Naschmarkt in Vienna

Just outside of Vienna's zone 1, there is one of the most popular markets in Vienna. The market has been there since the 16th century! 

There are all kinds of shops selling fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, flowers, cheese, and so forth.  There are also a lot of small restaurants and bars which have outside seatings.  People were just sitting outside, sipping a cup of coffee or beer or wine, and enjoying the sun.

I have to say I need to learn how to relax like European.  People seemed to be able to just sit there forever enjoying the drinks, cigarette, sun, and lots of talking.   I think my tolerence level is up to an hour. I know that I adopted much slower life after I left Yahoo and have used to an even more slower life in Czech Republic, but I am not sure if I could ever become like European.

We had a glass of beer. We thought we ordered a plate of sausages, but what was served was completely different. It was a dumpling with meat inside.  Enjoyed everything, but we left in less than an hour :)

Hundertwasser's Kunst Haus in Vienna

I have to say that this was one of my favorites in Vienna.  Hundertwasser was rather a controversial contemporary artist born in Vienna. Kunst House which was designed by the artist is so artistic, organic, and just so adorable.  The house contains 50 or so apartments, and the second floor has been opened to a public as a museum of Hundertwasser.  It said that Hundertwasser had a clear philosophy about the house he wanted to build.  The floor is not flat, as the flat floor is for machines.  He made the garden on top of the building, as the building covers the earth. The walls are made of plaster, so that the kids can draw on the wall and still can be repainted.  He wanted to make a house which grows with people who lives there.

The museum is filled with his paintings. What's noticeable about Hundertwasser's paintings are the colors (lots of very bright colors) and organic lines.  They sort of reminded me of Watt's Tower made by Simon Rodia, which I wrote in my LA blog. Interesting thing is that Hundertwasser's style of painting changed significantly when he was around 20 years old.  Till then, his paintings were just so beautiful and very true to life, which reminded me of Picasso's earlier paintings.  And all of a sudden it changed, as if something inside of him burst out onto his canvas.

It seems like he spent most of his time travelling.  He also spent quite a lot of time in Japan and was once married to a Japanese lady.  Although he has been deceased 10 years ago, his arts still exist all over the world including in Japan nad are being appreciated by local people.

Vienna Boys' Choir / ウィーン少年合唱団 / Wiener Sängerknaben

Vienna Boys' Choir is the most famous boy's choir in the world, and it is almost like an icon of Vienna.  The choir was established by Maximilian I of Habsburg in 1498.  Although it was dismissed in 1918 when Habsburg was destroyed, it was reformed again in 1924. 

The role of the choir was to provide musical accompaniment to the church mass. The boys received the top musical education, and many went on to become professional musicians. Franz Schubert or Clemens Krauss were one of them. Nowadays there ae about 100 boys aged between seven and fifteen who were strictly chosen, and they have been going around the world for the concerts.

Their concerts are being held every Sunday at the Burgkapelle inside Hofburg Imperial Palace. You can buy tickets in advance, or you can line up in front of the Burgkapelle on Sunday morning to get the extra tickets they may have.  The chapel itself is not big, but thy prepared chairs on the 2nd and 3rd floor for people like us to come and listen to the boys (and they have a huge projector showing the boys, too).  Boys will be located at the rear end of the 3rd floor, so if you get a seat facing the alter, you would not be able to see them.  Well... it would be difficult to see them from almost anywhere in the chapel to be honest.  But, at the very end, they would come downstairs and sing at the alter, so you can wait till then to take a picture - like I did :)  Not sure why we want to see them instead of just being satisfied with their singing, but anyway....

Unfortunately the alleged abuses from the past members of Vienna Boys' Choir were reported recently.

Freud Museum in Vienna

There is a house Sigmund Freud lived from 1891 till 1938 just outside the ring in Vienna. Sturdy but elegant building had total of five stories. The second story was used for his office. Now the second floor has been turned into his museum. You can learn a lot about Freud there. Somehow... I have been interested in Freud ever since I learned about him. Unfortunately I couldn't spend too much time there, but I was thrilled to step into his apartment and office that he actually lived his life. Btw, the middle aged Freud was quite a good looking guy, which I never knew :)

There were a couple of things that I learned about Freud. He was born in Moravi (!!), a little town called Příbor; then an Austrian town but now a Czech town. His parents had a 20 year of age difference. I understand that he found that he had a strong affection to his mother and also came up with the theory named "Oedipus complex," and I wonder if his parents' age difference had anything to do with it. He was also born with a caul, which was considered to be a sign of good luck back then.

I wanted to re-read his book "The Interpretation of Dreams," but it is packed in one of the boxes which were sent to the storage house in LA... :(

Cafes in Vienna

If you are Japanese, I am sure you've heard of a coffee called "ウィンナーコーヒー (wiener coffee = viennese style coffee)."  I remember I was around 10 years old when I first heard the name of this coffee.  My father took me and my sister to a cafe near our house, and asked us if we want to try the coffee.  I asked if a sausage is in the coffee :-)  As the word "ウィンナー (wiener)" also meant "sausage" in Japanese.  I suppose the original naming of the sausage was "ウィンナーソーセージ (wiener sausage = viennese style sausage)" and we started to omit the most important part of "sausage" and started to call the sausage "wiener."  
Anyway, whenever I hear about vienneese style coffee, I remember this story.

