Vienna

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Not 'Good Night" or a song by Ultravox or Rigby's cat. This IS the real thing at last.

Friday the 22nd October sees Anne, Joyce, Ian & I off to Vienna to celebrate Annes 70th year (Sorry about that Anne). We have a good flight and get a taxi from the airport to our hotel. I have a window seat on the plane so get to see the Alps, just a sprinkling of snow on the tops and also see the Danube which is very wide. The journey was very smooth & no waiting about. Hotel AM Konzerthaus is very nice. Good size room, good amenities, excellent staff on reception and in the restaurant they could not be more helpful. It was also well located for what we wanted to do & see. And L'Ocitane toiletries on top. Very funky lampshades too.

A quick unpack & out for some lunch - I am totally lost and have the city well upside down. I am quite taken aback as it all seems to be quite old world, with the tram wires & the traffic lights hanging down in the street. We find a cafe and somehow manage to order some food and beer, more pointing at pictures and saying bitte than anything else. Hey its a long time since any of us was in a German speaking country. We do get better, promise.

It is sunny but very cold we are all a bit tired and try to get to the Belvedere Gardens but our lack of direction & fatigue gets the better of us. Anne & Joyce go back to the hotel & Ian & I do a quick tour around the local area to see if we can find somewhere for dinner tonight. We pop into a beer keller for a swift half & are amazed to find people smoking. Yes you can still smoke almost anywhere here.

Dinner

We went to the Gmoa Keller which is close to the hotel. We are all a bit tired and it is traditional food and serves good wines according to our book. Boxes ticked. We have difficulty in getting a table but it gets sorted out. The menu arrives, oh dear we do not have a clue what is what. It is fairly extensive - we find an English bit at the back but there is limited choice. The waiter has little or no English but keeps telling us he has a good goose. It became known as the many legged goose as they seemed to be mainly serving goose legs that night. However we had Weiner Schnitzels served with traditional Potato salad. I had lamb, it was very good. For Dessert I had Apple Strudel which was excellent. I made a point of trying as many strudels whilst in Vienna, as I could just to mark them out of 10. This was the best one of the whole holiday. We drank some red wine which was recommend by Mein Herr the waiter.

On getting back to the hotel we were dismayed to find our clothes & hair stank like we had been infused with Chinese food, our room was red hot & I did not get much sleep. Ian woke me at 7.18 to get me out of bed as we were meeting up at 8 for breakfast. Noooooooo. But after a good hot shower I was ready to go.

Wiener Fruhstuck

Having found a great cafe on our way back to the hotel last night we decide to go there for breakfast. Only to find that on a Saturday it does not open until 9. It is bright but cold outside & we need something to eat, nothing seems to be open but then we spy the golden M yes we end up eating our frustuck in McDonalds! Well it was good & we did have the Wiener choice apart from Mr F who had a bacon & egg Mcmuffin heathen!

We head towards the market trying to avoid getting run down by one of the many trams and fast speeding cars. It takes a while for us to get our head around the directions but it is soon sorted. We are not sure of the distances but it is soon clear that Vienna is very walkable and all the main attractions are close to each other. We pass the Succession building an example of art nouveau it has this huge ornate golden dome on the top.

Then the magic of the market beckons - well we are all suckers for looking at food & drink.

I think that you must be able to buy any food imaginable here in this market. Also for such a landlocked country the variety and freshness of the fish is almost unbelievable. You would think that it had just been hauled off the quayside. I wonder why we English cannot provide this standard and quality. We spend quite a while wandering around the stalls but it is freezing cold and we are forced into a cafe for hot chocolate which was very welcome.
One of the things that we see for sale in the market and in some of the beer kellers is something called Sturm it is fermented grape juice only available for a few weeks in the autumn. It is on sale everywhere and people are drinking it in the open air cafes. We did not have any but I later read that it is very potent and Sturm means new wine.

We are lucky in the choice of cafe that we choose as it is right by the Majolika House one of the finest examples of an Art Nouveau style house

Naschmarkt

Coffee Houses & Opera House Tour

After freezing at the Naschmarkt we make our way to a coffee house for a treat. We have apple strudel - ranked 3rd in my listings although it was still good. Ian had a torte called molitoff which had rum & brandy in it. We had coffee which as alway is served with a glass of water and a spoon. The coffee comes in a separate little pot and are served individually on a tray to each of us.

