tried souls
The past couple of days have not been super happy ones. Please post pics/vids of cute kittens? ;-;
Monday consisted of a lot of walking. Unfortunately, my camera died fairly early on during our morning tour of the Leopold Museum so I have very few photos.
In the courtyard formed by the buildings of the museum quartier, there are these weird plastic chair things.
Why are they there? No one knows.
Artsy shot of the front of the Leopold. Prepare yourself for a lot of pretentious photography in this post, y'all.
The Leopold was alarmingly busy, much to our surprise. As it turned out, a particularly famous painting by Egon Schile was being hung in the museum again after a long hiatus due to a court case about the legitimacy of the museum's ownership. Dr. Leopold, who collected all the art that now hangs in the museum, had bought the painting on good faith from an art dealer in the 50's. What he did not know at the time was that the painting had originally been stolen from its owners by the Nazis during WWII. So blah blah blah, court case stuff, it was determined the painting belonged to the museum. So the museum got its painting back and I got a free poster and orange juice.
Welcome back, Wally, indeed.
I was rather obsessed with these flowers, because they were so large, and orange. Truth be told, I found them rather mesmerizing.
Oh look, a Klimt painting. You can tell it's a later work, due to its lack of bling. (or, more tactfully, the gold leaf Klimt liked to coat everything with when he was young. Oh well, you work with what you know, and he was originally trained to be a goldsmith) This is not the painting's original incarnation, either. It's first rendition was much less ornate, but after the onset of WWI, Klimt repainted Death's head to create that particularly sinister skull, and added extra figures to the mass of Life.
I don't quite know why, but this Schile sketch really speaks to me.
A lovely quote, but it's especially interesting once you read the bottom tagline.
Oh Freud, you so crazy.
Alas, this is about when my camera died. So there is no documentary evidence of the rest of the museum (which containted some truly freakish art), nor our later walking tour through the historic Jewish district, nor the horrifically expensive but very tasty veal I ate for dinner. Ah well, you live and learn.
On Tuesday, we went to Mauthausen. I don't feel comfortable giving commentary, nor posting all my pictures (most of which are of the sky), so here a just a few.
That afternoon, we went to the town of Waidhofen. According to our guide, who is an English teacher there, it is just an ordinary Austrian town.
Sure this is ordinary. It's completely ordinary to be a perfectly picturesque little town.
With giant gold statues found in multiple squares around a village with a population of 4000.
And giant memorials to how they kept the Turkish Ottomans at bay during the 16th century. Ordinary, my ass.
Doop de doop, artsy photo inside of their Rathaus.
Oh look, another artsy photo!
Artsy photo with epic sky~ (are you bored, yet?)
~oooo~ ~reflections~ (because I could keep going for hours)
Oh hay! It's a church! One dedicated to St. Catherine, even. Did you know that St. Catherine is the patron saint of bakers? Upon learning this factoid, my life suddenly made a lot more sense.
I have to say, there is a reason that European men aren't known for a particularly manly sense of style.
Why yes, Virginia. That is a hot pink sweater paired with a baby blue polo shirt.
And then we went to dinner. The restaurant was located in a lovely courtyard that I want to live in forever and ever.
Ivy! Medieval stone work! Be still my beating heart!
I never wanted to leave
In the restaurant~
BIER!
GLASSWARE! (from Ikea) Also, an empty bread basket. Strangely enough, all the water glasses, despite being from Ikea, were made either in Russia or Bulgaria. I had a Russian cup.
Mmm, chicken and potato salad. I could have gotten the spinach ravioli instead, but I had barely eaten anything that day, much less anything with protein. So chicken it was. We also got soup, but I ate it before I remembered to take pictures. Too hungry.
Taffenstrudel, apfelstrudel, and vanilla sauce. NOM.
And then we ran through the rain back to the tour bus and sang Journey all the way back to Vienna.