Schonbrunn Palace – Vienna

We spent the morning at Schonbrunn Palace.  All I can say is that, once again, we found a place that kicks Versailles ass.  I don’t  know why Versailles gets so much hype, really, over crowded, over done and over priced!

Schonbrunn, on the other hand, was wonderful.  It was absolutely immense and we probably could have spent days seeing it.  I thought this sculpture was awesome- and it wasn’t even part of the official tour!  We were not allowed to take photographs once inside the castle rooms, but I really loved the art and furniture we saw. My favorite was probably the parquet floors, amazing.  This was the summer home of the Hapsburg family, which ruled the Holy Roman Empire (a HUGE area, see map) from 1438 to 1740.  The family continued to rule Austria after the break up of the Holy Roman Empire until 1918.  They were a large family, that encouraged intermarriage – apparently this led directly to their extinction. “The Habsburgs sought to consolidate their power by the frequent use of consanguineous marriages, with ultimately disastrous results. Marriages between first cousins, or between uncle and niece, were commonplace in the family. A study of 3,000 family members over 16 generations by the University of Santiago de Compostela suggests that inbreeding directly led to their extinction. The gene pool eventually became so small that the last of the Spanish line Charles II, who was severely disabled by genetic disorders, possessed a genome comparable to that of a child born to a brother and sister, as did his father, likely due to "Remote Inbreeding".^[6] The infamous Habsburg jaw was one such prominent manifestation of inbreeding.”  Guess they should have married to some commoners.  Another Hapsburgian fact I found interesting was that the 15th child of the last Holy Roman Emporer and his wife, Francis I and Maria Theresa, was none other than Marie Antoinette! At the age of 14 she was married at Versailles to King Henry XVI. She ended up having 4 children with him but only one survived to adulthood. Antione was the last Queen of France during the French revolution (that would be the storming of the Bastille, etc… around the time when Les Miserables happened) and was guillotined when she was only 38 years old.  You can see a painting of her, a few years before she died, and then see me, at right – wish I had that blue dress, even today.  She had a fascinating life, read more about it here.  As we were going through more of the palace, I did steal a few shots out the windows… rebel that I am.  I wanted to get a better angle of the immense gardens.

 

Tour over, we braved the rain to head outside to the gardens.   They were wonderful because there was every style you could think of featured and each corner was a new surprise.

  

I particularly liked the mermen riding on hippocampus – another mythological beast to add to my collection of favorites.  Next we headed into the area that had the both mazes and labyrinths.  We did one maze and one labyrinth. The maze was quite fun and hard enough to get disoriented and lost in.

  

We then headed for the labyrinth.  In case you don’t know, a maze is when you have many choices but only one leads to the goal (i.e. the exit) but a labyrinth is a web of paths that have only one choice but lead to the center.  The fun in a maze is trying to find the right path, but in a labyrinth it is more about enjoying the journey.  I told the kids that, usually, people use labyrinths to meditate and that they should think of a question and hold it in their minds while they were wandering along.  Zander and I did it but the others were having too much fun running around and talking.  My question was: “How will I get home?”

The reason this was my question was that we had always thought we would stay 2 years, and that was to be over in September.  This meant we had to decide whether or not to go back to the US or stay – and also it meant that Andre would again need to be job hunting.   So we were in a kind of stressed out place facing this choice.  As I was walking and breathing deep, Andre came up to me and held my hand.  He smiled into my eyes and told me he loved me.  Meanwhile the kids were running past, snatches of their laughter floating in the air.  I breathed deep and continued to pace, slowly chanting in my mind… How will I get home? How will I get home? How will I get home?  I reached the center of the maze where a small bench had been thoughtfully provided and sat down.  Andre sat next to me and put his arm around me and Callie ran over to snuggle into my other side.  It was then that the answer came, ringing clear as a bell in my mind.  “You  are home.” 

And the fact is, I really was.  I was in a strange place but I was surrounded by love, by my family, and by joy.  That is home.  I have been feeling better ever since this day about all the uncertainties in our lives.  I have always tried to live in the moment, but it is getting easier recently.  I have realized that, even if we end up staying here longer, that will be OK.  I like it here, in fact, I love a whole lot of it – and my family is here – which is the most important of all.  It is like that saying I heard the other day.  It’s not about having what you want, it’s about wanting what you have.  I am truly blessed to want what I have (but I must admit that I do want more, especially like my mommy!)  

This is Andre and I leaning up against the Harmony Stones.  The larger stone represents the male principle, the smaller the female.  By touching or embracing the corresponding stone, we transferred harmony onto ourselves and onto each other.  These stones were activated by the master of Feng Shui, Dr Fes Jen and his wife in 1999.  Nice to find a touch of Asian spirituality in the Viennese garden!  What an amazingly multicultural world we live in.

We moved on, skipping the mirror maze in favor of the amazing playground. Digging toys, water wheels and an absolutely incredible bird thing that rocked up and down – just like as if we were really flying.

   

It was time to head to the rest of Vienna but we passed lots more amazing gardens (and a freakishly bold red squirrel) on the way out…  I was in love with the tunnel of blooming wisteria shown below – amazing – we tried to get an cute shot of Andre and I but, as usual, a kid got in the way!  He loves that rainbow sweater.

 

We left the castle, stopping, for a few minutes, to literally smell the roses. Roses are ubiquitous here and smell amazing – much better than the roses in the US. We may travel all over, but we do take time to notice the little things – see, proof!!!

