A Café with Cats! Oh, and the Prater, Albertina, and Beethoven, Too

I would say that last weekend was thoroughly successful. For starters, the Wake group was rendezvousing at the Schweizerhaus in the Prater for a final lunch on Saturday. Although I'm not happy to see them go, it was a really nice final get-together and everyone was in great spirits. Not to mention the food and beer are definitely must-trys. Their signature meal, the crispy Hintere Schweinsstelze, is essentially a giant fried pig knuckle. It looks a little something like this:

Photo curtesy of the Schweizerhaus

Weird, right? Perhaps even gross? Oh no, no no no. This thing is utterly delicious, and not to be tackled alone. That, followed by some Schweizerhaus beer chocolate, a skee-ball horse race, and bumper cars, made for a fine afternoon.

But that wasn't all. I also went to the Albertina that afternoon as it was one of the final days of an Impressionist exhibition that I wanted to see. I decided to get a yearly pass, too, which for students is only 30€ - at normally 8€ a visit for students this means I only have to go three more times and it will have paid for itself. I plan on going to the Albertina more than three times in the next year. Plus I get a discount in the gift shop, and they tend to have pretty good offerings. I may have already taken advantage of that perk as well.

But wait! There's more! After getting my dose of artistic culture, I headed for a café nearby that I had read about having just opened: Café Neko. Okay, it's been established by this point that I like Viennese cafés. However, what I don't think I've mentioned as of yet is that I also like cats. I like a lot of other things as well, however, when I found out that two of the seemingly unrelated things that I like were combined, well, how could I not check it out? Yes, this is Vienna's one and only cat café. They had to go through a lot of work to get all of the health regulations approved, as you might imagine, but apparently this is a very popular concept in Japan and Takako Ishimitsu and her husband decided to take on the project. So, if you would like a cat with your coffee, there's only one place to go and hang out with five furry new friends.

But just when my day couldn't get any better, a glance at my phone told me it was time to pick up David for dinner and a concert. He had made reservations for us at Texas Steak House near the Stadthalle. That was about as good as I expected it to be, but afterwards we went to the Konzerthaus for a performance of some Beethoven pieces by the Belcea Quartet which was formed in 1994 by students from the Royal College of Music in London. They played Beethoven's String Quartet No. 5 in A major, Op. 18 no. 5 and his String Quartet in B major, Op. 130, with the Große Fuge, Op. 133. The playing was very good, very clean, very enjoyable. I was also quite enchanted by the venue. I've been inside the Konzerthaus a number of times, but always in the Großer Saal, the great hall, until Saturday night. The Belcea Quartet was playing in the Mozart Saal, a powder blue room with stained glass behind the stage and delicate gilt scrolling around the ceiling. I think it's been below my radar in the past, but I'll have to make an effort to be aware of what's playing there in the future.

Also included in the weekend, although not on Saturday: Anna and I went to see The Sound of Music at the Volksoper on Friday night. Interestingly, it was all in German, except for perhaps five lines sung or spoken in English, and very good, but very truncated; there was practically no development between Maria and Georg. However I was pleased and a little surprised to see that there was a full audience that night, even if many of the viewers were children (and loud and distracting ones at that - something I feel the Viennese would never tolerate if it was just a handful of children, but I suppose it being a whole crowd of them they just didn't bother to quiet them). Still, it was interesting to watch. The singing festival at the end was very in-your-face Nazi, too, with a giant swastika behind the von Trapp family as they sang, soldiers at attention stationed throughout the audience with guns, and a group of Nazi officials spotlighted in one of the boxes as attendees. Very un-Austrian. It was all very entertaining to say the least.

My one other discovery of late is Mayer am Pfarrplatz, a Heuriger associated with the Sky Bar. Also a restaurant (Pfarrwirt), it's in a little nook in the 19th district (but not near Grinzing or Neustift am Walde, the two Heurigen-heavy areas of Vienna). As far as I can tell, the only difference between the two is that you're in the 'restaurant' if you sit inside and in the 'heuriger' if you sit in their garden. This is some of the best heurigen food I've eaten so far, though the prices reflect that a little. Everything I tried or noticed anyone else had ordered was rather simple fare but very well prepared to bring out the flavors. It looked like it would be hard to go wrong with just about anything you ordered there. I'll definitely have to go back, and soon I hope.

And Yesterday I was Back in Texas...

I have recently made friends with my tailor and have gone out for drinks with her and her boyfriend a few times. Her boyfriend just happens to be part of a band, Die Wilden Kaiser, and they were playing at a Dorffest, essentially a village party, on Sunday. Manuela invited me to come along so I really couldn't pass up the opportunity. We got there relatively late, around 4:00pm - the party started at 10:00 - and everywhere I looked there were brown leather pants and dresses with aprons like The Sound of Music. And beer. Lots of beer.

