We arrived in Vienna very early on Christmas Eve day. It was strange to be back in such a modern place with its luxuries, including an ultra modern train that took us into the city. We walked from the station into the old part of the city where we found our hotel. We dropped our bags and headed into the city. Our minds were filled with the recent, hard-core adventure in Chad and the expectation of spending a beautiful Christmas together in Vienna.
Kelly’s thoughts…
As we walked we felt the contrast between where we were and the last weeks. Everywhere was specialty stores with one selling only gin, another selling socks, several selling souvenirs, and others selling other specialized things. We in the West truly have an abundance. We soon found St Stephen’s Cathedral, the main church in the center of the old part of Vienna. Towering magnificently above the surrounding town, the building has witnessed many events through history. The known history of St Stephen’s dates to a parish church built in 1137, though even that building was built on a 4th century Roman cemetery suggesting it was the site of an even older religious building. A history of a very different, long lineage of people from those we encountered in the Ennedi, but still the weight of human history was heavy in our minds.
Buildings on the site of St Stephen’s were expanded, destroyed, burned and rebuilt over many years. The current church building was largely established in the 1400s, though it has been renovated and added to and remodeled many times even since then. It was nearly destroyed in WWII by retreating German forces, but orders were disregarded and it survived. It was burned in part in 1945 by the Soviet army. Much was lost but it was repaired to its current state by 1952.
The cathedral is an incredible building in the midst of a city with some of the most beautiful and immense architecture I have ever seen. During the next days we visited many smaller cathedrals and other fantastic buildings: the Hofburg imperial palace and grounds (the winter residence for the Habsburg rulers), the Belvedere palace (a summer home for the prince at the time), and the Schönbrunn palace (the main summer home for the Habsburgs). Everywhere else in Vienna we discovered old to ancient buildings, most of them with their date of origin on the side. We even found a site with Roman walls alongside Renaissance walls under a great palace that still stands.
Our first day, Christmas Eve, we wandered the streets early, stopping for apple streudel, coffee and tea. We had three days of simple exploration, where would we start?? So we found a cute little clock museum. Three flours of clocks of all kinds from antiquity, interesting and beautiful. Some large, some minute, all used to mark the passage of time at some time in the past. We learned that clockmakers all largely agreed to use Roman numerals, but oddly they decided to us IIII instead of IV. I felt inspired to make a clock, because I loved the woodworking, and I will use IIII.
We also found the Habsburg tomb. An underground series of rooms filled with the bronze coffins of the many Habsburg family members from many generations. Ornate and strange and creepy, we were amazed. The skulls and other bones on the outside of the coffins looked to us to be casts of the skulls of the persons inside, complete with uniquely missing teeth and the “Habsburg jaw,” a deformity arising from excessive inbreeding of the royals.
We then found ourselves in a lovely park near the river with statues of Viennese thinkers and artists, including Mozart. A man in period clothing was selling tickets to concerts and wondered if we wished to see one that evening. We didn’t know, so we chatted a while and decided, yes, of course we wanted to see the concert.
After a lovely afternoon continuing to wander among the magnificent history of Vienna, and some good wine and food, we found ourselves at the concert venue. And it was there we found ourselves all evening listening to a wonderful orchestra, the Sound of Vienna, led by the first violinist playing Mozart and Strauss and Christmas music, with ballet performances, and beautiful singing from a baritone and soprano. On the very stage where Strauss gave performances in the Kursalon Hübner building. On Christmas Eve. It was an experience for our lifetimes.
During Christmas in Vienna, most of the shops and restaurants are open every day of the season, and the people of the town and tourists all come out and enjoy the lights and decorations and the season. There are Christmas markets all over the city, especially at the palaces and near St Stephen’s cathedral. The booths sell all kinds of art products, beautiful hand-made clothing, other local items, and food and drink. The street food was wonderful. Riki loved the soup in a bread bowl, and I really enjoyed the smashed and fried potato with sour cream and bacon on it. I fell in love with glüwein, or mulled wine, a hot, spiced wine beverage. These are served in small ceramic mugs. One pays a deposit and can get that back upon returning the mug, but we kept a pair of mugs we really liked to bring home.
One shop that was closed was the Steinway and Son’s showroom. Window shopping there revealed many gorgeous, black grand pianos, but my favorite was an incredible solid wood piano made entirely of book-matched decorative rosewood. The price? €322,500 (~$350,000)!
