I'm a bit apprehensive about how much to write on these posts about those great cities I visited. The other week when I had posted my first day's experiences of Vienna, Elijah just made me laugh. He kept reading and reading my Vienna post, and when he was done reading it, he said: Wow! That tired me out. I'm ready for a meal!
Our second day of Vienna started with a visit to the Opera House. Its construction started in 1861 and was finished in 1869, completed in a Noe-Renaissance style. At the time of its building, the street on which it was built raised higher than the opera house itself, so the public started calling it the sunken treasure chest. Nevertheless, it is a glorious building with amazing architecture completed with marble columns and gilded gold ceilings and decorations. Right before the end of World War II, the opera house was almost burnt by the American bombardments. The stage and the auditorium were burnt completely, but the ball rooms, the foyer with its gorgeous frescoes, and most of the front section were saved. The reconstruction of the building took a while, but in 1955 the doors of the opera house were opened once more. The auditorium was rebuilt to hold 2100 seats and 567 standing places (each of those seating and standing places were installed with their own individual translation equipment.) The seats and the curtains were patterned after the original ones, but the ceilings' fresco and the interior architecture had a definite 50's feel, which I wasn't too wild about. This opera house is one of the most busiest opera houses in the world with 50-60 different operas performing throughout the year, with about 200 performances averaging a year. With the exception of July and August, you could hear a different opera every day of the week. The love for classical music, and especially that for the opera, was seen as a cultural heritage to the Viennese people, and as such they were willing to allow the government to use their tax money for almost 50% of the expenses that were required to sustain a staff of 1000 people. Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed my tour.
I took this picture the night before on our way to our hostel:
The auditorium:
The Foyer and the Ballroom:
As we were strolling around Vienna, I happen upon a statue of one of my favorite writers during my younger years, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
As you have probably established by now, I've a lot of favorite authors and artists, but Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a guiding force in molding my young personality. I even had his picture on my wall alongside Shakespeare, Moliere, and Dostoevsky. I've read his poems and his masterpieces, Faust and The Sorrows of Young Werther, many times over. I had a quote book with half of it from Shakespeare's plays and half from Faust. Goethe was a kind of a writer that appealed to my young soul with his impassioned poems and thoughtful emotions. He was born in Germany in the late 1700's and made a mark in the literary circles of that time. He was a great poet, writer, politician, lawyer, scientist, artists, in short a well rounded men. His ideas, along with those of Schiller's made up a literary genre called Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress). The views of this new movement were a mix of the Age of Reason thoughts and those of personal contemplations such as Emerson and Thoreau in America expressed. It became a bridge toward Romanticism of the late 1700's with its free expression of emotion and individual contemplation. I personally enjoyed his passionate, but thoughtful impressions about life, religion, science and love. Here are some poetic sayings from his works:As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures.
Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.
"[Words] must flow out from the heart. And, when the soul is touched with passion's flame, We look around and ask - Who burns the same?"
"All that philosophy can teach,
The lore of jurist and of leech, I've mastered, ah!
and sweated through Theology's dead deserts, too,
Yet here, poor fool! for all my lore, I stand no wiser than before."
There was this sad poem I remember reading from his collections of poems that absolutely tore my soul apart. I still get the same feverish feeling when I read it.(My cousin Blerta has this theory about me that because I read so many Greek tragedies, Hans Christian Anderson' s very sad fairy tales, and heart-breaking literature from melancholic authors such as Dostoevsky and Goethe while young, I can't stand nowadays watching anything but happy-ending movies. Reading these kind of masterpieces such as Faust was all worth it and made me who I am today.) The poem titled the Erlkonig, deals with a folkloric character the Erlking, a mean magical creature who lives in the forests and preys on travelers at night. Goethe got the inspiration for writing such a ballad when one evening he was visiting a friend. While talking to each other, they saw through the window a farmer carrying his son in his horse toward the doctor's house. At that time many children were dying as a result of various sicknesses. This was Goethe's deep expressions about those hard felt events. Schubert later on wrote music to it and it has become one of the most heard German Lied. Here is the poem (it's sounds way better in German and in the Albanian translation of it, or maybe that's just my nostalgia speaking):
The Erlking
Who's riding so late through th' endless wild?
The father 't is with his infant child;
He thinks the boy 's well off in his arm,
He grasps him tightly, he keeps him warm.
My son, say why are you hiding your face ?
Oh father, the Erlking 's coming apace,
The Erlking 's here with his train and crown!
My son, the fog moves up and down. -
Be good, my child, come, go with me!
I know nice games, will play them with thee,
And flowers thou 'It find near by where
I live, pretty dress my mother will give."
Dear father, oh father, and do you not hear
What th' Erlking whispers so close to my ear?
Be quiet, do be quiet, my son,
Through leaves the wind is rustling anon.
