Another Day in Vienna, Another Pastry (or 2)

Today was another great day in Vienna.  We began with going to another art museum (early 20th century stuff), with some very interesting and beautiful art by artists I never heard of.  Then we went to Starbucks, which was a total ripoff.  A grande (medium) coffee was the equivalent of about $6!

 

Then we took a bus tour of the city.  It has really beautiful buildings - stately, ornate, imposing.  We also took a tour of the emperors´ summer palace, which was a pretty amazing place.  They had over 1,000 servants there, so you can imagine what it was like!  But it must have really smelled awful because the servants were only entitled to ``bathe`` once a month, with a single bucket of water each!  (It probably wasn´t a much different story for the nobility actually.) Everyday everyone put flour in their hair because white hair was all the rage.  Needless to say it was heaven for lice and fleas.  There was a painting of people paying to get their turn to have a monkey pick the lice out of their hair and eat them.  Disgusting!  And of course, no bathrooms or running water.  So, while they all lived in these incredibly ornate rooms, with amazing paintings, sculptures, and all kinds of art, and inlaid wood floors, and decorated ceilings, they had to drown themselves in perfume to put up with the smell. 

 

We had dinner at a basic Austrian restaurant which was very good (more sausages and wiener schnitzel), and went for coffee and pastries after.  Actually we also went to a different coffee house in the late afternoon for coffee and pastries as well.  We came to the conclusion that what beer is to the British, and pizza is to Americans, pastries are to the Viennese.  Everywhere you go there are all kinds of ``coffee houses``, some very simple, some very ornate, but all have an incredible variety of delicious and beautiful pastries, and a wonderful selection of different kinds of coffee drinks, and they all seem crowded all the time.  And, there are no overweight people.  I just don´t understand how that can be, but it seems to be the case.

 

The Viennese seem to be very polite, reserved people.  I like that.  They don´t appear to be all that warm to strangers, but definitely are not cold, just polite and somewhat formal.  And they certainly are not loud, which I really like.  They have a pretty nice life here.  The government takes good care of them - pays them something like $160 per child per year until age 26, health care is free, you only have to pay for the first semester of college and the rest is free if you decide to continue, and your pension (at age 60 for women and age 65 for men) is 80% of the average of your 5 highest earning years.  Income tax is from 30% to 50%, and the VAT is 20% on everything, but it all seems to work out pretty well.

 

Tomorrow we are gong to another museum, do some more walking around and maybe some shopping.  All the stores were closed today since it it a national holiday to celebrate the last Allied soldier leaving Austria in 1955 and leaving the Republic to run itself.  There is a HUGE pedestrian ``mall`` (really a series of streets) where there are 100´s of shops.

 

It was pretty cold today, with some rain.  It is supposed to be sunnier tomorrow.