2016/05 Europe cruise - Vienna |
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Wednesday May 18th
We woke up in the dark right next to another boat; we were triple-parked in Vienna. But it was a good mooring spot, next to the Reichsbrűcke (bridge), closest to the city centre. We could see the United Nations complex on the opposite bank; I’d worked there for a few days back in 1990.
On our side of the river was this massive basilica-style St Francis of Assisi church, located in Mexikoplatz, a square named in thanks to Mexico, one of the few countries to protest the Nazis’ Anschluss into Austria in 1938. 
We took off in the buses for a tour of the sights of Vienna, zooming around the streets amongst a collection of massive baroque slabs, rathaus and museums and palaces. I don’t remember which one is in the picture, but there was another almost identical building across the street. Then we set off walking around some of the palaces while the guide tried to fill us in on the history of the Habsburgs 
who dominated Europe for centuries, but there were just too many names for me to make sense of it all. 
There are, of course, hundreds of statues scattered around Vienna, but these ones of Hercules crop up all over the place. This one was on the Hofburg Palace. I don’t know what the poor guy on the ground had done to deserve that treatment.
We had a glimpse of a Lippizzaner horse, not performing, just being brushed.
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Vienna - Palaces |
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In front of one of the palaces was an excavated area of roadway, showing some Roman ruins, a reminder that these good building 
spots were good thousands of years ago too. The ruins were of a hypocaust, the Romans’ version of underfloor heating, very similar to that used in the “modern” palaces.
Our tour ended at St Stephen’s Cathedral, which towers over the surrounding palaces and government buildings. The stonework is rather dark but the hundreds of thousands of tiles on its roof were brightly shining, showing off the double-headed eagle of the Habsburg’s empire.
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Vienna - St Stephen's |
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Outside were many groups like ours, taking in the statues and listening to their guides’ banter. Inside was a seething mass of people 
trying to see some amazing altars and stained glass and pulpits. Entry to the church was free, but there was a charge to enter the catacombs and parts of the nave. I saw priests wrestling groups of people who didn’t understand this and were barging past them without paying. There were just too many people. It was not a great experience for anybody.
The strange blue clouds in the ceiling represented faith, hope, and charity. They just looked strange in the context.
None of the optional excursions appealed to us and we didn’t want to return to the crowded city centre, so after lunch we headed out of the city to the Hirschstetten flower gardens.
They were outside the scope of our map, but I found a subway station that was within walking distance and we set off on the U-bahn. Vienna has a very extensive and quite cheap transit system that includes trains, trams, buses, and the subway.
The plan was to use our GPS to find the way from the station to the gardens, but it kept freezing up before it found a walking route. We had to walk in the gardens’ vague direction before it decided to help us. We eventually came into the gardens via what might have been the back gate. There were no staff around and most paths were taped off but there was an ancient greenhouse that looked to be open, one of four that held tropical plants and birds and lizards. This was well worth seeing but all the exit doors were locked so we had to backtrack to the gate and take what looked like a service road. Suddenly we were in a network of kiosks, all shuttered, but in
the distance were flowers and people, mainly kids.
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Blumengärten Hirchstetten |
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We came to a section that looked to be a guide for how to build and plant family gardens: flowers or herbs or cactus, or even a partygarten. Beyond were flower beds, shrubs, ornamental trees, large rocks, and some elaborate play equipment for children. It was obviously a popular spot on a sunny afternoon, but we noticed that almost everyone came in from the other direction. That’s what comes of my trying to read directions on German web sites!
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Hirschstetten Gardens (0.38) |
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To get back we had to change U-bahn lines in the centre of Vienna and got to experience the local rush hour, squished into a U-bahn carriage. We barely made it back to the boat in time to eat. “You went where?” was the question at dinner.