Christmas travels: Vienna, California, and Utah

Months ago we planned a trip to Vienna for the week before Christmas.  Because of the way the days fall, with Christmas day on a Sunday, the kids had three full weeks off of school for the holidays and we wanted to take advantage of the time.  The Italian Christmas holiday always goes through January 6 for the epiphany and La Befana.  It's easy to think that you will be spontaneous and do something at the last minute but things slide and nothing happens.  That happened with Christmas travel last year.  I didn't want it to happen again.  So we booked cheap tickets and a great place to stay in Vienna months in advance.  A trip to Florence after Christmas could be more last minute so we didn't book anything ahead and it turned out that that was a good thing since plans changed.

 

Vienna is a beautiful city and absolutely magical at Christmas time with all of the street lights and the Christmas markets sprinkled around town.  I was excited for the Christmas markets.  It's one of the main reasons we chose Vienna.  The kids were excited for the baked goods, goulash, and schnitzel.  Our place was near the opera house so on our first night we found a convenient place for dinner nearby.  I loved the way they decorated the walls with vintage opera posters.  

Vienna opera house at night

(It was Northern Europe around the winter solstice so there are a lot of cloudy night shots.)

Vienna started, like many European cities, as a Celtic village and Roman outpost.  It was at its height of power and influence from the 16th century through WWI as the seat of the Habsburg dynasty (from 1440-1740), a capital of the Holy Roman Empire, the capital of the Austrian empire after the fall of Napoleon (1804), and later the Austro-Hungarian empire (1867).  During this time it was the largest German speaking city in the world.

Vienna was, and is still, a cultural and social center in addition to being a center of government.   Many musicians, including Beethoven, Mozart, and Strauss, lived in Vienna.  The musical traditions that produced these masters continue today.  Vienna was also a center for art and intellectual thought.  It was the home of Gustov Klimt and his Vienna Secessionist movement as well as Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis.

Tiny elevator with a mirror.

Evelyn and I share a lot of interests in the things we want to see.  Jack has different interests that he shares with John.  Sadly, John wasn't able to join us for this trip.  He got stuck in California with work.  So on a cold cloudy morning I accompanied Jack to the military history museum.  Evelyn politely declined.  It was better than I anticipated.  The halls we had access to included history from the 16th century through WWI, including the car and uniform of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  The WWII galleries were closed for an event.  I wondered how they would portray that era here.  It would be an interesting curatorial challenge.

The Vienna arsenal

Both the exterior and interior architecture were quite amazing.  The building is part of the Vienna arsenal complex built in the mid 1800s.  The style has been called Romantic historicism, Italian-Medieval, and Islamic-Byzantine.  It's really a rather crazy mish-mash of many over the top styles from the past.

Hall of Generals at the museum entrance

I like the banners and uniforms.  The general theme of over the top mish mash continued.  Jaguar pelts...  Really?  

Court uniform for a major in the Royal Hungarian life guards.

One of my favorite items was a silk scarf printed with everything a soldier fighting the Ottomans would need to know, including a little song along three edges.

My Boy in his happy place

Jack could tell me all about the different rifles.  It was too bad that John had to miss this.  He would have loved it and I would have loved watching the boys discuss it all in great detail.  Since that wasn't possible we did the best we could over Facetime.

Cannon collection

That afternoon we walked around the city center and toured St Stephens Cathedral, the main church in the center.  It was big and beautiful and so very gothic.  Seeing the concert posters made me wish we could stay and see more.  We took the catacomb tour and saw the rooms full of bones and we shopped at the market in the square outside where we found goulash in a bread bowl.  We were cold and it was hot and tasty.

St Stephens Cathedral

The holiday lights were beautiful and, unlike Rome, there were plenty of Christmas trees of all sizes for sale.

On another day we went to the Belvedere museum with all the other tourists to see the works by Klimt.  Gustov Klimt is probably the best known painter of the Vienna Secessionist movement and The Kiss might be his best known work.  It is on display at the Upper Belvedere.  Much like the earlier Impressionists, the Secessionists wanted to break away from the conservative art establishment.  They were interested more in a style of thought than a particular artistic aesthetic, although it is closely related to Jugendstil, the German version of Art Nouveau.

