Living large in Vienna! (Part II)

So you are all probably saying to yourselves right now, “Long time no post! What in the world have you been up to, Jake? We’re all waiting on the edge of our seats to read the next saga in your crazy European adventures!”

I know, I know. It’s been another one of those crazy weeks here in Tübingen with a spontaneous trip to Vienna and the first week of classes! So I’ll try my best to catch you all up during the next few days!

Because we had a little bit of free time between the end of my “Deutsch-Kompakt-Kurs” and the start of the semester, Zach, Hannah, Rachel, Emily, Helena (our Canadian friend) and I decided to do something called “Blind Booking” through the German discount airline Germanwings. We paid only 60 Euros for a two-way ticket, but we could have ended up in London, Lisbon, Rome, Barcelona, Berlin, or Vienna. Because we all simply want to see as much of Europe as we can, it wasn’t important to us that we choose exactly where we ended up!

Since Zach and I both went on the trip, we decided that he would blog about the first half, and I’d write a little about the second half! Before you read the rest of this post, you might be interested in reading Zach’s latest post first!

On Saturday we packed as much into one day as humanly possible (you think I’m joking). We woke up in the morning and had our usual hostel breakfast, and then made our way to Schönbrunn, which is conveniently right on the subway line that runs between the hostel we stayed in and downtown.

We spent an hour or two wandering the never-ending gardens, but decided not to take a tour of the inside. There are many palaces in Vienna, and rather than touring all of them, we decided that later on Saturday we’d go and tour the Hofburg. (The Hofburg is in the middle of the city and was the emperor’s normal residence; Schönbrunn was mainly used as a summer home.)

After Schönbrunn, we made our way to the Naschmarkt, the largest and most famous street market in Vienna. The market seemed to stretch on forever! We’d walk for a little bit, think we’d reached the end, but it would just keep going! Because we went on Saturday, it was particularly busy; at some points I was getting a little claustrophobic because there were so many people.

The Naschmarkt had so many interesting offerings. Vendors bring fresh meats, cheeses, olives, baked goods, deserts and everything else you can think of! We ended up finding a cheap Döner stand for lunch – Döner is German gyros-type meat that’s served with veggies like a sandwich. It’s often sold in Turkish snack stands, so people assume it’s Turkish, but many Germans are quick to correct you that it the Döner Sandwich actually came from Berlin.

After lunch we headed to the Secession House, the home of the rebellious art movement “The Vienna Secession,” founded by Gustav Klimt and other artists in 1897. The artists broke off from the primary “Wien Künstlerhaus” because they found the group too conservative and thought the group tended to copy earlier styles of art instead of pioneering innovative ways to present the ideas of the time.

The architecture of the Secession House is, in and of itself, worth seeing and the building also houses Klimt’s famous Beethoven frieze. Seeing the giant frieze in person was incredible, especially after reading about its history and the meaning behind all the panels. However, the rest of the exhibits in the Secession House left much to be desired.

The House presumably wants to keep with the “mold-breaking” nature that it’s founders intended, but some of the modern art presented there has gone a little too far. For example, the exhibits were simply random words on walls, or even air conditioning. You read that right, air conditioning. One exhibit was air conditioning a room to an uncomfortable temperature. To them that is “art.” It’s a little much, in my opinion.

We then quickly made our way the United Nations building in Vienna, because someone had told us there were daily tours. But it turned out that those daily tours were only Monday-Friday. So we saw the outside! That counts for something, right?

I’ve got to finish up some homework and things before I meet up with my friends later in the Altstadt, so I’ve got to leave you all hanging! In the next post (Vienna: Part III), you can look forward to hearing about The Hofburg Palace, our last night in Vienna dinner, as well as our trip back home!

Unfortunately, I had forgot the memory card for my camera in Tuebingen, so I couldn’t take any pictures in Vienna, so I’m stealing Zach’s. You can check out his pictures from the trip on his Picasa account here: https://picasaweb.google.com/117445044945979223598