Religious buildings, Music, and Bratwurst

A typical view of Vienna, with churches, buildings, trams, tram cables, people, and bikes.

On Thursday last week (Sept 19), the group headed over to BOKU (Natural Resources University) in the afternoon for a seminar with Jan Sendzimir, one of the IGERT collaborators here in Austria (although he is an American expat). Hannah, Ilonka, Noelle, and I decided to walk there, it was about 4 km there. The weather was really beautiful and it was a nice way to see more of the city. The talk was also really interesting, Jan is a really good speaker. He talked with us about adaptive management and his personal experience with "shadow" networks--which are people who are interested in a problem, and may be involved in the official program trying to address the problem, but are also interested in developing an alternative story line and alternative solutions. It was really cool to hear someone talk about adaptive management in a positive way. The setting was also really beautiful, too.

Our seminar was held in this old building.

The "Universitat fur Bodenkultur" (BOKU)

On Friday, Ilonka and I had a Skype meeting with Jan, Piotr, and Bela Borsos, who is our host on the trip to Hungary. We discussed logistics of the trip, mainly how to get from Vienna to Nogykoru, a small town on the Tisza River and how to purchase train tickets to get there. On Friday I also purchased tickets to go to Melk to see the giant abbey that was founded in the 1000's, but the current building was built in the early 1700's.

So we (Ilonka, Nathan, Marie, Vicky, Shelli, and I) got on the train to Melk Saturday morning, about 8am, and rode for only about 1.5 hours. The train was going 225 kilometers per hour at one point! When we got to it was a little chilly, but Melk is a really cute little town so we warmed up walking around. In the town center, I grabbed a cannoli-type snack to fuel up before the short trek up the hill to the abbey. We didn't take a tour of the abbey, but walking around it was fun because Vicky had a Rick Steve's book that explained a lot of the details. She made a good tour guide for me (I was the only one that stuck with her the whole time)!

Fast!

One of our first views of the abbey over the town of Melk

Inside the first courtyard at the abbey.

The group in a second court yard.

In this photo (or at least in person from this angle) the ceiling
looked curved. It was really a beautiful painting in the "Marble Room".

Interestingly, the columns were painted curved
like this so that the ceiling looked rounded if you were in the middle
of the room. It's a pretty neat effect!

A view of the town from the abbey's gardens.

View of the town and the abbey from the gardens.

The abbey towers over the Danube (behind me in this photo).

After we finished visiting the abbey, we grabbed lunch in town, where it started to rain (thankfully I'd brought my backpack cover and my rain jacket). We headed to the boat dock to catch our river cruise on the Danube back towards Vienna. On our walk we had a great view of the abbey towering over us on the rocky cliff. At the boat dock, there were hoards of tourists that were being dropped off by tour buses, so it was a crush to get onto the actual boat. But Shelli and I managed to secure a nice table on the sundeck so we could see the sights as we passed, and Vicky once again described for us what we were seeing. Once back in Vienna, I totally crashed from exhaustion and went to bed pretty early, I had an exciting day planned for Sunday, after all!

One of the bunch of castles we saw on our boat trip down the Danube.

We had nearly perfect weather for this trip--the clouds made for
much more interesting photos.

On Sunday, Vicky Noelle, and I headed out early to see the Vienna Boys Choir perform in their "home" church, the Hofburg Chapel. According to my research, this Sunday Mass service with the Vienna Boys Choir has been ongoing since 1498. Vicky and I bought tickets for 7 Euros, and we were on the second floor in the room with windows that looked into the actual chapel; we could not actually see the service from where we were sitting, but we could hear the music pretty well. The boys sing from  up on the highest balcony, so most people can't even see them singing. But we could hear them, and they do a live stream and feed it to televisions that we could watch (of both the boys choir and the service). So this was an interesting experience, I would say probably worth 7 Euros, but I wouldn't go back.

This is how I watched the Mass and Vienna Boys Choir (on
screen), we could hear them pretty well.

Vienna Boy's Choir home church, where they've
been assisting with Mass since 1498.

After that we headed to St. Augustine Church, which was less than five minutes walking. The church was founded in 1327 by Duke Frederick the Handsome, and became the imperial church in 1634. As such, the weddings of many important people took place here, including that of Maria Theresa, in 1736, and Marie Louise in 1810 to Napoleon Bonaparte. The interior was remodeled in the Gothic style in the 18th century. Also, what I thought was most interesting, was that the church was essentially engulfed by the Hapsburg's expanding winter palace (the Hofburg) and is now part of the complex, rather than a stand-alone building. The main reason we went here was to hear the church music during Mass, which is quite famous (and totally free). There was a full orchestra and choir, of course we could not see them because they were up in the balcony with the organ. But it was a really beautiful church and the music was awesome.

Inside St. Augustine's Church, apologies for the
crappy, low-light photo...

Inside St. Augustine's, where Maria Theresa is buried

Vicky and I attempted to go to FiglMuller for lunch, which is famous for Wiener Schnitzel, but it was too busy. So we instead went to a place nearby. The food was delicious, but the service was terrible. Our waiter was grouchy with us and we could not get his attention in order to pay the bill. We speculate that because servers here in Europe don't make a living from tips like in the US, but instead get a small commission off whatever their customers purchase (apparently), they don't pay much attention to their low-paying guests (like poor students). But either way the food was good, so that's what matters most.

I had bratwrust and sauerkraut for lunch, yum! Then I went home.