Bloom and Grow Forever: Easter Break Continued: Tour-guiding in Vienna

After a beautiful, wonderful, family-filled, and refreshingly warm week in Israel, the 'rents and I flew back to freezing, gray, yet still undeniably charming Vienna. We only had about three days before the start of our next trip, but we managed to pack a lot of stuff into those few days! Because the weather was so dreary, we visited a lot of museums, starting with the Jewish Museum, which I had visited before. There was a new exhibit that I had not yet seen called "Alles Meschuuge?" which was all about Jewish humor! I found it to be really fun and interesting, so I'm glad I had an excuse to go back to the museum and see it. By the time we got out of the museum, the sun had come out (although it only lasted a few hours) so we seized the opportunity to walk around the city a bit. We did a sort of greatest hits tour throughout the Innenstadt (the city center), walking around and inside the famous Ringstrasse. Here are some pictures from that day:

On the steps of Parliament, with the Athena column
and part of the Hofburg palace in the background

In front of the only Roman Ruins in Vienna, which are right
outside the main gate of the Hofburg

A trip to Vienna would not be complete
without a visit to Cafe Central! (the first of
many Kafee und Kuchen experiences of the trip)

Cutest Elephant statue I've ever seen, in front of the
Natural History Museum

We ended that day with the Freyung Easter Market. Although it's the only Easter Market in the Innenstadt, it is a great one!

The next day we visited the Albertina, arguably the most famous art museum in Vienna. There was an exhibit on the dutch artists Breugel, Rembrandt, Bosch, and Rubens, one on Max Ernst (crazy but cool surrealist painter), and one from the collection of the Batliner family which held everything from Monet to Picasso to Chagall to Degas to modern people I've never heard of but still had cool art. I enjoyed that exhibit a lot. There was also a special photography exhibit that featured a photographer from Newport Beach, and had a lot of pictures from various locations in Orange County, including Irvine! Even though we couldn't recognize anything because it was minimalist photography from the 1970s (and Irvine has changed SO much since then), it was still very exciting!!!

Despite the cold we headed next to the Naschmarkt, the permanent outdoor market just outside the city center, and then braved the weather again at the Schönbrunn Easter Market. This market is the most famous in Vienna and I wanted to make sure we got a chance to see it before it ended, and I am so glad we did! Even though it was col, it was still filled with people of all ages, as well as tons of food and drinks and beautiful crafts. If only the weather hadn't been so horrible!!

This lady in the stilts chicken costume
was the coolest

Everybody knows the song about dreaming of a white Christmas, but no one wrote about dreaming of a white Easter, and there's good reason. IT SHOULD NOT SNOW ON EASTER. Yet, when we woke up Easter morning, there was a good 4 inches of snow on the ground. Easter is supposed to represent Spring, and snow does not equal Spring. But the very un-easter-like weather did not stop us from celebrating the holiday in full force. No siree. In fact, on Easter Sunday we visited not one, not two, but THREE different churches. Vienna is famed for its beautiful church music, and Easter Sunday is the perfect time to experience it. We started at the Minoritenkirche, where the Italian community worships (there's even a replica of the Last Supper on one of the walls). There we heard a choir perform Mozart's Coronation Mass, which was beautiful. We then headed to my church, the Vienna Community Church, a non-denominational English-speaking congregation that meets in the VERY yellow Freie Evangelische Kirche not far from church #1. We then killed time in one of my favorite cafe/restauraunts, trying to stay warm, before church #3 of the day: St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom). There we heard Mozart Vespers, also a beautiful piece, and very exciting for me because I finally got the chance to go inside the nave, where normally you have to pay to go! So hooray! Here are pictures from all of that: