Fritag 3 Juni:

Today was the scavenger hunt for the class. The object of which was to go around to different sights around Vienna and take selfies in front of them. The first group to find all 10 sights and send in their selfies was to win the scavenger hunt and would receive a prize. I wanted my group to win, so we worked hard to complete the tasks. We began hour scavenger hunt at the Theater and der Wien before heading to the Brahms statue in ___ park and going to the Musicverein, after which we then began out search through the city center. In the city center we were to find landmarks relating to Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart which included the place where Beethoven’s 9th was premiered, the house where Mozart lived when he composed Le Nozzie die Figaro, Peterskirche, the plague monument, and the old Burgtheater. After the building in the city center, the last was the Rathause, or the seat of Wien’s city government.

After the scavenger hunt, one member of the group had not eaten breakfast, so we made a pit stop by a satellite location of Zanoni and Zanoni for gelato, water, and coffee which we enjoyed in the park around the Statue of Schiller. Park culture is very important in the life of the Viennese – and the same could be said of coffee house culture – many Viennese can be seen in the parks relaxing throughout the day. As one may of the city of Vienna said, “Parks are like the lungs of a city.”

In the Hofburg complex lies the Burggarten, or the imperial garden where the imperial family would spend time outside when in the city. Franz Josef highly prized his time in this garden and had a Jugendstil glasshouse had installed to hold a tropical oasis of butterflies called the Schmetterlinghaus. While I feel the 7 euro price tag for adults is a bit steep for the little amount of time one spends in the Schmetterlinghaus, the experience is still good. After buying your ticket, you progress through the turnstile into a holding area, which is supposed to help keep the butterflies in their habitat. One in the holding area, you can now enter the glasshouse. The glasshouse is filled with a variety of tropical plants including bananas and papayas. If you stand still close a flower, a butterfly might land on you, as one did to me! It was a fun experience in the Schmetterlinghaus, but it is not something that should be rushed. When you take your time to enjoy it, the price tag is not so bad.

We walked to the Musikverein after the butterfly garden to meet up with the larger group for our tour at 12:15. Of all the guided tours of performing spaces on this tip, it was the best one! While the Staatsoper is a towering building over the ringstraße the tour was not the best as can be seen in a prior entry. The tour guide here was extremely knowledgeable about the building and really made the spaces come alive. The building was designed by ____ in the Neo-classical style and built between the years ____. The original building hosted a grand staircase in the lobby, but it was removed in a renovation around 1911 to allow for more space for the patrons to mingle during the intermissions, which as a relatively new idea for orchestral performances. The main hall – Golden Hall – is home to the Vienna Philharmonic. Once a year they perform their New Year’s Concert Series during December 30, 31, and January 1. The Friends of Music club financed the building when it was first built as propaganda to claim Vienna as the city of music, the same with a few other sites around Vienna sponsored by the same club. (I am constantly saying to myself on this trip now to look for the propaganda in everything. It’s all done for a reason to advance some agenda.) Since the club did not have a large pool of money to build from, much of the building is wood and plaster painted over in gold and to look like marble. From a distance, much of it does in fact look like marble. The tour also ventured into the Brahms room. Before the Second World War the Brahms room hosted an organ, which was used in recitals and lessons. During the final months of the war, a bomb landed on the Musikverein destroying the organ and causing other damage to the room. When the building was repaired following the war, the organ was not reinstalled. Now this small hall is used for smaller recitals and chamber music that might not sell the number of seats needed for the Golden Hall. The complex hosts more recitals halls than we saw on the tour, some being underground. These underground halls allows there to be 6 or more concerts/ recitals happening in the building at the same time.

After the tour, I ventured to Kartnerstraße to shop a bit at Peek and Cloppenburg, a department sotre on the main shopping street. I was overjoyed to be able to pick up a couple of shirts that are hard to come by in the United States due to the trends of athleisure wear becoming so popular. With a bit more time before I needed to be dressed and ready for Don Giovanni at the Staatsoper, I attempted to mail a couple of posters back to the states, but due to new shipping regulations and filling out the onine forms, I was unable.

The production of Don Giovanni featured a wonderful cast of singers who were misguided by their staging director. The staging and set design lacked much to be desired and often hindered the audience’s perception of the action on stage. After the production I went back to the hostel and prepared for bed.