After this and a bit warmer we take a tour of the state opera house. See later post for pictures. We are taken all around including backstage, get to hear all the history. They have a different production every night and the stage hands spend all day changing the scenery and orchestra pit. Some productions need 38 trucks to bring all the props from the store & some only take 2. Still a hell of a lot of logistics to organise everyday,

Stephansdom

This cathedral known as the Steffl by the Viennese is the most beloved landmark of the city as it's rebuilding after the world war 2 bombings was a symbol of hope.

Dinner

As we were going to the concert we decided that we would eat early. So around 4 ish we located a Gausthaus, where you get traditional food & hopefully don't smell like a crispy duck when you come out.

Ian had some garlic soup to start with which was lovely, we all had a taste so we all had garlic breath. He & I then had gulasch which came with dumplings, a frankfurter and a fried egg. Anne & Joyce had Tafelspitz beef served with rosti and an apple & horseradish sauce. Ian had apple strudel for pud. This one came 2nd in my ratings. V Traditional dishes and excellent and no we didn't smell of cooking when we came out.

Back to the hotel & a quick change before the highlight of the concert. The Musikverein was just about 10 minutes away so we walked it had warmed up slightly.

Mozart Concert Golden Hall Musikverein

Well this is the reason we are all here in Vienna. For years we have watched the concert on New Years day and religiously applied for tickets. But as we were told over here, the likely hood of us actually getting some are very rare unless you are a millionaire or know a politician. We have been looking forward to this for a very long time & I feel that it might be a bit of a second rate performance. The golden hall itself is just as beautiful as it appears on the TV and also lives up to its name. The chandeliers are sparkling away and the atmosphere is electric as the musicians take to the stage. They are all dressed up in period costume. I should not have worried as it was a fantastic performance, the Orchestra and performers were top. We had very good seats well after all they were not cheap so they had better have been. We had a good view, after I had politely told the Chinese man next to me to stop leaning forward!! We were on the right hand side as you look from the stage just up in one of the boxes. If you are lucky I will tell you exactly where, when we see the concert on TV on New years day.

We were on a high so walked back to the hotel only about 10 minutes away and settled ourselves with a snifter before bed.

Sunday Morning

Anne & Joyce decided that they wanted to do the city bus tours and Ian & I wanted to walk so we went our separate ways outside of the Opera house only to meet up 15 mins later in the Spanish riding school. On the way there we went though the Burggarten and saw the Palm house, it was a grey morning but much warmer than the previous day. There was some sort of Army display or recruitment drive going on at the Hofburg palace so we could not get any good photos due to all the tents and displays going on. It did have a bonus though as there were lots of Braatwurst and gluwein stalls which is where we had our lunch. We went into a big marquee where there was a live band and rows of trestle tables set up. Some people were already drinking steins of beer and clapping along to the music with great gusto. A scene that we wold assume typical of Germany - Austria. We went to the Spanish School of Riding (See next post) and then walked around the Parliament buildings down to the Rathaus (Town Hall) Which has to be the biggest & most impressive Town Hall I have ever seen. We walked back through the Volksgarten, there are a lot of parks in Vienna, we stopped off for a beer before wending our way back to the hotel.

Spanish Riding School

I wanted to go to see the Lipizzaner Horses so Ian & I went off in the direction of the Hofburg Palace

We managed to get tickets to a morning performance it was excellent. I was very excited waiting for the horses to appear. They were perfection and the finale school quadrille was just superb. The elegant white Lipizzaner horses are all stallions and when they are born have dark or black skins. They only turn white around the age of 4-6 years. We were shown all the stages of training and the varying ages of the stallions and were lucky enough to get to see them in the stable yard across the road as well. The whole thing was of course set to music with the inevitable Blue Danube taking centre stage and finishing off with much clapping along to the Radetzky march as we all filed out of the school.

Spanish Riding School

Sunday Night

We decided that it would be easier to have dinner the hotel and as it had started to rain seemed like a good idea. For hotel food it was good although they were trying to do an Austrian Italian fusion which in my case did not work out. It was rather strange, but we enjoyed a Prosecco and a good bottle of Zwiegelt (Good Fusion). We then got in a taxi and went to the Sacher hotel where we had our dessert, the famous Sacher torte with whipped cream followed by coffee, which was consumed in sumptous surroundings with the most charming waiting staff. We then dodged the rain drops and ran over the road to the Opera House.

The Staatsoper