Beautiful Vienna!

Because of limited vacation time, this was going to be our last trip in Europe in 2007. We flew into Bratislava and took a 60 min bus from Slovakia to Vienna.
.
Ryanair uses Bratislava as their Vienna airport. They use regional satellite airports to cut down costs and sells real cheap tickets. It was pretty easy to get the bus too.

.

Here is an old map of Vienna in 1858. Click on it to see it in full detail.

.

Here's what that blurry picture of a Slovakia / Austria border crossing looks like. This was all I could snap before being warned I could be arrested for photographing a border crossing point.
.

.

.

It was so nice to start Sunday morning with a little snow! It doesn't snow in Ireland for longer than 10 minutes per year, so this was a real treat.
.
The snow made it an oddly romantic start to the day for us.
.
We went to the Vienna House of Music museum and saw the spectacles and some compositions of Franz Schubert (there's a large music selection of Schubert to hear in the media section of this wikipedia link)..
.

Here is the sheet music compositions, handwritten by Schubert himself. It was fascinating to see this type of music handwritten on a page.

.

We went to the Beethoven Platz to see the Imperial orchestra/opera/ballet. It was a small performance of Viennese musicians. They were all either part of the Vienna Philharmonic, the national symphony or another widely renowned Viennese orchestra.

.
The opera singers were really impressive. The voices were just astounding!
.

Here is a picture from inside the Salm Brau restaurant/brewery. We ate here EVERY night in Vienna. Their specialty is salted crispy ham... and it sure was special. The last night there we both split a leg for two. The table next to us had the same thing... for FOUR!!!!

.
It'll be a few weeks till we can eat ham again.
.
Everywhere we went there were Christmas market stalls under construction. We were just a few weeks early for some of the best Christmas markets in Austria.
.

This is the Kunsthistorisches Museum inside the newly constructed Museumsquartier (check out the link for interesting info on the controversy regarding it's recent construction). It's a collection of museums that really enrich the Vienna experience. Here's their official website.
.

They were building Christmas Market stalls everywhere around the city. We read they are as much drinking markets as Christmas markets!

.

This is inside the Museumsquartier in Hero's Square.
.

We took this picture of the town hall from a hop-on-hop-off city bus tour. These buildings are just gorgeous.

.

They sure are proud of Mozart here. Never knew he lived his life so broke! He borrowed TONS of money from seemingly every friend he could and lived a lavish life on their generosity.
.
Once when he didn't have any disposable money, he saw gorgeous jacket in one of the fanciest shops in Vienna. He wanted it so badly that he wrote a letter to a friend and described how much he needed it to keep up with his creative productivity, etc... the jacket was his in a couple days.

.

I suppose he was a pretty talented guy.

.

Sunday night we went into the St. Stephen's Cathedral in the center of the old city. Above is a video taken during the Sunday evening service. We were careful to be quiet, not to use a flash and not disturb the service.

.

The place was beautiful!

.

We eventually made our way to the home and office of Sigmund Freud. We found in 1909 that he was invited to Clark University to receive an honorary Doctorate of Law degree.

.

In WORCESTER, MA of all places!!!!!!
.

This is a picture inside Freud's office of the actual mirror he had hanging in this exact spot. We thought it made a great picture of us.

.

Nearly every part of the old town's center ring was decorated for Christmas. They decorate for the festivities more lavishly in Europe than in the states.

Set in the old 16th-17th century streets, these decorations really go a long way.

Vienna really is a wonderful city. It was a really enjoyable trip.

The Town of Bremen in NW Germany

We went for a long weekend in north-western Germany to a town called Bremen.

.

They've been host to the longest funning festival, Freimarkt. It's actually been going on since 1035 A.D.!

.
There were roller coaster rides and TONS of food and beer. One of our favorite foods was a plate of fresh potato pancakes with apple sauce.

.

They also serve hot mulled wine. It's the red wide in the large globe in the background of the above picture. I didn't really love it, but had to try it to see what it was like.
.

The machismo in me made me think... "I can knock over those cans... how hard can it be!" It's harder than it looks, the balls don't weigh much at all.
.

These are the Bremen Town Musicians (click to read the story summary) from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales.
.
There are representations of the Bremen Town Musicians all over this city. The lamp fixture above shows the 4 animals.
.

When we woke up and walked into the old town on Saturday morning, we saw a HUGE crowd of people lining up along that looked like a parade or race route.

.

Turns out there was a 150 float parade that morning. All the kids along the route had canvas bags they used to collect candy from the floats. We had fun collecting a handful of candy too.
.

Here's a view of the town hall through the parade crowd. This building was so intricately ornate. Seemed to be right out of a fairy tale book.

.

Here is Karen down in the Schnoor section of the city. It's in the south eastern part of the old town. It's a small section of really well preserved fishing houses from the 15th - 16th centuries. Now it's mostly small shops and cafes.

.

Sunday morning we went for an inside tour of the city hall. It was gorgeous!

.

That was our guide in the front. He's telling us here about the stories carved into the wooden spiral staircase. It chronicles the temptations of life that face humans in our path through life, struggling to do what's right in life.
.

Here's a doorway to the official greeting room for official guests coming to Bremen. It must have taken YEARS to carve all the stuff in this room.

.

Here are some wild wooden faces carved in to a row of benches along one end of this massive ball room. There were so many surfaces carved in this room, it was really astounding!

.

Wild, huh!

.
This is one of the mirrors that allows you to see a portion of yourself at a time as you walk into the HUGE dining room... first you see your feet, then knees, and up from there. It was designed that way quite specifically.
.
Here's Karen in front of a Steiff shop. The Madson's visited Germany a couple times almost 25 years ago, and the Steiff museum we went to back then was pretty impressive.
.

There's a restaurant inside this windmill restaurant that sits on top of the old city wall.

.
We usually have one really nice meal in each city we visit. We had that meal here in Bremen. We both had venison with shpatzel... it was a GREAT meal! .
.

Here's a picture from the outside of St. Peter's Cathedral in Bremen. The initial walls of this place (still standing on the bottom level of the building) were built in the early 11th century.

.

We walked in during a choir rehearsal. It was really a treay to hear them practice for a while. The voices in that place just carried incredibly!

.

We climbed up one of the towers in the cathedral (267 steps) and got a cool view down on one of the bells.

.

One last goodbye picture from outside the beautiful city hall.

Hiking Brayhead, County Wicklow

This is looking up at Brayhead in County Wicklow. We went up for a hike on a leisurely Saturday this past weekend.

.
It's a good day if there is no rain, so we took advantage of the weather while we had it. This has been the driest October in 20 years, so we've been out as much as we can.

.We paused mid-way up for a drink and some pictures.

.

The hill side was covered with these yellow flower spiky thistle things. You can see the whole town of Bray in the background.

.

Here is a picture of some flowers looking up at Karen.

.

There was an odd, sort-of cocoa butter smell to these flowers. It was really an unexpected smell.

.

It was a little breezy up top and we had to time our pictures carefully to keep other hikers out of the frame. Because it wasn't raining, there were a good number of people out for a hike.

.

We're getting ready now for a cold and wet winter. These last few chances to get in good weather are valuable to us!

.

We stopped at the top for a nice snack and warm barley tea. It was such a nice day.

.

A couple last pictures from the top before heading down.

.

There are not many trees left in Ireland. Ones this big are a rarity.

.

This are the ruins of a house that was used to collect a tariff from travelers walking from Bray to Greystones.

.

There's a stairway from the house going up toward the path that must connect the cliff walk to the summit of Brayhead. We'll have to go back and hike that sometime soon.