post 4

First things first: my wise and kind father (a Vienna expert) informed me that I had some incorrect info in my last post. Here's his correction:

"Belvedere was the summer palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy. Not the Habsburgs (I think that is what you meant). This German is hard. But Eugene came to Vienna from Paris in the late 1600's and was a successful military commander against the Turks and was richly rewarded by the Habsburg monarchs. Belvedere is probably my favorite Vienna palace."

My dad is a good man. Thank you, Vater.

Now moving onto today. Today was Motzart's birthday and we celebrated him all day. (Side note: Austrians do not get this day off from work, and there are no festivals going on around town. Also, most Viennese people we talked to were not aware that it was Motzart's geburtstag. That would have been nice for me to know awhile ago.)

This has nothing to do with Mozart, but it's an old tree in the center of town that all the blacksmiths would hammer a nail into when they had finished their apprenticeship.

We started out on a walking tour of all the Mozart-adjacent places in the city. We visited a little theater where he performed, the home he lived in when he wrote The Marriage of Figaro (now a museum), the home he lived in before he died (now a department store), the last place he ever performed, and the church where they played his final requiem two days after his death.

A view of Stephansdom from the theater where Mozart gave concerts.

The church where they played his requiem.

We also made the trek out to the cemetary where they've placed a grave marker for him (no one knows where he was actually buried because he died in debt).

The St. Marxer Friedhof is the most amazing old cemetary. I know it sounds creepy, but I could have spent hours there. It was so beautiful and old and we were there right at dusk and I loved it. I took one million photos.

After the cemetary, we had to cruise home because Becca and I had tickets to see The Magic Flute (today was ALL about Mozart). We went home to grab our tickets, and we left with just enough time to make it to the theater. We are getting pretty good at the public transportation here. So we emerged from the U-Bahn station, go into the theater, and ask the usher how to find the standing room area. We figured he must be new, because he took our ticket to show to another usher. When he came back to tell us where our seats were, these were his exact words, "Go outside, go down the stairs, get on the U3. Take that to the U6, and take the U6 to the Volksoper stop. That's where you go." We were super confused until he said, "Your show is not here." We had gone to the Volkstheater instead of the Volksoper. Don't even say what you are thinking. We were so embarrassed. So we follow the man's instructions, except that there was a big demonstration going on downtown, so the U-Bahn wasn't running super well. A very nice lady told us it would be better to take a taxi since we had like, seven minutes to get across town. So we went up to get a taxi, only we realized we didn't know how to hail a cab, so we asked a police officer, and he laughed at us and told us how to take a streetcar where we needed to go instead. Loooong story short, we made it (only 20 minutes late...luckily the tickets were only a couple Euro). And it was lovely. When we got home and told Norbert the story, he said, "You do things that make me laugh."

Also, if you want to see pictures with people in them, head on over to Becca's blog. I've been using my iPhone to snap photos so that's why I'm not in any.