I wanted to visit a kaffeehauser while I was here, and since the area around University of Vienna seemed ripe with interesting cafes the first thing I did was to take a metro back to that part of town. The cafe I stopped at, "Einstein", didn't have any of the special Viennese coffees I had seen listed on the internet, so I ordered an espresso machiatto with onion rings instead (a compromise between class and frugality). There is a beautiful cathedral, "Votivkirche", nearby that I had only seen from afar yesterday. It sits in a park so it's easy to stroll around.
The architecture reminded me of Suzallo Library at the University of Washington.
While walking back through Heldenplatz on my way to the Austrian National Library, I passed through a plaza, "Michaelerplatz", that I hadn't encountered on my first pass through yesterday.
It had some interesting buildings and sculptures.
At the National Library, the ticket lady gave me a student discount even though I didn't have my student I.D. with me (actually I did, I just forgot it was in my bag since I never use it). After ascending the central staircase, you enter a 77.7 meter long chamber densely stuffed with ornamentation and old books. I found it quite impressive and mostly tasteful.
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| These were my two favorite photos that I took there |
In the back corner there is a Bosendorfer grand piano (Bosendorfer is an Austrian company, in fact). It must sound absolutely ethereal when played in such a large space.
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| That piano looks like it needs to be played 😬 |
The volumes on the shelves are so, literally, voluminous that you wonder what it was they had so much to write about hundreds of years ago. A few facsimiles were on display. A lot of bibles. In fact, almost everything I remember seeing had something to do with Christianity. Seems as if everyone had a god fearing fever up until the past few hundred years. Or those were seen as the only works worth preserving. There were a few old maps on display as well.
After the National Library I stopped at another cafe, this time closer to the outer ring of the Inner Stadt, where I heard there were more authentic, local cafes. The only Viennese coffee item they offered was Melange, the "most typical" Viennese coffee, similar to a cappucino but with a Viennese style "mokka" (espresso) and foamier milk. I ordered that and a sacher cake, a layered chocolate cake that I found kind of bitter. Sugar and caffeine overload!
After my "dinner". I took the metro all the way to the end of the line, then took a tram to Central Cemetery where the graves (or in some cases, supposed grave/monument) of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, among others lie.
Believe it or not, a cemetery far outside the center of Vienna was not much of a tourist attraction. It was almost entirely void of life the entire time I was there (I'm pretty sure the few bodies I saw strolling through the graveyard were among the living). The composers' graves were easy enough to find, though they were also indicated on my map, which helped quite a bit.
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| A church near the middle of the cemetery |
I felt I needed to commemorate this moment with a selfie, although I'm still unsure how kosher grave selfies are. At least no one caught me taking pictures of myself.
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| Nailed it? |
From the graveyard I reversed my commute back to the hostel for the night, but not before they closed all the gates to the cemetery and I had to leave via an "emergency" exit. I mean, it wasn't an emergency, I just didn't want to spend a night in a graveyard. On the tram ride back, the operator ended his route a stop earlier than I had anticipated and I pretended to understand his directives in German as he showed me and guy-with-headphones-in-his-ears out the door. I run into small obstacles such as these all the time while when traveling, so often that I usually don't even mention them in my posts. I walked the remaining half kilometer to the metro station.
I slept around 12:30am. I had already bought tomorrow's bus ticket to Prague.
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