Christmas Day in the morning we climbed the South Tower of St Stephens Cathedral, 343 steps in a tight spiral that top out in a guard room. The view was fantastic. Below us we could see the Christmas market in the streets below, and all around the city was in view with its cathedrals and palaces and rooftops. In the distance, the hills of Vienna rose from the edge of the city. The guardroom was a watchtower for attackers and for fires in the city. A bell could be rung and a lantern displayed if there was danger. I was happy to learn about a small insect, a springtail, Megalothorax sanctistephani Christian, described from the catacombs below the Cathedral, described in 1979 (link).
Into the evening we visited markets and many smaller cathedrals, which were open for the holiday. We wandered all over Schonbrunn Palace estate with its trails and orangery, monuments and fountains. There’s a botanical garden and a zoo, because every estate should have a menagerie. Here we even identified some European birds: rook, carrion and hooded crows, grey herons, great tits and blue tits. It was a wonderful holiday away from home.
Our last day, St Stephen’s Day, we had tickets to the Belvedere, a magnificent palace, now a world-class art museum. We explored the floors filled with art spanning hundreds of years of European art history. In the evening we finally had schnitzel and beer in a local restaurant out of the main city center. It was wonderful. Our last activity, after dark, was a ride on the Giant Ferris Wheel. The view of the city, different from the view from the guard room in St Stephens, at night, was incredible.
Our time in Vienna was an amazing capstone experience to our entire trip. Our trip began with a long, wild drive across emptiness sleeping along the way in tents among the nomadic herders, and we finally found ourselves in one of the historically most luxurious and opulent European cities of all. As we boarded our long flight home, we found ourselves transformed, and our understanding of the world, and ourselves, would never be quite as it had been.
Riki’s thoughts . . .
My favorite things from Vienna were definitely the beautiful buildings, towering above us as we wandered up and down the streets. Some of the alleys were quite narrow, and the lovely buildings reminded me of the walls of the Oyo Maze in the Ennedi. The buildings were of ornate stone, with many sculptures built in. After further investigation, we saw that the sculptures were not of carved stone, but of poured concrete. These were still impressive because someone had to make the molds, but I was somewhat disappointed that they were not carved works.
On the grounds of Schonbrunn Palace, there was a note on the map that indicated Roman ruins. When we got there, it indeed looked like a Roman bath, complete with broken pillars and sculptures. When we read the sign, we discovered that the builders of palaces in the 1700’s would create replicas of Roman ruins, tricking visitors into thinking that they were authentic. There were, indeed, some Roman ruins in the area, so the ruse was plausible.
There was another parallel between what we saw in Austria and what we saw in Chad. Both had paintings on the ceilings. As we walked through the cathedrals on Christmas Eve, we found ourselves once again craning up to enjoy the artwork on the ceiling, just as we had in the caves of the Ennedi.
One last parallel was the sight of horses pulling wagons. In Chad, scrawny small horses pulled hand-made carts, with simple rope and blanket harnesses and car axles fastened to a simple frame. These carts were used to haul heavier and bulkier loads than the donkeys could carry. Through the streets of Vienna, perfectly-matched sleek horses, dressed in lovely harness were being driven by people in period dress, perched on beautiful carriages of all shapes and sizes. People could buy rides on these carriages, and travel through the Christmas-garbed streets of the city.
I think the most shocking difference was between the simple mobile huts of the Sahara, single-room round structures as small as ten feet in diameter, topped with thatched roofs and the palaces of Vienna. The summer and winter palaces of the Habsburgs were immense, ornate, extravagant castles on acres of pristine grounds littered with buildings, gardens, and fountains. Fresh water flowed everywhere through the palace grounds, a stark difference from the wells of the desert. And we are somewhere in the middle, with more than enough to be comfortable. I am truly grateful for what we have compared to the Chadians, and have no desire to be burdened with the indulgence of eighteenth-century royalty.
This adventure was wonderful, life-altering! I was glad that the most rustic and rugged part of the vacation was first, and the trip got more plush as we traveled, definitely the right order. I cannot say what part I liked the best. I have discovered that it is not necessary for me to have all of the modern conveniences in order to have a wonderful time. And it is not necessary for me to be in the middle of nowhere to have a wonderful time, either. The variety of this trip, the amazing sights, and my fabulous travelling companion were just right! I cannot wait for us to take another trip somewhere, whether near or far away, but I am also quite content to be home with Kelly and the dogs while we make our plans.
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