Cafes seem to be deeply integrated into Viennese life.  There are hundreds of cafes even just inside the ring, and they are full of people throughout the day. It is not only a place to drink coffee or eat breakfast, it is a place to read newspaper, relax, meet with friends and talk. 

I would say the most famous drink is "Melange."  It is topped with thick foam, which resembles Cappuccino.  The wiener coffee that I mentioned above seems to be called Einspanner.  Coffees are served with a small glass of water and a small chocolate.  After taking a long walk around the ring, coffee definitely helped us relaxed.

gG and Stadtpark in Vienna

Since we felt guilty leaving gG alone in a strange hotel room, we decided to take him to a city park across the street from our hotel. The park was huge (according to the wiki, it seems to have an area of 65,000 square meters) filled with lots of beautiful trees and flowers.  Viennese folks were enjoying the sunny weekend afternoon in the park. 

Surprisingly the dogs were banned from the park. We saw this sign and wondered if cats were allowed... (I guess not too many people take cats to the park :) 

Anyway, we let ourselves in the park. gG is typically very adventurous, but he was uneasy with the huge open air.  But, after all, he enjoyed the grass he hasn't seen since we left our home in Los Angeles.

One of the most famous monuments in the park is the gilded statue of Johann Strauß II, who is famous for waltzes such as "The Blue Danube."  The park also has the Kurslon where Johann gave his first cncert on Oct 15, 1968.  Since then, the Kursalon became a popular place for concerts and dancing.

Enjoy "The Blue Danube"!


There are several other monuments, such as the one of Franz Schubert, Franz Lehár, Robert Stolz and Hans Makart.  But most of all, it is just a wonderful place to relax with your beloved ones!

Rather artistic pedestrian light in Vienna

One of my hobbies (!?) is to check out the pedestrian lights wherever I visit.  Vienna's pedestrian light was just so artistic.  I suppose there are lots of people riding bikes there, too. 

Btw, when I was in Japan this time, I noticed that the bikers follow the same lights with cars instead of the pedestrian lights!!  I did some research and indeed in Japan bikers are supposed to follow the traffic lights for cars unless the pedestrian light has a sign next to it saying "Signals for Pedestirans and Bikers" speficically.  Hmmm.
Anyway, I liked this semi-meaty man on Brno's pedestrian light, too :)

St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna

The symbol of Vienna, St. Stephen's Cathedral, stands tall in the center of Vienna. The first sight of the south tower was just surprising and magnificent. We were walking down the narrow street, and all of a sudden a tip of beautiful looking tower appeared in front of us. It reminded me of a scene from the UFO movie :) Yes, I was that surprised with the first sight.

The cathedral was first built in the 12th century and has been remodeled to be the current gothic style in the 14-16th century. The south tower is 137m high, and it has a nickname of "Steffl."  You can actually go up the tower, although we didn't as the last admission ended at 4:30pm.  We were late for that.  What I really liked was the roof of the cathedral.  It was just beautiful.  It says that it is covered with 230,000 glazed tiles.

The cathedral also has catacombs which holds the remains from the massive death by Black Plague (killed 150,000 people in Vienna).

Vienna Streets

Just like Tokyo, Vienna consists of 23 zones (Bezirk), but each zone is much much smaller than the one in Tokyo.  The zone-1 is the center of Vienna, and the street called Ring runs around zone-1. Most of the popular sightseeing destinations such as St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephandom), Vienna State Opera, and Hofburg Imperial Palace are located inside zone-1, and everything is so close by that you can walk to any destinations or take a tram which goes around the ring.

We headed to Vienna around noon on April 2nd. By 3:30pm, we arrived at the hotel near Stadpark that is also right next to the station called Parkring. Our plan was to stay there until April 5th, the day I flied out to Japan from Vienna Airport.


We had two full days of sightseeing already planned, but we were eager to check out Vienna as soon as we arrived to the hotel.

We cheked into our hotel, situated gG with a glass of fresh water and a plate of his favorite food, and we decided to take a walk to the Stephansdom, which was about 8 mins away from the hotel.

The most streets inside the zone-1 are narrow and surrounded by the beautiful buildings.  I wonder if it is due to the Easter holidays, there weren't too many cars in zone-1, etiher. Although it was still cold outside, we bundled ourselves up and enjoyed the early evening walk in the city of Vienna.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

We are planning a trip to Vienna this coming weekend, which is a long weekend due to the Easter holidays. And, one of the things that I have been wanting to do is to see an opera or something at Vienna State. I started to look for a way to buy tickets online, and found out I can do that at Culturall.  You select a venue you are interested in, the month you are interested in, and you get a list of plays that you can choose from. The great thing about the site is that you can reserve the tickets by specifying the desirable seats on the seating map.

We got two tickets for the ballet show "Ein Sommernachtstraum"  - the famous comedy by Shakespeare "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Parkett level.  I can hardly wait!