Cruising Central Europe: Austria
After leaving Passau, we crossed the border into Austria and had our first afternoon of great weather. It was sunny and warm enough to be out on the top deck for more than ten minutes. This stretch of the Danube was beatiful, with hills, forests, and little towns around on all sides. People biked down the path alongside the river; apparently this path goes pretty much clear across the country. My brother Nathan and my uncle Chip decided to join the newlywed couple onboard in using the ship's bikes to make the 20km trip the rest of the way to Linz, our stop for the night. I stayed on the top deck to sit and enjoy the scenery, as did most of the rest of the family.
[1,2,&3 - Cruising down the Danube in Austria. 4 - My grandmother helping Sally (my brother's girlfriend) with some knitting]
We arrived late that afternoon in Linz, and we only had the night there before we would set sail again. The bikers had beat us there and were sitting and having a beer waiting for us. We went on a quick walking tour just to get the feel of the town before dinner. With dinner being the usual two-and-a-half hour affair, things were pretty much shut down by the time it was over. Some of my cousins and I enjoyed the view of the city lights across the river, as well as of the illuminated Kunstmuseum, which we were docked alongside.
[Linz: 1 - The city at night, 2 - The Kunstmuseum]
The next day we made our way to Vienna, stopping at Melk along the way. Melk's big draw was Melk Abbey, home to a community of Benedictine monks for over 900 years (although the current building is more recent, having burned down and been rebuilt multiple times). We were led around by a very emphatic guide with a very guttural German accent. It sounded at times a bit like she was getting punched in the stomach with the beginning of each new word. The museum that they had set up in a wing of the abbey was actually pretty interesting, as they constructed each room to create a feeling in visitors for how the abbey was doing at that time. So, for example, during the Protestant Reformation when the Catholic Church wasn't doing so well, the rooms detailing this time in the Church's history were dimly lit and kind of gloomy. On the other hand, for the rooms of the Counter-Reformation when the Church got back some of its power, the rooms are bright and practically glistening. One room was dedicated to a time when the church was on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs; in this room the floor had been slanted up and down to give you a sense of the highs and lows of the church's fate. It was actually a pretty effective way to get people to remember what they had seen, by incorporating physical atmospheric cues along with all of the display cases of historical objects and descriptive text on the walls. I was also a big fan of the library, which had books stacked to the ceilings and was very musty and old-feeling. Over the course of the trip, every one of us had a day that we got to be travelling buddies with my grandmother, and this was my day. She had seen the abbey already (she's seen pretty much everything already), so could tell me about the differences since she was here last.
[Melk Abbey: 1 - The front courtyard, 2 - A gilded statue (not entirely out of gold to save money and their conscience), 3&4 - Fancy staircases]
[Melk Abbey: 1 - The library, 2 - View of Melk from the balcony]
After our stop in Melk, we all got back onboard - well, except for three people who thought we were leaving an hour later and had to take a taxi to the next dock to catch up with us (and then wouldn't shut up about it for the rest of the trip). We got into Vienna that night, got dressed up, and bussed ourselves off to a concert in the Hofburg, the Hapbsburgs' palace in Vienna. It was all quite touristy, but still enjoyable as far as I was concerned. It showcased the music of Mozart and Strauss, two of Vienna's most famous former citizens, including several operettas with a few extremely hammy singers.
[Vienna: At the concert in the Hofburg]
The next day we had until late afternoon to explore Vienna. It was the most consecutive time we'd had anywhere since Prague, but I still thought it wasn't enough. I really liked Vienna and there were multiple sights and areas that I wanted to explore a bit more. It's definitely on my list of places to come back to. The ship was docked a bit far out from town, so I took the bus in for the morning tour, but then peeled off with my cousin Julie and my brother Josh. We wandered over to an 100-year-old coffee shop that was still decorated more or less like the 1950's and hung out there for a bit, kicking the day off with some caffeine. Then we made our way over to the Museumsquartier, a huge museum complex along the museum plaza near the Hofburg, where we had been the night before. We meandered through the touristy shopping district and stumbled upon the Hofburg gardens at the back of the palace complex on the way there.
[Food and drink in Vienna]
[A greenhouse and the park in the Hofburg Gardens in Vienna]
Once at the Museumsquartier, we first went to the Museum Moderner Kunst (called the MOMAK), which housed an impressive range of modern art. They were having an exhibit on Sigmar ole, a Polish pop artist who liked to use huge translucent synthetic canvases. The overall effect was that you can kind of make out the wooden beams that are bracing the frame, and these become a part of the overall composition of the paintings. Not bad. There was some funny stuff up on the higher levels, including a series of kind of dada-ist records that you could listen one, one being "A Lecture on Nothing" by John Cage, that goes on and on about how he's in the second part of the third chapter of the fifth section and he's still saying nothing and how it's a little bit like passing through Kansas. In the basement was a exhibition on the Vienna Actionists, who liked to do perforamcne art and weird things with human and animal bodies that I don't really want to talk about. I thought I was pretty open-minded but I guess at some point I'm still a bit prudish. It still makes me shudder a little bit to think of it (if you think you are less of a prude then me, then go to this link.)
[Elevators at the MOMAK in Vienna]
The other museum in the complex that we had time to visit was the Leopold Museum, which is famous for its collection of Egon Schiele paintings, who I'd never heard of but who turned out to be quite good. His paintings are really powerful in a twisted, painful kind of way. I thought it was pretty amazing that he is now considered such a major figure and he died before he was 30, even having spent a lot of that time in the army. And on top of that, he produced so few paintings that the largest collection of them amounted to maybe six, maybe seven tops. You can find out a little more about him here on Wikipedia.