Gustov Klimt is most famous for the works made during his "gold period".  He was familiar with gold from his father's work as a gold engraver.  His works during this period were inspired by the gold mosaics found in Byzantine churches in Venice and Ravenna.  It is easy to see the connection between the styles.  If you want to enter the world of "art collectors", you can buy part of the NFT of The Kiss.  My Girl is clearly not impressed.

The Kiss

We really like the room with the Character Heads by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.  Some people have said that they were made as studies of the "canonical grimaces".  Others say that they were made to ward away demons.  Scholars say that they are evidence of neurological or mental illness.  Rather than illness, my first impression was of caricature.  We thoroughly enjoyed this part of the exhibit and managed to entertain a few serious old men with our attempts at impersonating the impossible expressions.

I find it so interesting how artistic ideas get recycled.  One of the rooms of the Upper Belvedere was decorated in a now familiar Grotesque style.  The Belvedere palace was built between 1717 and 1723 long after Rafael and his buddies found the richly decorated "grotto" that gave the grotesques their name.  This was a popular style of decoration at the time.  The Lower Belvedere also has a Hall of Grotesques.  The fresco artists of the 18th century were copying the Renaissance work of Rafael, who was copying the work on the walls and ceilings of Emperor Nero's Domus Aurea, which in turn were likely painted by artists from "the East" who were inspired by the art of home.  Where does it stop?  I don't know.  It just keeps going.  The execution changes a bit over the centuries, but the connecting thread is clear.  

Christmas market stalls were set up outside of the museum.  We couldn't pass the churro stand without stopping.  It was a taste of home, even though they didn't compare to the massive churros at San Jose's Christmas in the Park.

Empress Elisabeth - Sisi

On a friend's recommendation we went to the small Sisi museum.  This museum is in the Hofburg palace and included the imperial apartments and exhibits about the life of Empress Elisabeth.  As a teenager in 1854, Sisi married Prince Franz Joseph.  Her serious older sister was originally intended to be the bride, but Franz Joseph fell for the beautiful and lively younger sister.  By the age of 21 she was the unhappy and discontent mother of three.  She was known and revered for her long hair and exceptional beauty, but was unhappy in her marriage and felt trapped by the rules and structure of court life.  She retreated from court into a life of constant travel, extreme dieting and exercise.  Elizabeth loved the sea and got a tattoo of an anchor, quite scandalous at the time.  Her only son and the heir to the throne died at age 21 leaving her to grieve for the rest of her life.  At age 60, Sisi was stabbed by an assassin and killed.  I kept thinking of a gilded cage.  Trapped by her beauty and her position, she had everything money could buy, but nothing she wanted.  So incredibly sad.  Women in general have it better today, but it is still a difficult life in the public eye.

Concert hall of the Vienna music society (Musikverein) and Karlskirche in the background

There are lots of opportunities to hear music in Vienna.  I went to a concert of Mozart's greatest hits.  The whole set up was pretty touristy, with the musicians dressed in period costumes, but the music was well done and very enjoyable.  I sat next to a Turkish woman from Dublin.  It was nice to chat with someone and enjoy the music.  Many of the pieces were familiar.  I was less familiar with the opera arias.  Some were in Italian.  I was expecting German, but it was nice to be able to understand a bit.

I wish...  We left on the afternoon of the Messiah performance.

The Christmas market at Karlsplatz known for handmade arts and crafts

The main market at the Rathausplatz

We thoroughly enjoyed the Christmas markets.  There were many scattered around the city.  Some were quite small, just a hand full of booths outside of a landmark.  Two of the larger markets were at Karlsplatz and Rathausplatz.  I was on a mission to expand my collection of ornaments and I was not disappointed.  There were ornaments in every material and shape imaginable.  The most common were the traditional glass type.  Some were simple and others quite elaborate.  I also really liked the wooden ornaments, but I didn't see any of the straw ornaments we saw last year in Germany.

The main market at Rathausplatz had a double decker carousel and a Ferris wheel.  Of course we rode them both and we may or may not have rushed up the stairs past a couple of small children to make sure that we got the prime horses on the upper level, the ones that actually go up and down.

The City Hall was lovely.  The facade is in the ornate mish-mash of gothic and Renaissance styles popular at the time.  So many of the architecturally interesting buildings are churches or palaces.  Vienna seems a bit different with many purpose built civic buildings and museums.  The city hall building was built in the late 1800s during the urban revitalization that took place when the medieval fortifications from the 1300s were taken down and replaced with the Ringstrasse.  Emperor Franz Joseph wanted to connect the city center with the expanding suburbs and create space for city gardens and new building projects.

