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  • Day 231

    Day 232: Filming in Vienna

    October 4, 2017 in Austria ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    Long day of filming today! Although I've been to Vienna and the world heritage area a couple of times already, we figured we should take advantage of things and film a video about the area. So we had breakfast and headed into the old town again!

    Started at the Rathaus (Town Hall), worked our way down the Ringstrasse and then across into the Neue Burg (New Castle). Unfortunately we were mostly retreading over ground we'd seen a couple of days prior, so we found it a little frustrating but at least we had good weather and a good idea of what to film.

    One place I wanted to check out that we hadn't visited was the Kaisergruft, the burial place of the Habsburg Emperors. Basically every Habsburg king, emperor, prince and duke was buried in this crypt underneath a small unassuming church off the side of the Neue Markt. It cost 8 euros for entry and dogs obviously weren't permitted, so I went in myself while Shandos headed to a nearby juice bar. It was pretty interesting, noting how the tombs and sarcophagi got more and more elaborate as their power and wealth increased, reaching a zenith with Maria Theresa and her husband Francis buried in a huge sculpted thing about the size of a minivan!

    The only notable exception I could find was Marie Antoinette (who was of course Maria Theresa's youngest daughter), which set me to wondering where she was actually buried. Turns out, nobody knows! Most French kings and queens are (or at least were) interred at the Basilica in Saint-Denis on the northern outskirts of Paris, but the tombs were all ransacked during the revolution, and nobody's quite sure what became of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's bodies. Interesting.

    Back outside into the Vienna sunshine, where we wandered around further before finishing up right at the centre of town at St Stephansplatz. Finished up our filming and had a typical Viennese lunch - wiener mit brot! Tasty. Shandos headed back to the apartment to do some work, while I had a further wander around city and did a little more filming. Spent some time in a nice cafe having a coffee and cake, then eventually headed back home in the late afternoon.

    Didn't feel like going too far for dinner, so we headed for a Turkish barbecue place up the road which looked nice and had good reviews. Tasty food, Shandos had some chicken shish kabobs while I had a pita bread filled with various meats!
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