YOLO

Four people, two and a half hours, three cafes, eleven cakes.

Yeah, go ahead and read that again: four people, two and a half hours, three cafes, eleven cakes. That is how we spent almost all of the afternoon of our last day in Vienna. The cafe crawl. 

All right, yes, yes, yes, I haven't posted in a long time, but! This time I have a legitimate excuse. No, "my brother ate the computer," nothing like that. There's a good reason. But more on that later. 

There are two things you should know before I start this post. First, my title, YOLO. If you are of my generation you likely know what this means. YOLO stands for "You Only Live Once," the idea that because you only live once you should take every opportunity to make your life, as my brother would say, "BOSS". Of course, there is a story (whether or not this is an urban legend I do not know) that some stupid teenager was drunk driving and texted their friends "YOLO," then got in a car crash and died. So there's also YODO, "You Only Die Once," but don't worry, what we did was not that extreme. You have to admit though, the irony is thick. 

The second thing you should know (and if you're of my parents' generation you're probably one of their close friends, and you probably know this) is that my father does NOT like too much sugar. He just can't take it. I mean, he doesn't like DARK CHOCOLATE for god's sake, a fact that I find close to blasphemous. Who doesn't like dark chocolate?! Don't answer that, if you value my friendship. You know who you are. 

Anyway, you can imagine our surprise when, on the morning that I wrote my post about the Habsburgs, my dad said, "I have an idea, and you're gonna think I'm CRAZY." We looked at him, mildly interested, and I say only mildly because my dad says crazy, dramatic stuff all the time. But this would blow our minds. "I have an idea. We are in the land of pastries, right?" A pause for effect. "Well, how about sometime this weekend we go to as many cafes as possible, and instead of having lunch, try AS MANY PASTRIES AS WE CAN IN ONE AFTERNOON." 

We stared. For a long time. And then finally I laughed and said, "That sounds AWESOME. YOLO!!!" 

My dad, the guy who can't stand sugar, suggested that. That really is crazy!

So the next day, Sunday, we went to the Belvedere Palace in the morning, which is a museum, and in the afternoon went on our cafe crawl. The former was really interesting, because we saw lots of great art, especially by one of my dad's favorite artists, Klimt. Not to mention the fact that we saw the infamous "The Kiss." (You guys probably know what that is but in case you don't, look it up, I'm sure you'll recognize it.) But unfortunately the museum will have to get less description than it deserves, simply because of the "bossness" of the afternoon. We went to three cafes: Aida, Oberlaa, and Demel. The pastries were AMAZING. My dad took pictures of all of them and rated them on Facebook. I have to say, Viennese cakes are pretty darn good. We barely ate dinner that night, we were so full from our "lunch." 

That was our last day in Vienna. The next day we were supposed to drive to Bad Mitterndorf, a town in the Austrian Alps, but it was snowing REALLY hard. For those of you who generally stay within the Bay Area, it's kind of hard to imagine. Even Lake Tahoe hasn't gotten that much snow in one day for years. There was a lot of wind so the snow stung your face when you walked outside and we had to drive really slowly, both because of lack of visibility and the piles of snow that were filling the streets. It took us an hour or so to get our chains, and after that even though we weren't skidding anymore the snow kept getting carried by the wind and blowing all over the place, making visibility pretty limited. We were driving for a few hours and we still didn't make it out of the general Vienna area. So we just got a hotel room and spent the rest of the day doing schoolwork. And so, of course, (*ahem*) I HAD NO TIME TO DO A BLOG POST.