In front of the hall was a very large Christmas tree.  Under the tree was a creche with a very strong roof, and on the roof a brass band played holiday tunes.  So festive.

Brass band under the tree and on the roof.

We took a tour of the Opera House.  I convinced My Boy by telling him we would likely be able to see some of the back stage workings.  He has been the stage manager for the plays at school.  While we were there the stage crew was taking down the set from the morning rehearsals and setting up a different set for the evening performance.  That's a lot of work to do every day.  The Opera House opened in 1869 and was part of the building boom at the time the Ringstrasse was built.  It was severely damaged during WWII.  Only the facade, the grand staircase, and a few other spaces survived.  Because of a shortage of building materials during and after the war the rebuild wasn't completed until 1955.  It is a beautiful building and still a center for the artistic and cultural high society of Vienna.  Although some of the traditions, like the debutante ball seem a bit antiquated.

State opera house after March 12, 1945

Photo source

It wasn't always dark

While walking to the Rathaus market just after sunset we saw an unusual tower and decided to go check it out.  The tower was part of this church, the national cathedral for Italians in Austria.  Inside it was quite dark, but a few lights were on, including the Christmas tree lights, and a vocalist and organist were practicing for a Christmas program.  It was so incredibly beautiful, my favorite experience of the whole trip.  We sat with a handful of others and enjoyed the music.

We were in Vienna Monday through Friday the 23rd.  On Wednesday we were talking to John and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to come during the holidays.  The time he could stay was short and because of the holidays the tickets were expensive.  We decided to turn it around.  For not much more the three of us could go to the US for the holidays and have 11 days together instead of 5.  It was a great decision.  I had been missing my family even though we had been back for visits during the summer.  With all of the fun and interesting places we were seeing I was really looking forward to spending time with family.  We quickly booked tickets home to California.  We arrived home in Rome late Friday night and less than 12 hours later we were headed back to the airport.  Thanks to a 3 hour Christmas Eve delay in Heathrow it was nearly midnight when we arrived.  We had missed the Christmas Eve party, but we were able to make it up in later visits.

We had a nice quiet Christmas morning with Grammie and GranDad.  Another day we walked along Westcliff in Santa Cruz.  The storms this winter have been wild and the waves were huge.  We did a little beach clean up for some scout service hours and marveled at the surfers.  There were some spectacular wrecks.

The pond in G & G's neighborhood

My Girl and I went to Utah to visit my parents and the rest of the family.  We were lucky that our visit lined up with my nephew's wedding.  We hadn't planned to be there, but I'm so glad we were.  My Girl got to build a mini snow man and I got to visit with my parents and brothers and their families.

We spent the afternoon between the morning wedding in Logan and the evening reception in Mendon running around Cache Valley.  We stopped at the Gossner cheese factory for cheese curd and flavored milk, a meat shop in Richmond for hot dogs, a shop with goat milk soaps, and the historic county courthouse on Main Street.  The courthouse was restored a few years ago and looks lovely.  Many years ago my Grandmother had an office there as a Cache County extension home agent during the 1950s and 60s.  A woman working full time with a husband and children at home was an unusual thing in Utah at the time.  (Look for Bessie Lemon on page 134)  She was an amazing woman.  She earned a Master's degree after having kids and as the extension agent was considered faculty at USU.  When I was there as a nutrition student there were faculty who remembered her.

The old safe

The old Cache County courthouse

Logan LDS Temple

Most of the cousins

My Mom

We flew back to California late on the night of the reception.  Thankfully the weather cooperated and there wasn't much snow.  The next day we were headed back to Rome.  It was all a bit of a whirlwind, but I'm so glad we went.

To finish out the Christmas season we went up to see the Nativity at St Peter's.  Each year it is different.  I really liked this one, so much better than the ceramic space alien figures from a couple years ago.  I love this so much more than the gaudy Neapolitan style.  It is a traditional style from the Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the North East corner of the country on the borders with Austria and Slovenia.  Maybe we'll get up there some day.

It was a whirlwind of travel for the holidays and I loved it, especially the time with family and friends.