Vienna

We started the morning with a nice breakfast at a local cafe near our space home before heading out for the day. The space home doesn't have a kitchen area so it feels quite luxurious going out for breakfast for these few days!

A new European city equals another free walking tour, so we started near the centre and proceeded to walk around the main parts of the city, learning many facts about Vienna and Austria from our guide, Orsi, including:
- There are 9 million people living in Austria with just over 2 million people in Vienna. The 2 million mark was predicted to be reached by 2025 but this has increased significantly in the past year or so due to refugees arriving from Ukraine.
- 50 million people lived in the Austrian-Hungarian empire up to WWI and Vienna was the capital (an imperial city). The empire was huge and contained 10 different nationalities and languages. The Habsburg monarchy was so successful as they married royalty from other empires and spread their influence across the world (referred to as the empire on which the sun never set).
- The Habsburg rule lasted approximately 640 years until WWI. The city still has huge influences from this reign including that many of the buildings are marked with Franz Joseph I's name and contains the two headed eagle which was the symbol of this monarchy (which represented the king's two roles as imperial and royal king). Most of the top tourist attractions in Vienna relate to the Habsburg rule including the Schonnbrunn palace which was the summer residence of the family and resembles Versailles because Austria and France were close rivals.
- During the tour, there was of course lots of references to the Habsburg rule which finished with Franz Joseph I in 1918. His relatives had pretty bad luck - his brother who ruled Mexico was assassinated after two years in power, his wife (the beloved Sisi) was assassinated in Switzerland, his son committed suicide and his nephew (archduke Franz Ferdinand) was assassinated in Sarajevo (which triggered WWI).
- In the 19th C, Vienna was surrounded by fortification walls which were pulled down so that the city could grow with the surrounding smaller villages. The route of the old walls are now called the "Ring Road" which now contains many of the major attractions and buildings in the city.
- Even today, all Viennese children go to dance school to learn how to to dance but also how to be polite. The Viennese balls are still an important part of culture.
- We of course learnt about Mozart and his influence. He came to Vienna from Salzburg when he was 6 years old where he played for the first time.
- We also learnt about Viennese coffee culture. Coffee was brought to Vienna by the Ottomans. A traditional coffee house usually means that it is at least 100 years old.

During the tour, Orsi also described the events following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy and the events surrounding WWI. We visited Heroes' Square which contains the balcony where Hitler made his speech in 1938 declaring Austria annexed as part of Third Reich. Hitler was born in Austria and tried to be an artist but was considered too old fashioned to be accepted into the art academy in Vienna. Instead, he commenced a career in politics. Orsi explained that it was not until the 80s that Austria really recognised their responsibility for their role in the war and they had previously tried to say that they were the first victim's of Nazi Germany.

Unlike many of Austria's surrounding countries, it has never adopted communism and Russia left Austria following WWII on the condition that Austria would adopt neutrality. Interestingly, Austria is still neutral. This is fine for Austria's involvement in the EU now as the EU does not have a military but may be interesting in the future.

After the walking tour, we went inside St Stephen’s church to see the beautiful neo gothic architecture. The cathedral was built between the 12th and 16th century and was actually never completed (one of the towers is half finished) because the style was no longer in fashion.

We then visited a nearby coffee house, Heiner. We had been recommended this place by Gab’s cousins Cliff and Monica and it did not disappoint! We shared a delicious chocolate cake (Sachertorte) and Apple strudel before moving on to continue exploring Vienna.

After our sugar rush, we walked almost an hour to the Belvedere Palace which was one of the palaces of the Habsburg family. We visited the permanent exhibition part including the famous painting ‘The Kiss’ by Gustav Klimt. It was nice doing something different observing the various pieces but something really interesting we saw was planks with recreations of the artworks which had been created for vision impaired people with braille descriptions and a legend corresponding to various items of the painting and have a different texture to identify them. We took a few photos (but photography is not allowed in many parts of the musesum - though it's fine in front of The Kiss!)

We had a short walk around the palace gardens which are very lovely. We then headed to a nearby schnitzel house for a delicious dinner of Weiner Schitznels accompanied by a local beer! This was well earned after a day of nearly 30,000 steps!

We then headed back to our space capsule to chill out and watch a movie before going to sleep.Read more