The next morning we got up earlier than we ever have since we arrived here, which still wasn't all that early, but it was tough. We drove for a few hours and arrived in the afternoon to Bad Mitterndorf. Actually it's really nice, because we wouldn't have even gone to Bad Mitterndorf if not for Alex and Petra. Basically there's this awesome organization called Couch Surfing, which is where random people from all over the world can ask to stay at your house, usually for one to three days. You give them food and a place to stay, and then your act of kindness is repaid when you go traveling. Then you ask to stay at other people's houses for free. Even if they're not the same people as you had stay at your house, everybody ends up paying for their free bed and breakfast by giving others a place to stay. It's the ultimate system of karma because you also rate people and give them recommendations--so if you're a bad houseguest nobody's gonna give you a place to stay. And finally, it's a great way to meet other people from all over the world. Anyway, Alex and Petra (both are women, just to clarify since Alex could be a male or female name) are a really nice couple from Hamburg, Germany with two son. They are also doing a worldwide yearlong trip and blogging about it, coincidentally enough. They're people after our own hearts, and while they were staying with us they offered for us to use their appartment in Bad Mitterndorf. It was really nice of them, considering we had only known each other for 24 hours when they offered it to us. So we ended up staying there and going skiing for two days in a row. On the day we arrived my mom, brother and I went out hiking in the snow and sledding. It was really fun. We must've looked pretty silly, because we took turns pulling each other on the sled even though we were hiking uphill and I was singing at the top of my lungs, but it was really fun. There was also a snowball fight involved. It's funny, the thing about snow is that no matter how old and mature I think I am, I always feel like a tiny little kid again when I'm playing in the snow. I guess it's just the way you can create anything out of it, build giant forts or little snowmen, throw it at people and have snowball fights, run in it, jump in it, lay in it, make snow angels ... it's amazing. Even when you run in the snow it's lilke you're a little kid becuse you're so uncoordinated! Anyway, the next two days we went skiing. The Alps are so gorgeous, and the skiing was SO AMAZING--perfect snow and weather--that I think I might be disappointed going back to my own beautiful Sierra Nevadas! The only problem that we had with Bad Mitterndorf (and really it wasn't all that terrible) was that there was no wifi, so again (*ahem ahem*) I COULDN'T POST ON MY BLOG.

My mom looking like a supermodel on the sled

Me and my amazing mini snowperson!

Our first day when we arrived was beautiful…

Me, skiing in the Alps!

Gotta love your peeps ;)

So gorgeous!!!

Yesterday we left Bad Mitterndorf, and now we're in a hotel in Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. Seriously, both Vienna and Salzburg really use Mozart to their advantages when it comes to attracting tourists. It's kind of funny, actually, because there are these chocolates called Mozart Balls and it's like  Ray's Pizza in NYC. You know how there are tons of Ray's Pizzas in New York and each of them call themselves "the original Ray's" or "the famous Ray's" or "the first real original famous Ray's Pizza"? Well it's like that with Mozart Balls, too; we kept seeing shops for them around every corner and each of them looked exactly the same, with the same chocolates and everything!

Whether or not these are the original Mozart Balls I don't know, but we got them in Vienna!

So tomorrrow we're off to Cortina, Italy where we'll go skiing again, this time in the Italian Alps, with my amazing and crazy cousins Giulia and Ella! Unfortunately there will again be no wifi, so I'll give you all an update in a week! Until then, I wish you all the best.  

