Vienna, Day 4

We started the day attending mass at St. Stephen. In order to see the church up close, you must either pay for a tour, or attend mass. We went to the main service with the choir and orchestra and organ. The music was amazing.

Trivia - the church was built in 1300-1450. The tall 450' tower took 65 years to build. At the end of WWII, the original timbered roof caught fire and collapsed into the church.  The nave is more than a football field long, and nine stories tall.  Fortunately the stain glass windows behind the alter were saved during the war, but the rest of the windows were blown out during the fire.

In the shorter tower there is a bell that was cast from cannons and cannon balls to commemorate the victory over the Ottomans in 1683. It's supposedly the second largest bell in the world that rings by swinging. During the WWII fire it fell and cracked and had to be recast. Now it is only rung on special occasions, always to ring in the new year.

Every one of the columns holding up the roof has at least one statue on it, with elaborate carvings all around it.

Herta met up with us after mass and took us sightseeing all afternoon. First she took us to Prater - Vienna's amusement park. There we saw the Riesenrad, a 220 foot tall ferris wheel that was erected in 1897 to celebrate Franz Josef's golden jubelee on the grounds where the 1873 Worlds Fair was held. The wheel was designed by the same guy who build the Eiffel Tower. 

It's quite the playground, though most things were closed because of the winter and the rain.

Elvis is everywhere!!

Next we went to Hundertwasserhaus. Friedensreich Hundertwasser was an artist and architect. First he was an artist, then developed a philosophy that people should not live in boxes, their living space should be organic, no straight lines, trees on the roofs, floors not flat, and his idea he called Window Right - "a person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardized man who lives next door."  Oh, and every single window was a bit different than each other one.

Across from the apartment house is a little shopping area with a couple of restaurants, shops, a small gallery of his work.....

.......and the bathroom!! Last year we had flat screen TVs above every urinal, this year we have this! And by the way, this is the men's room!

From there we went to the Belvedere Castle, which was given to Prince Eugen, by Maria Theresa because he was such a brilliant military commander. It's now an art gallery and a park.

...and a great view of the central city. That's St. Stephan's spire on the left, and the high hill behind it is probably where we went a couple of days ago with the dog.

This is the Secession, created by a group of nonconformist artists at the beginning of the 20th century, many of them embracing art nouveau instead of the prevailing styles of the day.

From there we walked to the Naschmarkt, several blocks of buildings and stalls where there are restaurants and also food markets - fish, meat, fruit, veggies. Unfortunately because it's Sunday, it was all closed. 

At the end and across the street there were these amazing buildings with Art Nouveau facades.

Herta has been a wonderful guide, taking the better part of three days to take us around. We can tell she loves her city and loves to show it off.  Goodness, today she spent her afternoon walking all over in the rain with us.  But the rain didn't matter - it was a great day.  Finally we found a restaurant and had lunch / dinner, and then had to reluctantly say goodbye. I hope we can come back again some day when the weather is better. 

As far as our mystery about that vertical tunnel thing in Salzburg....one person suggested it might be a furnicular. One said it was probably the "Reisszug", a hoist (1504) for bringing up supplies, formerly worked by horses. But I looked that up and the photo doesn't look like it. The Reisszug was to take supplies to the castle, but this is on the other end of the hill, not near the castle at all. Any more ideas? It still might be a place where they could hoist up supplies to what looks to be a church or monastery.  Here is a picture of the Reisszug from Wikipedia...  

.....and here are two closeups of our mystery structure.