Matt and Lisa's Adventures

31 December 2024

Final breakfast of waffles (I will miss that) then off to the train station for the trip to Vienna. We had splurged on business class tickets and it was very nice. The first ticket inspector was fine but the second one told us we didn’t have the right tickets for business (we had booked economy originally and then upgraded but it turned out you needed to have booked first class to be able to upgrade). Thankfully he let us stay where we were. I tried to sleep on the train but was unsuccessful. The view outside looked very cold and desolate. 

We arrived on time into Vienna. As we left the station it started snowing and the city suddenly felt VERY cold. Our hotel is definitely a step down but they did have our room ready so that was a win. We quickly added some extra layers and then headed out to explore (after getting Lisa a coffee). 

We caught the metro into the city centre and just started wandering. First impressions are that the city is very pretty, clean and well organised. We just followed our nose, Lisa refused to look closer at some things (for example an awesome looking column as she said we would cover it in our walking tour, but we didn’t). We eventually ended up on the main street of the city. Everything was very busy and it gave the city a vibrant feel. It was a struggle to find somewhere for lunch so it ended up a McDonald’s meal. 

We had a walking tour booked in at 2:15 but it was so cold Lisa was worried about being able to make it through the afternoon. To keep warm we went to a random museum, turns out it was a religious relics museum – not what we would normally go for. It was actually really interesting and had a great audio guide. We spent an hour doing some learning and most importantly managed to keep warm. As well as the religious relics it has a temporary exhibition about friends which produced some interesting art works.

Our walking tour started from the opera house and our guide was Anna. She was very knowledgeable and it was an enjoyable tour despite having to endure the cold. 

• Vienna is the capital and with two million people is significantly larger than the second largest city which only had three hundred thousand people. The oversized capital is a result of the large Austrian empire which required a sizeable civil administration in the capital
• We heard about Franz Joseph who was the Austrian emperor for 68 years until his death in 1916. He was a workaholic who started his day at 3:30am. The empire ended in 1918 at the end of the First World War and a lot of Austrian territory was taken away to create new countries. The final emperor (who succeeded Franz Joseph) was exiled and died overseas
• Sisi was the wife of Franz Joseph and she was very beautiful and famous. No pictures or photos were taken of her in the last twenty years of her life so she managed to control a lot of the perception about her. She was assassinated by an Italian anarchist in Switzerland
• Opera is very famous in Vienna. There were lots of people selling tickets on the street but apparently this isn’t for opera but rather just music concerts. Operas are sold out in advance but there are some standing tickets that are available for sale on the day. Best not to do that for a Wagner opera as they can run for over four hours!
• Mozart lived a lot of his life in Vienna ands accomplished amazing things. His sister was also a musical prodigy but there weren’t the same opportunities for women at that time. Mozart died at 35 but it is unknown why. The death certificate lists a disease that no one has heard of. All very weird
• The Hofburg palace is huge and amazing. They kept adding more wings to it. Not sure why they needed all those rooms. This was the winter residence of the Hapsburg family that ruled Austria. 
• In the palace garden there is a large glass and metal building that was used to grow exotic plants like palm trees that couldn’t be grown outside. Having these exotic trees was a real status symbol for the emperor and his family
• In the city centre is the Saint Stephen’s cathedral. This was a genuine Gothic cathedral rather than Neo Gothic like a lot of the other buildings in the city. It had a high south tower, about 130 meters. They started to build a north tower but ran out of funds and energy so the north tower isn’t as tall. The cathedral caught fire shortly after World War Two. Austrians from around the country donated money to rebuild it. Different regions paid for different aspects which they are proud of. Anna’s family donated towards the roof and they paid for one green roof tile out of the two hundred thousand or so

After the tour we popped into McDonald’s again for a hot chocolate (that we had to mix ourselves, not sure why Europeans think that is acceptable) to warm up. 

Vienna is a New Year’s hot spot and they have a New Year’s Eve trail in the city centre with eight stages for different music and entertainment. We had seen one of the rock bands doing a sound check earlier and so we were keen to check this out. It turns out it was really awesome! 

• There were thousands of people of all ages out and about. It was great to see such a diverse range of people enjoying themselves
• Lots of stalls sold food and drink including alcohol although it seemed acceptable for people to also bring their own alcohol. 
• We walked around many of the stages which were close together and easy to move between
• We had a lot of fun learning how to waltz and being taught new techniques along with hundreds of other couples. The instructions had to be given in both German and English
• In between the lessons they played other songs and there was a big dance / sing along of You’re the one that I want from Grease which was surreal
• At another stage we had more dance music and partied along to that. That was great when they were doing well known songs in English but we did struggle when they played some German songs. 
• There were lots of people wearing pig hats which kids found fascinating. Pigs are considered lucky which is important for the start of the new year. Lisa talked me into buying a hat and had a good laugh at me wearing it. I wore it back on the metro which got some interesting looks
• There were lots of lights above the streets that gave the feel of chandeliers. Together with the dancing it made the streets feel like a massive ballroom

1 January 2025

Slow start to the morning as nothing was open early. We had a banana and shared a croissant for breakfast at the train station before catching the metro into the city centre. We had done some research on the best hot chocolate and the cafe Demel came up a lot. We arrived twenty minutes before it opened and there was already a queue. It turns out it is quite a big deal. The queue got even larger behind us as we waited. While we waited we could watch a lady cooking through the window. We discovered afterwards she was making their signature pancakes. It must have been weird for her to work while so many people watched but she seemed unfazed. It finally reached 10 am and we could enter. Lisa had a coffee and I had a hot chocolate with cream. It was very nice, not as overwhelming as Angelina’s African hot chocolate but still tasted rich and delicious. We also had a Sauchertarte which is a chocolate cake with a layer of apricot jam in the middle. It normally comes from the Saucher cafe which has an even longer line that Demel but we were not going to do that. The cake was disappointing, nothing special about it at all. We should have had the pancakes! Overall it was a fun experience but I wouldn’t have spent any more time lining up for it than what we did. 

It was then off to the fine arts museum. I spent a good amount of time on the German, Flemish and Dutch painters but then realised I was talking too long and so it was faster through the Italians and Spanish painters, then only a very brief look at the Roman and Egyptian history. I could have done with many more hours but it wasn’t to be. 

• The building was incredible. Purpose built to be a museum it was stunning and extravagant but with nice large rooms, high ceiling and a feeling of space even when crowded
• The stairs had an amazing sculpture of a man killing a centaur. Lisa tried to take inappropriate photos of it which was embarrassing. 
• There were two photos of women flashing men. They were by the same artist, so I think he just had a bit of a fetish for it
• There was a temporary exhibition on about Rembrandt but we didn’t go. Lisa said I told the ticket guy too loudly that “I don’t like that Rembrandt guy”
• There were a lot Rubens paintings. They were good at the start but by the time you have seen thirty they get a bit boring
• There were a few Veronese paintings, he is one of my favourites so I really enjoyed them
• There was a Dutch painting of people where the mother had fallen sleep and so everything was going to custard around her, that was fun
• There was an artist who had done a painting for each month of the year to show distant seasons and activities. The museum had about five of these and they were all brilliant. The winter one showing snow falling was particularly impressive
• There was a painting of a common celebration where everyone had a pie but one had a bean in it. The person who got the bean was then the king of the celebration. The hottest chick was made queen – unclear who got to make that decision or what happened if a women found the bean. They then set court rules for the other party goers, on the whole it sounded like a lot of fun
• There was a painting showing a painter starting a new work. The photo didn’t do it justice, but in person this looked amazing and just blew every other set work in the room out of the water

As we had to make our next tour we only had time to grab a muffin from Starbucks. Our tour was of the Hofburg palace and Sisi museum with our guide Michael. 

