The Amadeus Queen is parked on a canal near Vienna Woods.
We bussed into Vienna to the old Imperial part of town. The weather was cloudy and low 50s, not the sort that makes you want to linger outdoors even with all Vienna's inviting cafes.
This was the Hapsburg capital for generations. A hundred fifty of them are buried in this Capuchin monastery. Most of the architecture of the city is not so simple. It's designed more to communicate power and wealth.
We paused at this poignant Holocaust memorial of an old Jewish man scrubbing the street with barbed wire on his back. It was built on the site of a bombed building where 200 people died, sheltering in the basement. It is intended to remind Austrians that they were not all innocents in the war.
Our first indoor stop was the Musikverein with its 6 venues, 2 of them dating from the 18th c.
The modern Hall of Glass has amazing acoustics due to the glass tablets on the walls being curved and angled so as not to face one another. We were not allowed to take pictures anywhere but the historic Great Hall, also called the Golden Hall for obvious reasons.
These statues are under the balconies.
We visited the Mozarthaus Museum, but no pictures were allowed. It is more displays of information with an audio guide than a place to feel the reality of his having lived there. I wish I had left more time for the first floor where their actual apartment was.
The twelfth-century St. Stephen's Cathedral is the main square of the city and our meeting place as we scattered to do our own exploring.
We poked our noses inside for a short visit. Awe-inspiring.
Coming from Wisconsin, we couldn't resist sampling the local version of bratwurst for lunch. It was huge and slathered with brown mustard, but didn't have sauerkraut the way Wisconsinites eat it.
After lunch we met the group in front of St. Stephen's to weave through the old buildings to this courtyard of the monastery of the Teutonic Knights, a military order of monks who now work in hospitals instead of fighting crusades. Mozart stayed here briefly when he first came to Vienna. (He moved twelve times during his handful of years in the city mostly due to running out of money. Placards saying he lived there reminded me of "George Washington slept here" in New England.)
This window is the room where we attended a concert by the Mozart Ensemble.
The room was exquisite, but tiny. Our group of 100 needed two separate seatings.
The members of the string quartet were in period costume. Their leader (the second violin, mostly hidden behind the first violin) is Brazilian!
The program was a variety of composers with Viennese connections (except for Bach) and contrasted their styles nicely.
Remember that window in the courtyard? Here it is from the inside.
After our string quartet concert, we wandered over to St. Peter's Church for a free (for donation) organ concert.
The church is very Baroque, cluttered and overdone in Steve's opinion.
October 21/Vienna: The Sala Terrena in Mozarthaus
The Mozart Ensemble
- Mozart: Divertimento in F Major, K. 138
- Schubert: “Rosamunde” Quartet - Andante: Theme & Variations
- JS Bach: Air from Orchestral Suite No. 3
- Beethoven: String Quartet No. 4, Op. 18 (1:30 pm program)
Haydn: String Quartet in C Major “Emperor” (3:00 pm program)
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