We made our way down the main street (uh, the only street in the village? Quite possibly.) until we caught sight of her boyfriend. They were set to go on stage in about ten minutes, so we grabbed a drink and found a table near the stage and waited. There were plenty of people milling about, but when Die Wilden Kaiser started playing I looked behind me to see that people had flocked over. Although I think I understood about 3% of the words (I have a lot of trouble understanding German music), apparently they take traditional Austrian folk music, the songs everyone grew up hearing their grandparents sing, and give it a bit of a rock twist. However, the best part was that within a song or two everyone started dancing. And, what kind of dancing? A slight variation on square dancing and two stepping! Seriously, I could have been back at a dance hall after a rodeo - guys in button-up shirts, hats that had a strong resemblance to cowboy hats except that they were a little floppy, and tight brown leather pants instead of jeans (but really, it was almost like they were just still wearing their chaps), spinning girls in country skirts and pigtail braids around to some good ol' 'country' music, or girls getting together in groups of four and doing a sort of square dance, surreptitiously looking over their shoulders to see which guys were watching. And of course everyone was drinking beer.

Even the kids were dressed up in traditional wear. There was an especially cute kid that just loved the band and kept sneaking over to watch after every time his dad pulled him away. He even had a bandana around his neck! Come on, does it get any more country?

Unfortunately I didn't get to stay long because the Wake group was putting on a "Schubertiade" that evening - essentially a final mini-concert. I got to hear a fabulous performance by Nick of Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 28, among other things. A bit of a change from the rock folk music, but it was all really entertaining and everyone did a fantastic job. I'm glad that I got to attend both events!

Whitney in Wien

Whitney was in town for a business trip last week and was able to extend her stay for a few extra days, so I got to show her and her boss around. It was great seeing Whitney because I only ever get to see her for one dinner a year. She's not exactly family, but close enough. Unfortunately for the most part I had work or class during her free time, but I did get two great half-days with her.

I had already given her advice on where to go and what to see close to the city center, so the first morning that I got with Whitney and Leslie I took them out to Schönbrunn. I figure that's definitely a must-see, and since it was a little further out it was easier to get there via car. It was a little overcast and chilly that morning, but there weren't too many tourists there. We started with the abbreviated tour through the palace, hoping that the weather would improve a little over the next hour (no cigar). However the palace was, as ever, informative and interesting to walk through, and I think that both of them really enjoyed it. As an aside: the postcards in that giftshop are some of the better ones I've seen in Vienna (we were of course ushered through there before we could exit).

We then wandered the gardens a bit, although we didn't climb all of the way up to the Gloriette. I just adore the grounds of Schönbrunn, though; it's always so pleasant walking along the tree-lined paths and letting the dappled sun splash across your face and shoulders... Not that there was any sunlight streaming through the trees this time, but that's still something I enjoy. A lot was just blooming, too, which made the walk especially nice. I was also impressed at how much Leslie knew about the various types of trees we came across.

After strolling for about half an hour I took them to Schönbrunner Stöckl, the Czech restaurant that David had taken Anna and me to which is right at the corner of the Schönbrunn grounds. We had a great lunch and I introduced them to Radlers, a beer-lemonade drink which is especially popular in the Bavaria region during summers. Unfortunately after that I had to get back to work, but we figured out a good itinerary for the rest of their day before I left.

Saturday I was also able to spend some time with them, so after work in the morning I headed over to their hotel. We had discussed going out to the Zentral Friedhof, the Central Cemetery, if the weather was nice, which it was, so we decided to start out there and work our way back towards the center of Vienna. I had gone out the previous fall with my Dad, but we never did find the graves of the musical masters, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. However this time around I bought a map, a great 20¢ investment, and we wandered down the surprisingly scenic lanes until we found them.

Conveniently most of the great composer's graves were all situated in one plot, so we saw Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Gluck, all of the Strauss brothers plus Strauss Senior, and a cenotaph for Mozart even though he's actually in a mass grave somewhere in the nearby St. Marx Cemetery.

Mozart and Beethoven, respectively

Although the cemetery only opened in 1875, there are some beautiful gravestones and it still has a very old feel to it despite how well kept-up it is. We didn't even begin to see all of it even though we spent well over an hour there because it's one of the largest cemeteries in the world. Morbid as it may sound, I would love to get back out there and just wander aimlessly down the shady curving paths. I'll just have to make sure not to get lost and end up there permanently.

I took them back to the Naschmarkt after that, figuring they could pick up a Viennese delicacy or two and just enjoy the experience of wandering through the stalls and getting some free handouts. We stopped for a quick snack at the Zotter chocolate shop and I helped them choose a few things from the various stalls to try and to take home. I had to get back to work after that, but gave them a few more recommendations for their last evening there and said my goodbyes to Whitney until I see her again over Christmas. I think they had a really good trip, tough; I definitely had a blast showing them around!