• Michael was funny, he hummed the Viennese waltz while checking everyone’s headsets were working and danced about to illustrate the emperor falling in love
• The tour went through the Sisi museum in the Hofburg palace. Or, at least a tiny part of the palace. The palace complex is 18 buildings and is huge. It had been developed over a long period with each emperor expanding it in their own way. 
• Emperor Franz Joseph was meant to marry Sisi’s sister as that is what their mothers had organised. However, when Franz Joseph met Sisi he decided he wanted her instead, and it would have been awkward to have said no to the emperor
• Sisi was born in Munich and was very young when she married the emperor. She didn’t really enjoy life in the court and hasn’t been prepared for it as it was meant to have been for her sister. She didn’t really get involved politically other than to push for Hungary to be a more equal partner
• It’s a bit unclear how Sisi’s sister felt about getting pushed out, might have been more of a blessing…
• Franz Joseph went back to work two days into their honeymoon. He may have been a workaholic but that isn’t an encouraging sign for the couple
• They had four children but their son Rudolph was key as he was the heir. Sisi tried to make sure he had a normal education and he was far more liberal than his conservative father. He committed suicide at the age of thirty after killing his lover. His parents were heartbroken and Sisi        only wore black for the rest of her life
• We went through the different rooms in the palace that Sisi and Franz Joseph had used. In his office he had lots of paintings of her, but she only had one of his. She had lots of pictures of family and others though, including her favourite cousin. Imagine if Lisa had a photo of Andy in her office…
• The palace was very nice but felt like it was more of a quantity over quality affair. 
• The kitchen was a long way from the dining room and so they had to warm the food up after carrying it across. This seems like very poor architecture, why wouldn’t you just put the kitchen close to the dining area? Especially if you keep renovating the place?
• There was a room for Maximilian. He was the brother of the emperor and wanted to be emperor himself. He ended up being given the job of Mexican emperor. Turns out the Mexicans weren’t keen on that and so they killed him after a couple of years. Maybe we need to be learning more from the Mexicans?
• There was one group who were late for the tour and one girl in that group was then late when were needed to move on. The rest of us were left standing around in the cold. Lisa had some interesting ideas of how to punish her…
• Sisi had very long hair and it took three hours a day to brush it. She also did a lot of fitness work. Overall she seemed to come across as quite vain
• Empress Maria Theresa had been the ruler earlier – the only empress to rule in her own right after her father had no sons. Some nobels didn’t accept her initially but the military helped pull them into line. She was very busy and made important changes including mandatory education, direct taxes and a professional army. She also popped out 16 children in 23 years

It was now time for beer clock. We came across an Australian pub, however the service in there was so poor we never got served so just used it to warm up and plan our next move. Not sure why it was called an Australian pub as none of the beers looked Australian!

We googled and found a cool looking area behind the museums that was meant to have lots of restaurants and bars. It took us 15 minutes to walk there but we were underwhelmed when we arrived. We did find a bar called centimeters for a beer. They sold a beer taster with 1 meter of beer – about 2.4 litres, you would have to be thirsty to try that! They also sold some foods based on distance, overall they took a simple concept and ran with it, which I appreciated. While there Lisa found a promising schnitzel restaurant just up the road. However when we got there it looked like it had shut down. With it being cold we decided to head back to the known region around our hotel. 

We tried to go to Kaisers restaurant (which we had tried the previous night) but again we were out of luck due to a lack of a reservation – the Kaiser was not accommodating. With the weather being terrible we ended up back to Chilli and Cheese to try prevent a rigmarole. The food was again good, we shared another chicken schnitzel and a beef bowl. 

2 January 2025

First stop of the day was coffee at a cafe called The Cyclist chosen as Lisa liked the name. I had a very nice hot chocolate and we shared a cinnamon treat. 

Next stop was the war museum of Vienna. This had been highly recommended by both Alan and Lisa, and they know a good war museum so I had high hopes. It is in a very imposing former military complex with lots of large buildings that looked like castles. There was another frozen pond on the way in and Lisa again wanted to throw something at it but couldn’t find a usable projectile. The museum was broken into different areas, the area about the First World War was brilliant, so much information presented in a really interesting way. Unfortunately the area about the Second World War was closed for refurbishment which was a disappointment but also perhaps lucky as otherwise we wouldn’t have had any chance of leaving on time! There were also areas about the older military history, they were ok but not as engaging. 

• They had the chronological story of World War One going through the different years with the major events covered. This told a compelling story and put everything into context. 
• They had the actual car that Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were driving in Sarajevo when they were shot to trigger the First World War. That was amazing to see, it included the bullet hole of the bullet that went on to hit Sophia. There was also the uniform the Franz Ferdinand was wearing when he was shot
• I didn’t realise that Austria-Hungary had signed a different peace treaty with the allies rather than the treaty of Versailles. 
• The Austrians didn’t realise the importance of trench warfare and so didn’t have enough steel helmets for their soldiers which was a major issue. It took until almost the end of the war for them to finally produce enough helmets for all their soldiers
• Austria severely underestimated the Serbian army which while smaller was very well trained and had more recent combat experience which was highly valuable
• Initially it was expected that cavalry would be important as they had been for hundreds of years. Unfortunately the modern machine gun could deal with cavalry with ease
• There were impressive examples of fortifications complete with mortar holes that had been inflicted by enemy shelling
• There was a cannon that had been used in the seven years war. It had fired a lucky shot that landed on the enemy’s gunpowder stockpile. The resulting explosion killed three thousand enemy troops and the Austrians captured the city two days later
• General Radetzky was very successful and famous. Strauss composed a match for him that Lisa had to play in the Marlborough youth orchestra. He worked as a general until he was 90 and then died two years later, not much of a retirement
• There were some amazing paintings of battle scenes that helped give a flavour for the brutality of early combat

