Art Class Outing

A Visit to Vienna - October 18

One of our best excursions is a trip to Vienna.  We visit palaces, museums and then also have a special trip to the Vienna Staatsoper.

We stayed at the Wombat Hostel over by the Naschmarkt.

We arrived in the evening and then headed out on a walking tour to see the Ringstrasse and get some dinner and some ice cream. We started off by walking through the Naschmarkt.

Vienna is a beuatiful city by both day and night.

It was interesting to see this man in a suit on a scooter.

 

We also decided to go out and see the Hundertwasser house. Friedrich Hundertwasser was an artist/architect of the mid 20th century, who hated straight lines and loved bright colors. You can't really see the colors at night, but you can tell the houses are unusual.

Here is a daytime shot. The protection of nature was very important to Hundertwasser, so it is fitting to have beautiful autumn foliage in the picture.

 

Breakfasts in the hostel were pleasant occasions.

 

... full of animated conversations.

We would gather in the foyer before we went on our outings, where it was comfy.

 

We had a weekend tram/subway pass, so we could get all over the city easily.

One of our first outings was to Schloß Schönbrunn, which had strong connections to Maria Theresia and Franz Josef, some of the Habsburg monarchs we had been studying.

One of our students stands guard over the garden while others watch.

One cool attraction on the grounds of the palace is a set of mazes.  Here you can see some of our students navigating the hedge maze.

In the center was an observation platform so you could look at the lay out of the maze and watch people making the wrong turns.

 Victory!

There was also a playground that our students took advantage of.

By pulling on the bars, the bird flaps its wings and moves up and down.

And the people inside the bird get a nice ride.

 

Schönbrunn has a famous zoo too with lots of exotic animals.

We also visited the Nationalbibliothek (National Library). Many Habsburgs contributed to the collection starting in the early middle ages. Under Maximillian II there were over 9000 volumes, but it was Charles VI in 1722 who founded the building in fine Barock style.

 

Our tour guide explained the various changes to the structure, the meaning of the ceiling paintings and showed us secret rooms behind the books where they kept (what else?) more books.

Anyone can get a library card and request to look at books from the library.

Here is a little connection to Minnesota and Bob Dylan.  He evidently used an image from the parliament building as an album cover!

We used the subway to get to our evening. Our students looked absolutley fabulous in their opera clothing.

We had a wonderful traditional Austrian meal before the performance.

The opera we saw was The Barber of Seville. The opera house was of course gorgeous.

 

Here are a few images form the Staatsoper website to show you a bit of what we saw.

 And here we are in all our glory!

The next day we had a special treat - a visit to an exhibit of Albrecht Durer in the Albertine.

Durer was a magnificent artist who brought the ideas of the Italian Renaissance to German lands.

 

I think we wore them out!

 We also visited an exquisite exhib on Caravaggio and Bernini in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

WE also took a look at the Klimt paintings  in the main hall.

Here is a close up of the one representing Egypt.

I couldn't resist including a painting we saw of Maria Theresia.

 Sooner than we wanted it was time to meet the bus and head home.

On the way home, though, we saw a hint of things to come. This is the monastery in Melk that we will visit in December.

Midpoint Birthday

It is so hard to believe, but mid October represents the middle of our program and we had a birthday to celebrate reaching the half way point.  I thought it would be nice for people to see the "meat and potatoes" of the program, because this is a program for studying abroad and not just taking excursions.

Here are some shots of students in the class rooms.

On this day we were celebrating not only a birthday, but alsohaving a typical "Viennese breakfast".

 

Between classes students often hang out on the top of the University building, where there are stunning views of the mountains.

 

There is a central courtyard and a kind of Quad on the roof.  I love this shot of DM walking along the far end of this quad. You can see Salzburg's  medieval city wall in the background.