Do come, my darling, oh come with me!
Good care my daughters will take of thee,
My daughters will dance about thee in a ring,
Will rock thee to sleep and will prettily sing."
Dear father, oh father, and do you not see
The Erlking's daughters so near to me?
My son, my son, no one 's in our way,
The willows are looking unusually gray.
I love thee, thy beauty I covet and choose,
Be willing, my darling, or force I shall use!
"Dear father, oh father, he seizes my arm!
The Erlking, father, has done me harm.
The father shudders, he darts through the wild;
With agony fill him the groans of his child.
He reached his farm with fear and dread;
The infant son in his arms was dead.
Our stroll through Vienna continued and we stopped to observe, read, eat and learn at various highlights of the city.
We were able to find the Sacher Hotel famous for their world class desserts, especially the Sacher Torte, tucked in between old buildings that were renovated to my soul's delight and used now as first class hotels.
We visited several parks and saw several monuments dedicated to the Austrian genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The picture below shows one of my favorite little parks dedicated to his memory. Of course the buildings that were next to each of those parks had something to do with music either as music schools or performance houses.
Next we visited the government district where most of the political life of the city took place.The Viennese people had converted the old and magnificent royal buildings into edifices where governmental and social events took place. Here is the City Hall that with its lacy towers of 325 feet reaching the sky could put to shame any government building of today.
This building was surrounded by an amazing and spacious park and several restaurants at the base. Across the street, politicians could cool off their nerves by attending plays, concerts, and symphonies at the Burgstheater, or the Play House.
To the right of these buildings, the Austrian Parliament Building is found. It was in this building the Hapsburg Empire declared itself collapsed and where the new republic was formed. The architecture is absolutely Greek as you can see from the columns and the many statures adorning the facades. The most obvious one is the statue of Athena in the front of the building, which is said to have been placed there by the architect to declare with its presence the love for freedom and wisdom of the Austrian people as the Greeks of old once did:
In the vicinity of these great buildings, we happen upon the university of Vienna, and in the proximity of that we saw a spacious and interesting park. I loved the monuments placed here and there in the park, but what caught my attention mostly were the folding chairs placed all over the lawn just for people to sit and rest. I love this city!!!
Across the park and next to the University stood this really imposing cathedral that took my breath away with its flawless architecture and lacy towers reaching the sky at 99 meters. The Votivkirsche was built by the brother of the Emperor Franz Joseph I as an expression of thanks to God for saving the Emperor from an assassination. The name 'votiv' stands for 'thank offering.' It was built by the donations from 300000 Austrian, who just like the Emperor's brother, were grateful for their leader's survival.
The most interesting part about this cathedral is the fact that although it looks without a doubt a Medieval building with its dark and powerful presence, including the high towers inside and outside, it is actually built in late 1800's. Its imitations of that period are impeccable and of course are implemented even better with the later information and experiences. My favorite things about this Gothic style cathedral were the bright colors found in the windows as well as in the ceilings. It softened the cosmic presence that everything else reflects in such monumental buildings.
Not wanting Elijah to be starving while reading this long post of mine, I'll conclude my reminiscing of Vienna by sharing my impressions of one of the highlights of this trip, The Palace of Schonbrun. Seen individually each building doesn't strike you as a memorable experience, but taken in its entirety the Palace, the gardens, the sculptures, the fountains, the statues, the Zoo (the oldest Zoo in Europe), and my favorite the Gloriette, a little building on top of the hill, together they make an unforgettable sight and offered me a very relaxing, learning and breath taking adventure.
This palace was used by several Hapsburg royal families as a summer house. Its building started in the 1500's and continued its construction, renovations and addition for several hundred years. Each monarch would better it and add something of his own. The Palace itself has about 1500 rooms decorated mostly in the very flourishing style of Rococo. Its open to the public with the purchase of tour tickets. The Gardens and the grounds however are open to public for their enjoyment, and they of course are created after the Baroque style, with later Rococo flourishes added to it. There is a Zoo, a Puppet Theater in one of the Garden Huts (they are not huts actually, but these gorgeous small rooms built in the Neo-Classical style), a Palm Pavilion with plants form all over the world and a few other green houses, making it one of the biggest Botanical Gardens in the world. And of course there is the spacious garden and ground that encompasses hundreds of acres of land, all accessible to the public. Today, in addition to tours and other entertainment, you can hear and attend during the evening and all day on week-ends world class musicians playing and singing classical music. If I lived in Vienna, it would take me days to explore all that this Palace has to offer, and I would be there every week-end without a doubt. Schonbrun was truly spellbinding!
I was interested to know how the highly impressive Palace of Versailles would score with this profoundly welcoming estate. Stay tuned to find out which one received the higher ranking...
