Vienna, cultural heart of Austria

We had planned to go Vienna a few years ago, we had bought the flight tickets and chosen our hotel, only Covid stopped it from happening. So here we are trying again and to make sure we see everything we’re stopping for 5 days.

We’re stopping at Reisemobil Vienna. Basically a huge carpark with gravel roads and grass pitches just wide enough for you to get your table and chairs outside by your moho. It’s very tight but the shower block is big and there’s plenty of hot water.

It’s very closed to amenities, a Spar supermarket and a couple of restaurants, and more importantly, is only 50m from the train station. I manged to download the Wien App so was able to buy all out tickets online very quickly and cheaply. Only €1.30 for a single OAP ticket for one journey (irrespective of changes) for less than 80 mins. Which could basically take you anywhere you wanted to go in Vienna.

On our first day we went straight into the city centre and arrived at the heart of Stephansplatz and went straight to see the Cathedral.

Second place to visit was the Hofburg Palace and find out all about Sissi. TBH I’d never heard of her before we arrived in Vienna but they seem to be obsessed with her. Every souvenir stall has her face plastered on everything, with Klimt’s The Kiss coming in a close second!

Impressive architecture and as we walked around the corner there was every impressive, expensive stores you could think of.

We weren’t allowed to take any photos of the exhibition but here is a shortened version of her story.

Sissi, Empress Elizabeth of Austria and Queen of Hungary. She was married at aged just 16 to Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1854. She had been visiting the court with her mother (who was Franz’s aunt) with a view to her being married off to a lesser noble, when Franz saw her and fell in love. They were married 10 months later.

During the audio guide she was quoted in having said that as a 15 year old child she had been persuaded into signing an agreement which she had then regretted for the rest of her life. Doesn’t sound like she was very happy. Although she and Franz did have 4 children together.

She was considered to be very beautiful and became obsessed with keeping her petite figure (despite being 5′ 8″) and tiny 16 inch waist, so had a small gym built in her apartment so she could exercise regularly, she ate a very restrictive diet and her beauty regime and dressing of her gorgeous almost floor length hair took 3 hours per day.

When their eldest son committed suicide she bacame a recluse and spent most of her time in Hungary or travelling.

Whilst she was travelling in Geneva in 1898 she was fatally stabbed by an Italian anarchist named Luigi Lucheni. She had been empress for 44 years. It’s said that Franz was heartbroken upon hearing of her death.

These are the only photos we took od Sissi and Franz and they were on the shower block doors on our campsite 😂🤣 (I told you her photo is on everything!!!)

We walked around the outside of the palace and the gardens then later we went to the Friday afternoon (6pm??) performance of the Vienna Boys Choir which was excellent and very enjoyable.

Just for the last 2 songs they were joined by another choir who are on tour in Europe but we didn’t catch their name, guessing from their costumes they’re from central or southern America??

The following day we decided to have a rest day which was good as it did nothing but rain all day, thankfully it cleared up by the afternoon as we had booked tickets to the opera.

It was a modern adaptation of The Marriage of Figaro at the Volksoper Theatre.

Of course because it’s all about love, lust and fidelity at the end of Act I it was frenetic and involved an actor dressed in a penis suit running around the set before falling over with exhaustion (or something) !!! Which made us laugh, good job as hanging above the stage we’re two huge neon signs saying Laugh and Applaud which lit up to give us a cue when needed.

These photos are from the programme as again, photography wasn’t allow.

If we thought the end of Act I was wierd the finale was unbelievable, the penis was back, but this time he had a friend, an actor wearing ballons and a huge vulva which various actors would rub themselves against as the singing crescendoed, it was when one guy almost lost his head in it that made me wince. Anyway, it was very well received with numerous curtain calls. We found ourselves lost in silence as we walked up the road to the train station.

The following day we took a train (well 2 trains) to see Schönbrunn Palace. It’s been the main summer residence of the Hapsburg rulers for over 300 years. Of course it’s been changed and updated by various rulers over the years and became the property of the Austrian Republic in 1918 and has been in the Unesco World Heritage List since 1996.

Silly us, we visited at the weekend so the crowds streamed off the train like a plague of locusts, thankfully I’d pre-booked our tickets online. But we still had to queue to see the palace tour.

Here are some photos, be prepared for some bling

We decided to stop for lunch and as we were sat there eating the waiters came round and put all the sun umbrellas down, saying there was a storm in the way. We decided to catch the Noddy train down through the gardens to miss the rain. We just made it back to the station before it absolutely hammered down. I think we’d seen enough to get the idea about how vast the gardens are but it would have been nice to see more detail.

Our next visit was to Belvedere Palace, another beautiful Baroque palace built on gently sloping landscape by Prince Eugène in 1697 with the lower Belvedere started in 1712 with extensive gardens joining the two structures

Upper Belvedere has an enormous pond in front surrounded by symmetrical flower beds.

Behind it, flowing down to the lower Belvedere is a garden designed in the style of Versailles with close clipped hedges, fountains and cascades.

One of the things we went to the Belvedere to see was the Klimt exhibition. Although it was lovely to see some Monets there as well.

Some of Klimt’s earlier work which I hadn’t seen before

So what is everyone interested in……

Yes of course, The Kiss

Of course we couldn’t leave Vienna without a boat trip on the Danube, although it was on the canal rather than the river, but beggars and all that.

It wasn’t that interesting either.

There are so many other places we could have visited but we didn’t have enough time. I think we may have to go back one day but for now we’re off to Graz.