Lange Nacht

So next on the great 5 day tour was Vienna. Shortly after crossing the Austrian border Chesky and I listened to the Sound of Music soundtrack. It's almost impossible not to right, especially me being my mothers daughter. It was great fun. Then we went through our extensive musical libraries and played all the songs we had that made any reference to Vienna. Before actually entering the city part of Vienna we went to the largest hill that lends a stunning view of the entire city. The name is eluding me a the moment but it was fantastic. The only bummer was that it wasn't as clear as it could have been, but impressive nonetheless. We then proceeded to walk down the hill into Vienna. It was a really nice walk through a lot of vineyards. Naturally we picked grapes and then had seed spitting competitions, which I won of course. All my years of softball and sunflower seeds really paid off. Haha. The bus met us down at the bottom.
Next we all piled off the bus for a lunch of Schnitzel. Boy, do I love my German food. I also introduced the entire table to Radler, a type of beer that is mixed with a lemon drink. It's fantastic. After lunch we checked into the hostel which was really great. This time I shared a room with Chesky, Erinn, Beeler, Heather and Kaite. It was really fun. Shortly after checking in there was an optional city walk that was offered. "Why not?" was our approach, so we joined and it ended up being the best thing we could have done. We walked to the Museumquartier which houses many of the museums in Vienna. We saw the Maria Teresea statue [for those of you who don't know because I didn't, she is the only woman ruler from the Hapsburg dynasty] and we went to a really cool church that I can't remember the name of. It was really cool though because they were having mass. It was interesting to see. And now the reason it was great to go on the walk was because of this activity in the city called Lange Nacht. What it was is all the museums of Vienna are open for the night, until 2 am. You pay one fee of about 15 dollars and then you get free entry to any museum you want to go to. It was amazing! And because we went on the walk they bought it for us. AWESOME. So we went back to our hostel for dinner, there was a doner place right next to it, great location! Then Cheksy and I went to the Lange Nacht. She is a great museum partner, let me just say that. Our first stop was a really freaky modern art museum that used clothes to[Chesky and me in front of the Albertina] create things like trees and flowers. It was really cool. They also had a cool slide show of people holding up magazines that had prints of torsos on them so it looked like the paper was their torso [hope that makes sense]. Then we went to the Leopold which houses many of the German impressionists like Schiele and Klimt. It was really interesting because I really didn't know anything about them. There were also some cool art nouveau exhibits. After the Leopold we went to Albertina. This was my choice because I wanted to see the VanGogh exhibition. On the way in we saw some other students on the way out and they warned us that it was a zoo. Once we got inside we realized they were underestimating the craziness in the rooms. It was insane, I have never seen so many people in one exhibit. Out of control. It was really awesome though to see the self portrait and also to see some of his sketches and drawings. I had never seen any of them before. But we got out of there because it was so crazy. On the way out we saw a sign for an exhibit called Monet bis Picasso. We were intrigued so we descended the escalator, by far the best choice we could ever have made. Downstairs was a private collection of the greatest magnitude I could imagine. It was insane. Each room you walked in there was a painting you had seen in a picture or a name you heard. I saw Monet, Picasso, Chagall, Degas, Matisse, Klee, and many others. It was amazing, and I know I am not doing it justice in this blog. Bottom line: if you go to Vienna, go to the exhibit. As we were walking out we ran into the Ungers, Coozy and Nick. They only had three tickets and we were ready for a coffee break so I lent Coozy my ticket and then Chesky and I went to a cafe to wait and eat. We got some Viennese coffee and Kaiserschmarrn. Sooo good. It felt really good to sit down too. We were exhausted but like we originally thought, when would we ever get the chance to do something like this again, for free. So we met back up with them and then ran into Cody, Heather and Erinn too. Our next stop was the butterfly house. It wasn't nearly was cool as it seemed. There were cool butterflies but not as many as I had imagined and there were lots of roaches because it was so warm and tropical in there. But it was cool. After that we stumbled home, all of us sleep deprived beyond belief. We were probably delirious but it was a great walk home. In the morning we had to check out of the hostel at 10 but we then had some free time. Andy, Chesky, Beeler, Adnan, Pat, Nathan and I went to the Freud museum, which was really interesting. None of us realized that it was going to be all his old stuff, so that was really neat. We then wandered down to the river and stumbled upon the "fairness zone". It is an area down by the river where people can graffiti and write anything and everything. It was really neat so we spent some time there. After that we slowly made our way back to the meeting point and stopped for a doner on the way. On the way out of Vienna, we stopped for a while at the Hundertwasser village. It was pretty freaky but really cool. The architecture was really weird and modern. A great way to end a great stay in Vienna.