Bus Touring

On or first day of class we talked about the formation of the Austrian monarchy. From an early on, Vienna was an important city as the Romans controlled it for the first four centuries AD, at the time it was known as Vindobona (Parson 99). It was a military outpost for the Romans and was a walled city so that the Romans would be separated from Barbarians on the outside. Today we can identify areas of the Roman reign such as the Graben, which was the former ditch that surrounded the city, as well as the Am Hof which was the location of the former Imperial Court. The city was also the supposed location of Marcus Aurelius when he died in 180AD (Parsons 96). The Fall of Rome happened around 476 AD when invading Barbarian tribes of Germany took over. Kathy had us take the next 800 years as the Middle Ages, which consisted of the Dark Ages (476-800), the High Middle Ages (800-1250) and then the Late Middle Ages (1250-1400). The big takeaways from this are that the Dark Ages are a period where literacy is lost, except in the church. It is a time of tribe warfare and chaos, and as the church takes the central position of society again, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation begins. But the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation is not based on lineage, yet on the votes of electors from the 7 territories, it was an elective democracy. They made a distinct effort to keep the government secular and not part of the church. To try and avoid chronicle whiplash, I will just add that according to Kathy, Vienna was first mentioned in 1137. It is also important to look at the Babenburgs because they also played into the religious and cultural aspect of Vienna. Leopold III was responsible for building Klosterneuburg, which is a couple blog posts away.

 After class we had a couple of hours to kill before we were to meet back up and go on a bus tour with Dr. O, where we went by the Belvedere, the Hundertwasserhaus, and made our way up through the Vienna woods to a Hueriger for dinner and wine. Our first place of interest was the Secession Building which is a beautiful building with a gold flowered sphere on top of it. This building is of importance because it was location of Art Nouveau artists such as Gustav Klimt. After that we made our way to the Belvedere. Dr. O was explaining to us that it was the Baroque summer palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy, and it got its name due to view when Maria Theresia remarked, “Quelle Belvedere,” which meant beautiful view. Dr. O asked us how long we though it took them to build the palace, I said 20 years, everybody else was between 10 and 25 years as well, but she said they built it 2 years by working 24 hours a day, an amazing feat for the 18^th century. The Upper Belvedere was where the guests would stay, and Prince Eugene would meet them up there to welcome them, and the first thing they would see after the palace itself would be the view, an easy way to impress his guests. After this we went to the Hundertwasserhaus, which is now a government subsidized apartment now. It was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser who said that buildings should not be uniform, the windows don’t need to be straight in line with each other, nature should play into daily life. This was an incredibly beautiful place because it was so different from everything else I’ve seen. My favorite part was the fountain in front of the building that was made of many different tiles and also remnants of grave stones!

We bussed from there up to hills and into the Viennese Woods. We drove through little suburbs, which reminded me of home in that these houses had front and back yards, but they were also beautifully maintained and had little vineyards in them. We made it up to the wine garden and sat down for an awesome dinner. Dinner included blood sausage and a little cow’s tounge, among other, more normal foods. After dinner we had to make our way down to the bus stop to catch a city bus back home, and we traveled down a narrow road between vineyards late at night in the dark and saw tons of little shrines and markers on the way. It was really cool to see this side of Vienna because the city is so much different.