August 22-23 Free-day and Getting Lost
Updated: Sep 17
August 22 Saturday
Today once again started in that slow Viennese fashion to which I have become so accustomed over our 3 weeks here. I made the brief walk over to Cafe O'Pal where I spent a time reading on the history of Mauthausen concentration camp. I had there what has become my daily chai latte and today I treated myself to a chocolate crepe as a reward for another week passed. Sitting at the cafe for a few hours sometime inbetween journalling and thinking about journalling Prof Stuart walked passed with her friend and the mother in law of our on site coordinator briefly stopping to say hi. I hadn't had any plans for today beyond stopping at the grocery store and heading back to the apartment so the return of Prof Stuart about an hour later proved rather fortuitous.
Prof. Stuart upon her return to the cafe offered for me to join her for lunch and thus began my day of getting lost in Vienna, which I had planned for tomorrow. I trusted in the guidance of the professor entirely. We first made our way over to the local station at Burgasse-stadthalle to take the U6 a few stops Northbound towards the turkish district in the 17th. Missing our stop as it was closed for repairs we were forced to get off a stop further and got to do a little wandering in the 18th district as we made our way over to the Cafe for lunch. Being led down sidestreets and back alleys we eventually came upon a bustling Turkish street market in the heart of the 17th district, and weaving our way in and out of the crowds we came to a cafe called Kent. I had a traditional Viennese schinitzel and she had their falafel and although it was on their menu I was far too nervous to try the "liver soup". Continuing our walk after lunch we made our way further west into the Turkish district towards a place called Turkenschanzpark, the site of the primary defenses against the Turkish during the siege of vienna and since commorated with several items including a statue to the Cossack defenders from Austro-Hungarian Ukraine and a turkish fountain to remind people over who Austria triumphed at the battle.
After our time at the park we took what we called a clown car bus ride as it was near to empty at one stop before about 30 people got on all at once at the next stop. We laughed to ourselves as we realized that must be the experience for just about anyone attempting to take public transit while our whole class is rolling out as a unit.
August 23 Sunday
As much as I have grown to enjoy Vienna's much slower lifestlye I have come to find I still struggle to fully understand their Sunday ritual of closing near to everything down. I have to imagine it is good for the mind, body, and spirit, but my feeble american mind craves shopping on Sunday's sometimes and I find myself frustrated at the lack of availability for the day. At least for my sake Cafe O'Pal (and I met Pal this week) is open everday from 6 am to 10 pm so I was still afforded my daily chai latte even on this most sacred of day.
As today was a freeday and offered very little activity for me to get up to I made my way back to the Kunsthistoriches mueseum to spend more time in the classical antiquity era section than we had been allowed on our Gretl_guided tour this month. For me it is truly awe inspiring to stand in the prescence of just the likeness of so many emperors, from augustus all the way to the days of the finals emperors at the collapse of western rome. My personal favorites had to be Julius Cesar and Trajan, there is absolutely stoicism in their faces I feel excellentally captures the dignitas and gravitas to which they aspired. The absolute most incredible piece of the classical collection though is the genuine spatha they have. The spatha is a short iron sword that would have been produced by the roman state and issued to legionaries along with their armor, shield, and pilum, as the main pieces of their kit. To stand in the presence of a spatha, a real true roman blade, is to be about as close as I will ever be to a true legionnaire.
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