What will the afternoon bring?

The Rest of Salzburg

Rewind to May, please…. After we left Mirabell Gardens, we spent the next few hours experiencing Salzburg.   You see Callie and I posing in front of the Salzach river with the Salzburger Dom at right and the  Hohensalzburg Castle looming in the background.  Also a very cool door – I aspire to have a door such as this one day (but in shades of purple and green)

It is a beautiful city which is also amazingly well-preserved: from the plaster work on outdoor archways to the statues around each corner.  Music is very important to life in Salzbury and I liked the statue of the violinist.  In fact, this was the birthplace of Mozart – you can see the photo of his home (yellow) below.  Rumor is that he hated Salzburg and was in Vienna as much as possible, but that doesn’t stop the tourist industry from milking the Mozart connection as much as possible!  We stopped in a few churches, as usual. Below you can see the Holy Trinity Church or Dreifaltigkeitskirche.  I was amazed by the woodwork…

 

As we were heading to another sight, we passed a small church.  The priest was just coming out and offered to show us around.  He was actually an American who had been living in Austria for about 30 years.  It was quite a beautiful Protestant church and he told us how all the protestants had been, at one point, chased out of Austria and were now happy to return. He also made some lame attempts to convert us.  He asked Zander who the man in the stained glass was (Zander guessed “Jesus???”  Lucky for him he was right)  We realized soon it was actually an Evangelical Church and made our escape.

 

Then we reached the amazing main cathedral of the town Salzburger Dom.  The outside was not particularly embellished but the thing is massive.  I found it interesting to see the doors to the cathedral flanked by musicians… We heard music everywhere in this city.

The first cathedral was consecrated in this spot in 774 and was a central place of worship for almost 1000 years.  It was destroyed by fire in 1628 and rebuilt by the citizenry.  Then on October 16, 1944 aerial bombs destroyed the dome.  It was not fully restored until 1959 and the doors show a more modern influence.  Inside, though, the baroque masterpiece was preserved and we got some amazing photographs….

I do not think it is possible to overstate how amazing the ceilings were in this edifice.  The carving, the art, the lighting, everything!  You can see how amazed Z and C were as well!

 

The kids, for whatever reason, were talking a lot about Grammie this particular day and, when they saw the candles, really wanted to light one for her.  It is quite incredible to me, actually, how much strong feeling they hold in their heart for their Grammie.  We actually ended up doing two… and Griffin was so proud to be able to do his all on his own. 

The church has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times it was very interesting to go to the crypt underneath.  We could see the different roots of the many hundreds of years…  Another reason this was an interesting crypt was that, for whatever reason, they decided to put a modern art installation down there.  There was a repeating loop of tape (saying something I couldn’t understand in German) and lots of little macabre sculptures backlit by candles.   Bizarre to say the least

     

We wandered through the town some more, heading up the hill towards Hohensalzburg Castle, one of the biggest medieval castles in Europe.  We saw many many amazing fountains in Salzburg.  I especially like it when there is a mixture of formal sculpture and ‘natural’ rock like the red and gold number below.  I first fell in love with that in Rome when I saw the Trevi fountain.  I’m sure there is some sort of architectural term for that, but I don’t know what it is.  We passed these paintings of saints stuck into the side of the mountain on the way to the castle.  There is also an abbey in Salzburg and my guess would be that pilgrims, weary from their journey, could stop and pray at this little spot.  I wonder if all the rock faces used to be littered with them.  I didn’t like it – seems like antique graffiti if you ask me.

 

We decided, since there was time to spare, to go inside the castle – and I am glad we did because it was only here that I at last found proof that, yes, indeed, Salzburg was the ancestral home of The Sound of Music.  Exhibits 1 to 3 are as follows… 1.  The Sound of Music sign 2. The Sound of Music Puppet head thing and 3. An artistic rendition of Edelweiss….

 

There was lots of other awesome stuff in the castle too – but I am so sick of blogging about this town I’m about to puke, which is really a shame since it was a lovely place. And a big place – covering 33000 square meters of land! Of course, that size is small potatoes compared to the Citadel in our home town of Besancon which is more than three times as big at over 110 000 square meters.  Take that Salzburg!  OK, we’ve established it’s no Besancon, but it is lovely…

Lovely walls, lovely views of the city below

 

Lovely doors that I adored….

Lovely Folterwerkzeuge (torture devices).  These would have been in use until around 1800 – so for about 700 of the castles 900 year history.  For all those years, no one could be executed without a complete confession.  So they got them any way they could.  Spiked stocks, masks of shame or, a new one, the wheel of death… They rolled the wheel with the big blade on it over people to crush them – what a way to go.

   

Lovely Franziskanerkirche (Guess they repented there in the down times between torture) Or maybe they played around with the lovely puppets (marionettes are another huge Salzburg tradition) or had a lovely dinner at the Burg Taverne (pig head anyone???)

   

Lovely interactivity for children – great museum for kids…. they even had a kids version of the audio guide – of course, my kids couldn’t get it to work – but that’s not all that important.

 

And, of course, the lovely trash chute.  It was amazing how steep this thing was! 

I feel like Salzburg deserves a better blog, and this isn’t even getting an edit as it usually does from my wonderful spouse since he is in America.  Well, I guess that sometimes you just have to move on….. I need to go to the next blog, and we needed to head for Vienna….