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.