After that museum I made a stop at the English Bookstore along the way to stock up on some reading material (as I'd discovered that travel guides don't really always make excellent leisure reading material...), and pretty soon we were all back on the boat again and on our way. Up to top
[1,2,&3 - Cruising down the Danube in Austria. 4 - My grandmother helping Sally (my brother's girlfriend) with some knitting]
We arrived late that afternoon in Linz, and we only had the night there before we would set sail again. The bikers had beat us there and were sitting and having a beer waiting for us. We went on a quick walking tour just to get the feel of the town before dinner. With dinner being the usual two-and-a-half hour affair, things were pretty much shut down by the time it was over. Some of my cousins and I enjoyed the view of the city lights across the river, as well as of the illuminated Kunstmuseum, which we were docked alongside.
[Linz: 1 - The city at night, 2 - The Kunstmuseum]
The next day we made our way to Vienna, stopping at Melk along the way. Melk's big draw was Melk Abbey, home to a community of Benedictine monks for over 900 years (although the current building is more recent, having burned down and been rebuilt multiple times). We were led around by a very emphatic guide with a very guttural German accent. It sounded at times a bit like she was getting punched in the stomach with the beginning of each new word. The museum that they had set up in a wing of the abbey was actually pretty interesting, as they constructed each room to create a feeling in visitors for how the abbey was doing at that time. So, for example, during the Protestant Reformation when the Catholic Church wasn't doing so well, the rooms detailing this time in the Church's history were dimly lit and kind of gloomy. On the other hand, for the rooms of the Counter-Reformation when the Church got back some of its power, the rooms are bright and practically glistening. One room was dedicated to a time when the church was on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs; in this room the floor had been slanted up and down to give you a sense of the highs and lows of the church's fate. It was actually a pretty effective way to get people to remember what they had seen, by incorporating physical atmospheric cues along with all of the display cases of historical objects and descriptive text on the walls. I was also a big fan of the library, which had books stacked to the ceilings and was very musty and old-feeling. Over the course of the trip, every one of us had a day that we got to be travelling buddies with my grandmother, and this was my day. She had seen the abbey already (she's seen pretty much everything already), so could tell me about the differences since she was here last.
[Melk Abbey: 1 - The front courtyard, 2 - A gilded statue (not entirely out of gold to save money and their conscience), 3&4 - Fancy staircases]
[Melk Abbey: 1 - The library, 2 - View of Melk from the balcony]
After our stop in Melk, we all got back onboard - well, except for three people who thought we were leaving an hour later and had to take a taxi to the next dock to catch up with us (and then wouldn't shut up about it for the rest of the trip). We got into Vienna that night, got dressed up, and bussed ourselves off to a concert in the Hofburg, the Hapbsburgs' palace in Vienna. It was all quite touristy, but still enjoyable as far as I was concerned. It showcased the music of Mozart and Strauss, two of Vienna's most famous former citizens, including several operettas with a few extremely hammy singers.
[Vienna: At the concert in the Hofburg]
The next day we had until late afternoon to explore Vienna. It was the most consecutive time we'd had anywhere since Prague, but I still thought it wasn't enough. I really liked Vienna and there were multiple sights and areas that I wanted to explore a bit more. It's definitely on my list of places to come back to. The ship was docked a bit far out from town, so I took the bus in for the morning tour, but then peeled off with my cousin Julie and my brother Josh. We wandered over to an 100-year-old coffee shop that was still decorated more or less like the 1950's and hung out there for a bit, kicking the day off with some caffeine. Then we made our way over to the Museumsquartier, a huge museum complex along the museum plaza near the Hofburg, where we had been the night before. We meandered through the touristy shopping district and stumbled upon the Hofburg gardens at the back of the palace complex on the way there.
[Food and drink in Vienna]
[A greenhouse and the park in the Hofburg Gardens in Vienna]
Once at the Museumsquartier, we first went to the Museum Moderner Kunst (called the MOMAK), which housed an impressive range of modern art. They were having an exhibit on Sigmar ole, a Polish pop artist who liked to use huge translucent synthetic canvases. The overall effect was that you can kind of make out the wooden beams that are bracing the frame, and these become a part of the overall composition of the paintings. Not bad. There was some funny stuff up on the higher levels, including a series of kind of dada-ist records that you could listen one, one being "A Lecture on Nothing" by John Cage, that goes on and on about how he's in the second part of the third chapter of the fifth section and he's still saying nothing and how it's a little bit like passing through Kansas. In the basement was a exhibition on the Vienna Actionists, who liked to do perforamcne art and weird things with human and animal bodies that I don't really want to talk about. I thought I was pretty open-minded but I guess at some point I'm still a bit prudish. It still makes me shudder a little bit to think of it (if you think you are less of a prude then me, then go to this link.)
[Elevators at the MOMAK in Vienna]
The other museum in the complex that we had time to visit was the Leopold Museum, which is famous for its collection of Egon Schiele paintings, who I'd never heard of but who turned out to be quite good. His paintings are really powerful in a twisted, painful kind of way. I thought it was pretty amazing that he is now considered such a major figure and he died before he was 30, even having spent a lot of that time in the army. And on top of that, he produced so few paintings that the largest collection of them amounted to maybe six, maybe seven tops. You can find out a little more about him here on Wikipedia.
After that museum I made a stop at the English Bookstore along the way to stock up on some reading material (as I'd discovered that travel guides don't really always make excellent leisure reading material...), and pretty soon we were all back on the boat again and on our way. Up to top
posted by Nora @ 10:04 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home