Vienna

Natural History museum in Vienna

Vienna and Prague seem to go together, what with them historically being part of the same empire. So when we went to Prague, we decided to catch the train across to Vienna and spend some time there as well.

The Kunsthalle in Vienna

I was pleasantly surprised with Vienna. For some reason I kind of thought it would be boring with not much to show for itself. How wrong was I! I should have know given the might of the Austro-Hungarian empire that there would be some evidence of it's golden age. I mean they were intimately involved in the outbreak of the first world war after all.

Man their golden age must have been impressive going from the buildings still remaining. It also had a bit of a buzz to it, very slightly like Berlin, which I really wasn't expecting from an Austrian city. I always imagined Austria as the more provincial, conservative, lesser relative to Germany. Lets just say it wasn't quite that bad. I think they are quite conservative but that Vienna at least seemed to be going places.

It also continued the feeling of wealth that you had in Prague. We were staying a little bit out of the main old centre, but you had to walk through the museumsquartier to get to the old part of Vienna. Which is how I like to run my holidays, maximise the chance of coming across a great museum. And there are certainly a lot of them to see in this city. The main one is the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which contains a lot of art and Egyptian artifacts. You can't be a world power without pillaging Egypt at some point. I'm a little surprised now that there was anything left in the Cairo museum when we visited. The building itself is a work of art, marble all over the place, cornicing, pillars, paintings. It's got everything.

Weird trumpet thing at the musical instruments museum

We also went to the modern art museum, we turned up with not much time left in the opening hours. The ticket seller was a bit sad to take our money since I think she thought you needed at least a day to see everything there. I don't think she appreciated that not everyone visiting was a hard-core contemporary art museum aficionado. In fact that seemed to be a theme at Viennese museums. At the musical instruments and armour museum (strange combo I know) the guy lost it when we walked in with 1 hour to go. I really think he wanted to refuse to sell us tickets since apparently there was no way you could see everything in only an hour. We had to convince him that we were only interested in the instruments part, and that there was no other time we could visit before we would let us buy tickets. Pretty weird.

The main arena at the Spanish Riding School

When you are in Vienna you have to do a tour of the Spanish riding school, we didn't see a show or anything. I think you have to book a bit of a ways in advance to see that. But since we were the only English speaking visitors that day we got a private tour of the stables and the arena. So that was pretty good.

It's a very strange life these riders live. You start off as an apprentice working with an already trained horse, just sitting on the horse whilst someone else guides it. At that stage it's more the horse teaching you how to ride. After a few years you are allowed to start controlling the horse yourself and doing some of the more complicated movements, but still this is on a horse that is already trained in the school. After a few more years of that they are allowed to train a completely unbroken horse all the way through to the most complicated movements. This last step can take 4-6 years. It's only once a rider has accomplished this that they are considered a full rider in the school. That's some impressive training, almost as long to become a specialist surgeon!

I think there's a pretty high drop out rate in the apprentices, as you can imagine, though they don't really go into that during the tour. It's not as if they are even doing that much riding either, at least when they start. They'll only get maybe an hour a day on the horses, then the rest of it is caring for all the horses, cleaning the stables, that sort of thing. You would think you join the school because you love riding, then you don't seem to do that much of it. Doesn't sound like a great deal. I'm not sure the tour guide really appreciated my questions, because I would also have thought that someone who has trained at what is basically dressage for that long would be also out winning some major Olympic medals. But that didn't seem to be the case. It's not as if Austria is known as a horsing nation, Australia has won more horse event medals than they have.

Anyway it's a cool city, with a lot of museums and history. So definitely worth a visit.