First full day in Vienna

Ok, before I start - foreign TV and commercials are great. I think we forgot how different they can be. I don't know why it's so funny to see German toilet paper commercials, but it is. Especailly fun is when you see fun American cartoons, like Family Guy, in another language. :-)

Anyway, today has been a really fun day - we spent most of the day just walking around. We started off at the Stephansdom, the main church in Vienna, and went from there (we didn't actually go in to the church, but we can do that another day). For much of the morning we just wandered around - actually, I was setting out for the Hofburg but kept not looking at my map, so we literally walked around the Hofburg until I got irritated with myself and kept actually pulled out the map. On the way there, we saw the Votive Kirche, the Rathaus, Parliment, and walked past the opera.

When we made it back to the Hofburg, we decided that the most fun part to see would be the Schmetterling Haus (the instrument museum was a close second and if we have time we'll get back there another day). What's a Schmetterling?

Here's a picture of a pretty little one I got...

And here's Trey with another one - look closely, and you'll see it in at the top of the flowers, smack dab in the middle.

After about an hour of exclaiming, "This is so cool!" and feeling like complete dorks, we walked aorund a little more. I went in search of what I've been calling "my church" and found it. I claim it as my own because when UD chorale was here in 2001 I remember walking into a church at the outer part of the Hofburg just across from the Spanish Riding School and doing some impromptu singing. I got completely emotionally overwhelmed in a good way, and I think that's when I first felt like Vienna was home. Anyway, I found it - it's the Michaels Kirche. :-)

We spent the rest of the afternoon continuing our walk, and admiring the Vienna "Walk of Fame." Here's one of the stars, and I picked this one because I found the best story about him in one of the music funnies books we found in the opera's bookstore:

Aside from the German music jokes & anecdotes books we found, I found a musical sudoku book. For you musicians out there - instead of 9 numbers, you have the 7 scale degrees to work with. Each puzzle has a few squares highlighted, and if you sing them in order, you're singing part of the theme for which the puzzle is named. It's too cool.

The last part of our walk was past the Musikverein, one of the major music halls here. We found a concert tonight that worked for us - the Cleveland Orchestra with the Wiener Singverein doing the Brahms Requiem. It was a repeat of the concert they did last night, and it was amazing (here's the review from last night). Hooray for the 6 euro Stehplatz (standing room) tickets.

After the concert we grabbed a quick dinner at the Wienerwald - Martha, Trey thought of you, and about how much you'd probably giggle seeing the word "Wiener" all over the place! - and then bought a bottle of wine on the way back to the hotel. All in all, a good day. :-)

Tomorrow it's on to Schloss Schoenbrunn and the zoo!