We then went to the Naschmarkt which is a large market area. After discussing a few times about do we really need to buy and validate public transport tickets we ran into ticket inspectors after getting off the subway. Thankfully, we had tickets even thought it had been a real pain to buy them on the phone because there was no ticket machine at the tram stop. The market had lots of fresh fruit, meat, sweets and stuffed olives. But, like most of these markets the stalls got very repetitive, very quickly. We’re had a lunch of sausages and bread which was delicious and helped with ticking off all of the food we needed to eat in Vienna.

In the afternoon we had booked in a walking tour on Hitler’s Vienna. Our guide was Deter who was very good and knowledgeable – he had the air of a professor of history. It was a two and a half hour tour and while the temperature was a couple of degrees warmer than the previous days it was still cold. Thankfully, he managed to work in a couple of indoor stops which allowed us to warm up, even so people started dropping out of the tour as it went along. 

• Hitler was born in a small town in the north of Austria. He moved to Vienna at about 17 and spent seven years in the city. He wanted to be an artist and drew postcards to sell. He applied twice for the art academy and was rejected. He was good at architecture and ok at landscapes but not so good at drawing people
• We went inside the art academy (the one Hitler was rejected from) which was very nice with Neo Roman art work. There were also swastikas in the tiled floor which would have been there pre Hitler. This was an example of Hitler taking existing symbols and reusing them for his cause
• He disliked a lot of what he saw in Vienna, especially the multiculturalism and mixing of races. 
• He enjoyed the opera with the German composer Wagner being his favourite
• His father who died when he was young. His mother died of breast cancer when Hitler was in his early 20s. She was treated by a Jewish doctor and afterwards Hitler protected the doctor from his antisemitic policies
• Hitler liked to go to the Central cafe which was also a favourite of Trotsky who was in Vienna at the same time. For a month Stalin was also there, so it us possible that all three of these future leaders were at the same cafe at the same time years before they rose to fame and power
• After the Second World War Austria was split into four zones of control for the four allied victors. The same happened in Vienna but the first district was an international area. While the zones were administered by each power there were no walls or restrictions on people’s movements as there had been in Germany. 
• In 1955 Austria got its sovereignty back after agreeing to be neutral. They therefore were never part of the Warsaw Pact or NATO. Even today Austria remains firmly neutral in these affairs
• There was a large memorial to the Austrians Jews killed. There were about 200,000 before the war with about 135,000 escaping but often to other countries controlled by the Nazis. The remaining 65,000 largely perished in the camps or in horrible living conditions. The memorial is meant to look like books but you can see the titles and the library has no door handles to represent stories that weren’t finished and therefore cannot be told. The memorial was only erected in the 1990’s. After the war Austrians tried to move on and forget what had happened. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that they started addressing their past and teaching what happened in schools. Today it is an important subject with all Austrian school children having to visit a concentration camp, often Mauthausen which was the largest camp on Austrian soil. 

Then it was off to the train station for our sleeper train to Venice. One sleeping pill for tonight and hopefully I will snore my way across the alps! 

Overall thoughts on Vienna

• Very pretty and elegant city. Buildings looked impressive, everything was pristine. Nice wide streets
• Felt very safe. Saw a few police because of the New Year’s event but not as many as I would have expected. Only a couple of homeless people
• Great public transport and very easy to get around, I can see why it wins awards for being a liveable city
• Most people we encountered spoke English very well. Service people could be abrupt and grumpy, this just seems to be the way with Austrians though and even they acknowledge that
• It was a fantastic place to be for New Years and the entertainment trail was amazing event, it was definitely the best New Years Eve that we’d celebrated while traveling
• The art museum was a fantastic surprise and I suspect there would have been a few other great galleries and museums for us to enjoy if we had another couple of days 
• The cold let the city down as we spent most days wear a lot of layers