pre note: my hairdryer broke. thanks, austrian energy supply...thus the amazing hair in the pics.

another note: ignore the photo for the day...i have to choose one. It is NOT snowing here, nor am I in the Alps (Its actually kinda flat with distant hills, we are closer to the Hungarian plane)

in the morning I woke up with a trip to H+M followed by a kebap sandwich. These are amazing. It is greasy marinated chicken slices (its kind of peeled, like a potato, from a long roast of chicken) in a big roll with this turkish sauce and lettuce and tomato and onion and it tastes amazing. I will have to limit myself to one a week... the food here is all fat and sugar, even with all the walking i do I will have trouble here!

So Schonbrunn...Beautiful from the outside! The grounds of the palace are absolutely breathtaking. We entered from a side, so didn't see the palace straight on and when we came into the gardens between the Gloriette and the main palace we were stunned. The Gloriette looks smaller in pictures (isnt that a first for scenery when you travel!) The gardens were being prepared for the concert that will be held on tuesday there. It is the annual FREE concert by the VIENNA PHILHARMONIC.

[side note: it is impossible to get tickets to the phil. they are sold by subscriptions which are passed down through families and generations and use a weird kind of country club style waiting list to get them...so i purchased standing room only tickets to: LANG LANG AND Wiener Philharmnoiker (Yessssss Lang Lang); Beethoven piano concerto with this random kid who is apparantly an up and comer who is performing on an old piano from that workshop we visited...yay for a classical performance on a classical piano!; Stravinsky's Firebird by the Webern Symphony; Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto; Maurizio Pollini solo in concert. for those keeping track...martha argerich cancelled (not surprised there) and alfred brendel sold out WHILE i was ordering tickets...he was in my cart and i started searching for other concerts :(]

back to Schonbrunn. when we went inside for the english tour given by a british chap with british humor (it was so funny and the delivery was so dry!) We went through 40 of over 1000 rooms! It was hard to remember that this was just their summer residence from May to October. The rooms had very elaborate decoration as you would expect in a palace. Many of them got to be the same after awhile. All square with fabric wallpaper. what i found interesting instead were the paintings and the history behind each room. In addition to the architectural history, I learned a lot about the Hapsburgs, the imperial family that ruled for hundreds of years. they were pretty conniving, but also brilliant to gain so much territory through marriage and not war. it brings new meaning to the phrase "make love, not war." haha I want to go to the other royal museums now. That was the important part of taking the tour, as our tourguide told us that most of the furniture was not in the palace, but instead in the treasury across the city. It isnt something that i can easily sit here and talk about because it is an experience to go through, so you'll just have to come visit me and I'll take you (I'll even pay the 15 euro for you to get in :) My favorite rooms were the great hall where someone had paid 20,000 euro for one night of a "rave" party. unbelievable. However, they were not allowed to exceed a certain number of decibels...no fun.

there was a band competition in the courtyard. that meant about 500 people marching around with instruments and leder hosen. yessssss

I kept comparing this palace to the Biltmore estate that Dad and Ryan and I visited last summer. Biltmore is far more impressive in all aspects, except for the grounds, maybe. As my history professor reminded me, however, Biltmore was trying to be like all the great palaces of Europe. This is the real deal...200 years before Biltmore, summer (secondary) residence and party house, and with significantly different resources as far as decoration. When you do the research, Maria Theresia, the one who modified the palace to the way it looks today, took advantage of every decoration opportunity she had. In one of the room she had bought a bunch of prints from the far east, had them cut up, and put into the wall among carefully cut woodwork. The tourguide compared this to Bill Gates, american royalty, buying a bunch of michaelangelo originals, cutting them up, pasting them together and hanging them on his wall to his liking.

As i mentioned before, the grounds were the most impressive part of the palace to me. There were rose gardens and mazes with walls 15 feet high and flowers with the colors coordinated in the austrian flag and other shapes. It was glorious and so manicured, as you would expect. We walked up the big hill to the Gloriette (and almost died...its been almost to 90 every day here and extremely sunny!) where we sat at the cafe and ate ice cream ( i split a scrumptious banana split with alicia) and enjoyed the view of schonbrunn and Vienna in the background. We went down to the labyrinth and maze and wandered for awhile. The labyrinth was really cool...there were games with water and mirrors and tiles that rung bells when you stepped on them. Fun!

As if that wasn't enough fun for one day, it was Vienna's "Long night of Churches" Where every church in the city was open and giving free programs to the public. We only went to two churches. The first was the Hofburg Chapel, home of the Vienna Boys choir. I watched the best string trio I have ever heard play Bach's Goldberg Variations. They sounded like they were being digitally mastered as they played. It was perfect. in tune. in synch. What vienna should sound like. they also played an extremely exciting Haydn Divertimento for flute, cello and violin. More of the same, and the flutist was exceptional. He played the flute like it was a violin if that makes any sense and i loved it. Then we hopped over to St. Stephansdom which was a madhouse. This cathedral that is the literal center of Vienna. All streets and addresses and districts point to it, and nothing is allowed to be taller, even today. When we walked inside, there were huge triangular screens with faces projected onto them throughout the church, and creepy purple neon lights shot up through each column. It was really cool looking but somewhat scary! I felt like some big organ music should begin at any moment, and it did! Along with the Bruckner mass in d minor. They sounded awesome in the church...it was a full symphony and choir, but hey, they had room for it, even with the 1500 or so people that were probably in the church. We only stuck around for a bit and decided to come home. It was just too crazy. I always get a kick out of some of the people that walk around Vienna feeling entitled to the best standing room or seats that you showed up early for. When we went to a mass last week, a perfectly healthy, middle-aged woman walked up to our pew and instead of watching the service, stared us down...she was downright mean, and then we moved over to give her a spot and she left like 3 minutes later...ugh! Whatever I just have to laugh because im soo not used to behavior like that.

Now we are beat. goodnight.