The Habsburgs

The last two days were mostly spent learning about the Habsburgs and visiting their two magnificent palaces in the city. They are called Hofburg and Schönbrunn; the former was a winter palace and the latter a summer palace. In fact when it was first built Schönbrunn was out in the middle of the country! The city's grown enough that now it's just three subway stops away from Hofburg, at the heart of the city. Anyway, I promised you guys some interesting stuff about the royal family, and you will get it! But before I start talking about all the crazy things the Habsburgs did I should probably give you some background knowledge. I'm going to start with Maria Theresa, the matriarch of the Habsburgs and the only female ruler of the Habsburg empire. In fact she had no brothers or male cousins, and rather than having the royal lineage go on to a distant relative her father spent his entire career as emperor changing the laws so that one of his two daughters would be able to rule. Therefore when he died his eldest daughter Maria Theresa became empress at the age of 19. She was generally well-liked by her people and was very clearly the matriarch of the family; she had 16 children, 13 of which survived infancy, and felt very strongly that as the royal family she and her children were duty-bound to extend and protect their empire, often by diplomacy and marriage. She also greatly loved her husband and after he died calculated exactly how many years, months, weeks, days, and hours they had spent married to each other. And, finally, she was the mother of Marie Antoinette and two future emperors. Her only shortcoming when it comes to political power is that she was not allowed to become Holy Roman Empress because of her sex, a role which would have been practically guaranteed her had she been male, but instead she had her husband given that title. All right, so fast forward four generations to Emperor Franz Joseph, the great-great grandson of Maria Theresa. He was the son of Franz Charles (brother of Emperor Ferdinand I), who was the son of Emperor Franz II, emperor of Austria, who was the son of Emperor Leopold II, who was the son of Maria Theresa. Franz Joseph seemed like a pretty honorable man; he worked 16 hours a day, starting from before 4 in the morning, was extremely dedicated to his wife, and was greatly loved by the people. What's the catch? He started WWI. His wife, Elisabeth of Bavaria, was also very interesting. She is given the endearing nickname of "Sisi." She was an extremely modern woman for her time. She was very educated and besides German also spoke French, English, Hungarian, and ancient and modern Greek. She also wrote poetry. She was considered to be one of the most beautiful women of her time, with ankle-length hair and a 20 inch waist. (Think about it. That's TINY. Don't worry, though, she didn't have any weird surgeries or wear tiny corsets to be that way; she was naturally very thin and relied on exercise and diets to keep her figure.) Unlike most women back then who did not do anything at all athletic, she had a daily exercise regime, went hiking regularly, and was trained as a trick horseback rider; at one point one of the most capable female horseback riders in Europe (or so they say). Other beauty tips, a la Sisi, include raw veal put on the face under a leather mask while sleeping, 2-3 hour hairstyles, zero makeup, and a shampooing of her ankle-length hair using a mixture of cognac and egg yolk, a process which took an entire day. That is some commitment. The most interesting (and sad) part of Sisi's character was her depression. She felt extremely trapped by court life, particularly because she was given the title of empress and was married to Franz Joseph at a mere 16 years of age. She was hardly ever happy with where she was and traveled all over the world. Despite her beauty she greatly disliked the attention that was given to her and often wore all black (especially after her son's suicide) and hid her face beneath veils and parasols. She disliked the marriage practices of royals of the day, saying that young girls were whisked off at the mere age of 15 and told to say a marriage vow that they did not yet understand and would regret for the rest of their lives. Overall, she was very depressed and in her later years often wished for death. Finally in 1898 while in Geneva an Italian anarchist stabbed her with a filing knife. She was only stabbed once and didn't seem to feel the affects at first but soon collapsed. She died within a few minutes. Sisi's story is a pretty sad one, but interesting because like I said before, in a lot of ways she was very modern for her time.

Now that I think about it, my "background knowledge" pretty much took up all of my fun facts. Except one: part of Sisi's diets sometimes was eating meat juice. Pretty weird. But the rumor that it was raw meat juice is incorrect; they boiled it first.

Anyway, unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures inside either of the palaces but I have some from outside and I've got some off the internet. So enjoy! 

Schönbrunn

The fountain in the back of Schönbrunn was frozen over! 

Hofburg 

Maria Theresa

Franz Joseph

Empress Sisi

One of Sisi's dresses

Crazy rich people!!!

As you can see both palaces were very Rococo 

Vienna

I should honestly stop saying that I'm going to post the next day because it's almost always untrue. Oh well.

Where did I Ieave off? The opera. That feels surprisingly long ago. After a lot of fuss and preparation we finallyl left the apartment and made our way to the opera house. I was pretty excited, especially because I had some vague understanding that we had pretty good seats; the dollar is worth a lot more than the Czech crown and so tickets were pretty cheap. But I had no idea. The opera house was beautiful, built in Baroque style with an elegant Neo Classical exterior and a stunningly floral interior. There was a giant--and I mean giant, taller than a person--chandelier, a gorgeously painted ceiling, and floral designs and statues everywhere. We walked up the carpeted marble stairs and found our way to a door. I was so nervous and excited I had to step back and let someone else open the door for me! What I saw was breathtaking.

