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.
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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.

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

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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.
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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.
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The snow made it an oddly romantic start to the day for us.
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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)..
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Here is the sheet music compositions, handwritten by Schubert himself. It was fascinating to see this type of music handwritten on a page.

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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.

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

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It'll be a few weeks till we can eat ham again.
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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.
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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.
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They were building Christmas Market stalls everywhere around the city. We read they are as much drinking markets as Christmas markets!

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This is inside the Museumsquartier in Hero's Square.
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We took this picture of the town hall from a hop-on-hop-off city bus tour. These buildings are just gorgeous.

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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.
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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.

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I suppose he was a pretty talented guy.

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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.

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The place was beautiful!

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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.

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

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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.