Vienna is an astonishingly beautiful city. I get while cities are called jewels sometimes now! I got to the city in the afternoon, took a shower and then headed to one of the concerts I had booked. It was pretty obviously a touristy thing but it was nice– basically Mozart’s greatest hits. I don’t think that I picked out seats when I bought the tickets, I just paid for a section and then they assigned me one because my seat was in the very front row, dead center. It was not a good seat, I was a foot away from the stage and had to look almost straight up to see the conductor. I made eye contact with the performers. I got a great view of everyone’s shoes. It was pretty funny.

The next day I wandered around and did Rick Steve’s audio tour of Vienna which was a great overview. The big cathedral in the middle of the city was notable not only for its history and the building and everything but also because a young, trying-to-get-into-art-school Adolf Hitler did a watercolor of this building. The architecture was amazing– in my favorite spot there was the kings palace, built in the early 1900’s and right across from it, an aggressively square and modern building, also built in the early 1900’s . This was intentional. the architect of the modern building wanted to make the king have to reconcile with the modern age. Of course, the king only was a king for a couple more years before the Habsburg Dynasty ended.

After my little tour I went to Belvedere Palace which has been turned into an art museum and saw Klimt’s The Kiss as well as some Monet’s and other Klimt paintings. The famous one of Napoleon on the horse was there! The grounds were incredible and manicured, it was beautiful.

The next day I went to go walk along the Danube and listen to the song– it was right, the river is very blue. I read next to the river for a while and then made my way to Schonbrunn– the Hapsburg’s summer palace. I was not a fan! The Rococo style made it all overstuffed and over the top; too gilded, to indulgent. The grounds were lovely, again, but after walking through, it made sense to me why people in the 1900’s wanted to burn all the monarchy’s down. It was so self satisfied. The whole thing felt very “old world” (derogatory). No wonder Europe wanted to try socialism and communism– it must have seemed like such a better solution, so much better for everyone, than the insane wealth concentration and overstuffed monarchies of the past. Bummer it didn’t work out but I came out of that palace happy to be from the New World. That night I went to another Greatest Hits concert– it was great.

Vienna felt like a real city, and one that would be amazing to live in. It seemed like such a great quality of life– it was beautiful but still functional, cared about art but also cared about little cafes where people could gather and talk. It felt like a more cultured Germany.