July 4 Vienna

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.  We have learned an important lesson:  The more expensive the hotel, the harder it is to get free Internet service.  There is a small coffee bar across the street but it has limited hours that it is open.

We left you are Passau on our way to Vienna.  We make stops along the way:  Mauthausen Concentration Camp and the Schonbrunn Palace.  First on to Mauthausen.  If you have never been to a concentration camp, you should go.  It makes you fully realize what a horrible part of history it is.

Mauthausen was one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps.  This is where the famous Nazi hunter Simon Weissenthal was held.  As you look around the country side, it is difficult to believe what happened in the pastoral setting.

Mathausen has the “Todesstiege” which was 186 steps of stairs where prisoners were sent to the rock quarry and had to carry 150 pounds stones up the staircase on their backs.  It seems like an impossible task since most of us could barely carry out cameras up the staircase.

Each barrack held 1000 prisoners.  This is where everyone would wash.

Remember all the poor souls that lost their lives during this atrocity. 

We were then off to Vienna with a stop at the Schonbrunn Palace.  Talk about opposite experiences.  This palace was the hummer home of the Hapsburgs.  It has 1,440 rooms and thankfully we only saw about 40 of them.  This is the first palace that we have visited where you could actually imagine someone living.  All the rooms seemed comfortable.  The picture below does not do the palace justice.  I have only captured one side of the palace.  Picture the same size “wings” on the left and right.

Fortunately for you, we could not take pictures inside the palace but here is part of our little troop walking to the palace. 

The palace date from 1695 and rivals the Versailles Palace.  The Great Room is much bigger than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and the Royal Apartments contain more rooms.  This is where Empress Maria Therese lived during her reign.  Maria Theresa’s genius in maintaining the Hapsburg dynasty was to marry off her children to other European Royal Families.  So to deal with Napoleon, she made a daughter marry him. 

What Jack and I found amazing was that in about 1815 there was a Widow and Orphan Law passed that helped house widows and orphans.  To this day, there is still about 900 descendants of that population that still live in the palace.  Talk about a “Rent Control Building!”

There were extensive gardens which we didn’t explore and a zoo.  In the gardens, we couldn’t miss the maze.  Thankfully, some of our group made it through the maze and stood in a tree house and directed everyone else to  the end.  

 I have to mention for my friend Madelyn that we are staying at the Hotel Bristol that is one block from the Opera House.  Couldn’t have a better location!!  Really a top notch hotel.

Vienna Opera House

We have done so many things in Vienna that it is difficult to capture them all for you on this blog.  We went to see every museum and church (okay not every one but it felt like it), saw went to the Vienna Spanish Riding School to view the beautiful horses they train, visited the Hapsburg City Castle (you need some place to stay after you drive the 5 miles into town), took a carriage ride to a boat ride through the city and much, much more.  Here are just a few of the hundred plus pictures I have taken.

Vienna Opera House (just getting all sorts of ideas on how to re-decorate our home!)

Vienna Opera House

Globe from 1669 in the National Library

Sacher Restaurant over the years has asked dignitaries and royalty to sign a table cloth and then they are embroidered.  They also have one for celebrities such as movie stars and performers.

A big surprise for us one morning was to run into the head of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.  She was gracious enough to have her picture taken with us.

You see the logo below in every t-shirt store in Austria.

Here are our favorite museum signs:

We are leaving Vienna tomorrow morning and are off to Prague, Czech Republic.  Hopefully, I can find better Internet  service.

Jack and Nancy

Mauthausen was opened in 1938 as a satellite camp of Dachau.  Thousands of Russian prisoners were sent here and designated “return not desired.”  On freezing winter nights, prisonsers were forced to stand naked and were then sprayer with water and allowed to freeze to deather.  Over 335,000 prisoners passed through Mauthansen and before US troops liberated the camp in May 1945 over 122,000 died here.