We took our time because there were so many trains going from Salzburg to Vienna. Finally, a train with a first class car! We were pretty happy until the attendant told us that this was a privately owned trained so first class was another 15 euros. It would have been nice if our travel agent had mentioned this.... So we paid up because we were not going to second class at that point. It was a double decker train, so we thought it would be nice to enjoy the view from the top, which lasted for all of 5 minutes before we moved down because there was too much rocking motion for our liking. It was a quiet 2 and a half hour ride, they go by very quickly.
When we arrived in Vienna, we figured out that we could catch a "tram" to our hotel, which is a cable car but it sometimes goes underground like a subway. The tram we got on was so old, everything was wooden, including the seats and the floor. Then it was just a few minute walk to our hotel. The Rainers Hotel is very modern, functional not ornate. Bigger than the last room we had, that's for sure! All the hotels have big duvets on the beds stuffed into a clean sheet. This is the first hotel where we have not had to take the duvet out and just use the sheet, because this is the first hotel with air conditioning. The others have been "climate-controlled", which means you could open the windows. So it's a nice hotel, but internet is not free, which is why we are late on the blog.
We had a tour booked at Schonbrunn Palace, so we hopped onto tram #1 to downtown Vienna (10 minutes), then we had to transfer to the subway line to go west to the palace. We picked up our ticket package at the Orangerie, it started with an audio tour of the palace itself. Schonnbrunn Palace was commissioned by Leopold I at the end of the 17th century as a palatial hunting lodge. The palace has 1440 rooms, 40 of which are open to the public. They made us check our backpacks before we entered, so we didn't know that it would be so warm inside, and we had to carry our coats around for the whole tour. The tour was generally well laid out, although we had to work around many large tour groups not using the audio guides. The rooms are large but they have only a small aisle roped off for you to walk through. The tour took an hour, no pictures allowed of course. This way you want to buy the tour book in the gift shop that you are forced to exit through. We usually just buy one or two postcards, then take pictures of them and that is what you see in the blog.
Our package included dinner and a concert, but we still had a few hours, so we walked the extensive grounds for almost 3 hours. There had been a light rain earlier, but we were lucky that it stopped. We saw about half of the grounds in that time. And this was only the "summer" residence! We can't figure out why the royals had to have a summer and a winter residence in the same city. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the Austrians have done away with their monarchy?
Short history of the Habsburgs: They ruled for over 6 centuries, over parts of Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, Portugal, and the Czech Republic. The most famous monarchs include Maria Theresa who ruled for 40 years from her bedroom because she was always pregnant or nursing (she had 16 children). She believed in peace above war, and accomplished this by marrying off her daughters to neighbouring countries. One of her daughters was Marie Antoinette. The other famous monarchs are Franz Josef and his wife Elizabeth who they called Sissi. She was an enigma to the Austrian people until she was assassinated in Switzerland by an Italian anarchist, and then she became an icon. In 1918 the people were finished with the monarchy because it was so expensive. The last king refused to abdicate his throne, so he was forced to flee the country and died young. There are over 500 Habsburg descendants still alive, 50 of them in Vienna.
Even now we felt annoyed because they charged admission to every single thing on the palace grounds, including the labyrinth and the Gloriette (which is just a large column), and the WCs (toilets). Actually, almost anywhere you go in Vienna or Austria for that matter, you have to pay to use the WC.
There was one moment which brought sweet happiness to our hearts. A nun dressed in full habit stopped and whistled to the birds, and held out her hands with food for them. We watched her for quite awhile doing this, and she had so many birds flying to her hands and eating. She had no idea we were watching her.
Dinner "at the palace" was included in our package, and this of course means not the actual palace but a wing of it that was the servants' quarters. Still nicer than any of our homes! We were quite excited that the tea came with little chocolates, until we unwrapped one and discovered that it was a square of sugar. They also had sugar crystals on a stick that looked like a lollipop.
After dinner was the concert, in the Orangerie. Outside the door we were greeted by Emporer Franz Josef and his wife Elizabeth (Sissi) themselves (even though they lived in the 1800's).
When you entered, they asked you to check your backback, and then charged you a euro for the privilege. The concert room was very large and we chose to sit at the back. We found the acoustics were not as good as the Marble Room in the Mirabell Palace in Salzburg. It was a much larger orchestra, playing mainly Mozart and Strauss. This concert included several opera pieces and some dance demonstrations, all very regal and classy. Except for one opera duet where the man sang in Italian and all the woman kept singing was "meow". Very strange.
The Orangerie is the only known place where Mozart and and the Italian composer Salieri faced off against each other musically (The movie "Amadeus" was from Salieri's perspective). Salieri won. But Mozart went on to greater acclaim. It is interesting how both Salzburg and Vienna claim Mozart. He was born in Salzburg but lived in Vienna (briefly) as an adult, and wrote many of his works here. We have learned that Mozart was very brilliant but very reckless. He was hugely rich but he had a bad gambling problem and couldn't keep any of the money. He had to change apartments 14 times for not paying the rent. He died at the age of 35 from a lung infection.
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