We had our own personal balcony!!! There was  beautiful floral wallpaper, marble statues on either side of us, a SPECTACULAR view of the orchestra . . . it was amazing. The opera was really fun, too. The music was beautiful and it was actually really funny. Before then my impression of a comedy was any  opera that wasn't a tragedy, but I was actually cracking up at this one a lot. Of course, my brother didn't understand a lot of the humor because it was relatively adult, but he still had fun. If you remember, we saw Die Fledermaus. It was about a man who played a trick on his friend, and the friend got revenge by inviting him to this ball and calling him by a different identity while at the same time inviting his wife, maid, the jailkeeper (the main character went to the ball instead of going to jail as he was supposed to) and a prince. It was pretty hilarious even though it doesn't sound like it. There was a lot of mistaken identity, disguises, and people laughing at the guy's back while he made a fool of himself. There was one really funny scene where he thought he recognized his maid at the ball and she had a whole song about how she was a famous actress and how insulted she was that he thought her a housemaid! 

Sorry, I got these pictures off of the Internet ;)

So that was the opera! The next day (our last day in Prague) we went on a boat tour. It was my brother's idea--my dad was convinced it was a tourist trap--but it turned out to be really fun. Our tour guide was this British dude who actually knew a lot about the area, and the views were gorgeous. Then we went to the John Lennon Peace Wall, which is this wall dedicated to peace where people can basically legally graffitti whatever they want. It was originally built when John Lennon died back when Czechoslovakia was under communism. So I'm sure the graffitti was a lot more interesting and meaningful under communism than it is now, because then it was a way to have free speech, but it's still a pretty cool idea. 

Here's a slightly failed panorama 

Don't worry I actually took these :)

The next day we left Prague and headed for Vienna! On our first day here we got up late in the morning and didn't get to do much, unfortunately. We saw another Gothic cathedral and made our way to the Hofburg Palace, home of the Habsburgs. Seriously, it's a MASSIVE building built by this OUTRAGEOUSLY wealthy family. We didn't get to go inside, unfortunately, but we're planning to tomorrow. Then we made our way to this beautiful café where we had pastries and hot chocolate and hung out for an hour. When we came home we watched Amadeus, which is a movie about Mozart and his career in Vienna. Seriously, the Viennese brag about Mozart at every possible opportunity, but from what I can tell from the movie they didn't treat him all that well. I mean, he went bankrupt here and they brag about all the operas he wrote in the city but those operas got really bad reception in Vienna especially compared to a lot of other cities. Anyway, it was especiallly interesting because the movie, though it's supposed to take place in Vienna, was filmed in Prague, which we had just left. Pretty good movie, I would recommend it.

The Hofburg Palace

The cafe had the best faucet ever!!!

Today we went to a museum! Yay! What I learned today more than anything is that if you have enough money, by default it will make you go INSANE. It is crazy, the lavish gifts that the Habsburgs bought for each other! There was one gift that was a solid gold salt and pepper box. Yes, I repeat, a SOLID GOLD SALT AND PEPPER BOX. Told you they were crazy. So I guess that way everyone can know how freaking crazy and rich you are when you put salt and pepper on your salad, in case they didn't know already? I don't know, I don't get it at all. It's actually pretty sad, because these people were responsible for taking care of their people, but instead they taxed them heavily and used the money to buy all kinds of REALLY expensive but useless stuff. And that is why the French Revolution happened. ;) Sorry Marie Antoinette. Actually, did you know that Marie Antoinette was a Habsburg? She was the daughter of Maria Theresa, the famous Habsburg queen, and was actually named Maria Antonia but when she got married to Louis XVI her name was switched from the Austrian form to the French form. Fun fact for you today, if you didn't already know it! 

Beautiful museum! 

Anyway, tomorrow we are going to two different Habsburg palaces! Yeah, they were that rich. Seriously, we wouldn't be able to afford one of those if we saved up for the rest of our lives, and they had TONS of them. So, if I happen to remember and find the time tomorrow, be sure to look forward to lots of juicy facts about the crazy Habsburg family! ;)