my Garmin!

After reaching Schönbrunn station it was a very short walk to the Schloß.  By the way, Schloß  means palace, therefore this is the Schönbrunn palace, and the letter that looks like a script B is called an esszett.  It functions like two S's.  Now why the Hapsburgs palace is called Schönbrunn they never told me. 


Walking through the front gates I felt like singing Magic Kingdom in the Sky or It's a Small World.  It was just like entering Disneyland, except that Disneyland is smaller in actual acreage and doesn’t have a zoo, a palace, multiple hedge mazes, a carriage museum, several huge greenhouses that look they might have been built by Eiffel himself.  (I don’t know for sure.), a Japanese garden, a public swimming pool, a bakery. . . . wait, Disney does have those.  The point is I stayed until 5:00 pm and still didn’t see the whole place. 

Schloß Schönbrunn

Even if you’ve never heard of the Hapsburgs, you’ve heard of the Hapsburgs.  Outside of Vienna, Maria Theresa’s daughter Marie Antoinette is probably the most famous of them.  We all remember her. . . “Let them eat cake”? . . . During the French revolution she got a lot shorter? . . She was kind of absent minded. . . . You know the type, she'd lose her head if it wasn't attached.   Well her mother was the queen of Austria and her brother Joseph was Holy Roman Emperor.  When Joseph died his brother became Holy Roman Emperor.  Actually lots of Hapsburgs were Holy Roman Emperor starting with Maximilian I, who began his rein in 1493.  (Do you think they called him Maximilian the first even before there was a second?)  He was followed by Charles V in 1519, Ferdinand I in 1556, then Maximilian II, Rudolph II, and Matthias, who died without an heir which caused the Austrian lands and imperial title to pass to a different branch of the family.  I could go further, but you might find it more interesting to research on your own.  I recommend The Hapsburg Monarchy by Charles W. Ingrao. 

Queen Maria Theresa

Schloß Schönbrunn began construction in 1693 when Leopold I commissioned plans from Fischer von Erlach.  Fischer created the designs for several buildings in Vienna.  When Maria Theresa acquired what was the Schönbrunn hunting lodge, she began the process of turning it into a Schloß and it became the center of court life.  Take a look at the photo album.  It may take a while; I exhausted the battery while snapping pictures.  Even with deleting the horrible ones there are still over a hundred.

I toured the royal apartments but wasn’t allowed to take any photographs or videos.  Partway through one of the rooms I realized that I had left the video camera app open on my phone and had “inadvertently” recorded some of the room.  The quality is horrible, but at least you get to have a look around!  I can't quite figure out how I pressed all the correct buttons in the correct order and managed to hold the camera in the correct angle so that my finger wasn't over the lens.  

This miniature is what the tiergarten
looked like in Maria Theresa's time.

Following the grand tour I strolled through the gardens until I came across the zoo.  The Hapsburgs enjoyed collecting exotic animals and kept a zoo keeper as part of their staff.  Many of the original buildings still exist at the zoo, but happily they no longer house animals.  The cage that used to hold the Lion was as small as my hotel room.  Now they’ve got a brass lion statue in it and you can go inside the cage and have your picture taken behind bars.  Something every parent wants for his/her children.  The collection of animals is quite impressive and the enclosures are so lush that I think the animals are as comfortable as they can be in captivity.


At the top portion of the zoo is a tirolergarten. It’s a working replica of a Tyrolean farm complete with handmade cheeses, meats and breads for sale.  I had a light snack of Prosciutto on whole grain bread with what tasted like an Edam cheese.  It was yummy!

Outside of the zoo I walked through the palm house, the dessert house, the Japanese gardens, the hedge mazes and some more of the regular garden.  

The Gloriette

The gardens at Schloß Schönbrunn rise up to an enormous central building called the Gloriette.  The Gloriette has a café in it now and that is where I stopped for lunch. 

Lunch was exquisite!  I dined on Herrengulasch mit Knödel, Wurst und Ei then had Schwarzwalder kirschtorte for dessert.  (For the non-German speakers, that's beef goulash with dumpling, sausage and egg and for dessert, black forest cake.)  The green bottle in the picture is a brand of bottled water.  One peculiarity here in Vienna is that they don't serve ice water.  If you ask for water you are most likely to get room temperature sparkling water.  If you want non-carbonated water you have to ask for still Wasser and even then you will not get ice.  If you want plain old tap water you have to ask for Normal Wasser.

Herrengulasch mit Knödel, Wurst und Ei

   

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte

After lunch I returned to the hotel to prepare for my concert, the Mozart requiem at St. Stephen’s Church.  My classmate Eric also attended.  I couldn’t ask for a more beautiful place to hear this music.  On the way there, Eric and I stopped for another torte.  There is a picture of them in the photo album.  When we got to the church and looked at the program we had an added bonus in the form of a Mozart clarinet concerto.  The concerto was wonderful.  I have to admit to being a little disappointed in the Requiem.  The choir did not watch the conductor and in a place with a several second decay it is extremely important to watch.  Those of you who sang at Chase Field last year know what I mean. I could see the frustration in the conductor's directing.  He baton technique was very fluid, much more like Leonard Bernstein's conducting.  Admittedly that makes it a little harder to follow him rhythmically, but his beat was pretty obvious most of the time.  Because it is a very touristy venue they did not mind people running video cameras during the performance.  I still felt a little odd but the teacher side of me couldn't resist having a record to share with all of you.  The quality is pretty bad because I just couldn't bring myself to block others views as so many of the tourons did.  (Touron is a eastern Tennessee hybrid word combining tourist and moron.)  I did not record the entire thing, but I got all of the choruses that Mozart actually composed.  I should have recorded the soloists because they were amazing!  I'll try to upload the rest of them to facebook, but this internet service is driving me crazy.  If I can find a better connection, you'll get to see the clips before I return home.

Following the concert I returned to the hotel to type the blog.  See, I told you it was gonna be a short blog . . . . .uh . . .  never mind.