The Cubicle is empty!!!

Where: Vienna, Austria
When: Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2005

Mozart! Mozart! Mozart! Today was Mozart.

We didn’t get going until 11am today. A little tired from last night and recuperating from the beer and wine from yesterday. Drank a whole liter of water at once to keep hydrated. Tap water here is ok. But I limit it as to not get sick. I wen’t to the store yesterday to pick up some bottled water for everyone (ohne kohlensauer, without gas) carbonation that is. The gassy water does make me blow wind often. So I avoid it as not to piss off any Austrians on the subway.

First order of business was the Tour of Hofburg Treasury. This museum, located on the city Palace, holds the Hapsburgs’ collection of jewels, crowns, capes, scepters, religious ornaments, etc. There sure was alot of Bling-Blling!!! The collection has an emerald that is decorated with gold and is the second largest in the world. The largest is in a museum in Istanbul, Turkey. The crowns were opulent as all was decorated with precious stones. Only some of the religious ornaments contained diamonds. Coranation vests and regalia adorned some of the hallways. Some of these were encrusted in gold and mostly had religious symbols on them. Remember, back then people believed that the kings and queens were as close to god as you can get in this world. The collection is nice to see if you haven’t seen anything like this, but I wouldn’ pay 8€ for the tour again. Save it and have a beir at a local joint.

We then headed for another tour of the Musikverein Wien. For those of you not familiar with this place. This is where the Vienna Philharmonic play their New Years Day concert at. But before the tour we stopped at a cafe to have a …….. coca-cola. Too early for beir. Yeah I know I’m a wuss. Anyway. The thing I got out of the 1 hr tour is that the golden hall is all made out of wood for acoustical reasons. The cieling is not attached to the roof for acoustical purposes. If you had marble in there, there would be the echo effect and that would not be good for music (as far as I know) but in modern music that would be ok and considered another form of something. But in the days of Mozart that is not good. Anyway, The gold all around the hall is real gold (albeit gold leafed, I think that’s the term) but the marble looking wall is not marble at all. It is wood paneling painted to look like marble. The hall does have great acoustics as I’ll note a bit later. There are 2000 seats in the hall. Anyone can become a member. To get tickets for the New Years concert, I believe goes this way. It is by lottery. Members do not get special treatment. You have to register by phone or by internet for the tickets between Jan 3 and Jan 31 of each yr. for the following NYrs. concert. So go ahead and sign up and you may get to go to a concert in Vienna in New Years day! Hundreds of thousands apply from all over the world.

In the evening we attended a Mozart concert at the Musikverein Building and it was the best ever. If you had your eyes closed and just listened to the music, you could not tell whether it is live or if it’s memorex (hope you’Re old enough to remember the commercial). You can here avery not played by each instrument. No echoing effect whatsoever as far as this bad hearing can tell. The performance was great with Mozarts the Marriage of Figaro (which you may rmember from the movie Amadeus). I remembered a few others from commercials, but the names escapes me at this moment.

But this was Don’S and Mary’s night. They were all dressed up and were eager to go to the concert that they left earlier than the rest of us. We met them at the last subway stop ’cause they took a wrong turn and had to get off the train and get on the right one. They were so anxious that they missed the right connection. They had a wonderfull time and I don’t thing nothing can top this, unless they win the lottery of lotteries and get 4 tickets to a New Years Day concert with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein Building.

Tomorrow we leave for Salzburg.

Vienna has been great! The people here are very friendly and fun. They don’t play this game of we’re holier than art thou like the French. Sorry, If you have French ancestry. But that is my honest opinion. Although Vienna is smaller than Paris, I think that it is just as hip and cultural as Paris. I don’t mean Paris Hilton either. Also, Vienna doesn’t stink like Paris and that’s because the Viennese aren’t enamored with dogs as Parisians are. Overall, I would visit this city again.

Tony, I’ve never seen so many 23-yr old blond, blue-eyed and curvy like I’ve seen them in Vienna. You may only last a day or two before you snap your neck. j-k!

I’ve been lucky with internet connections. Here at K&T Boardinghouse, it’s free! Hope my luck stays true at our next stop.

Auf Weidersehen!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 14th, 2005 at 7:44 pm and is filed under A Bio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.