Spotless in Vienna

If you thought Singapore was clean, you ain’t seen nothing yet til you’ve been to Vienna. It was totally spotless and all the buildings have been cleaned til they looked shiny and new even though they were built hundreds of years ago.

One of the many grand buildings of the Habsburg empire

As is our practice by now, we took a guided tour by the tourist office to get a brief overview of the city/ country and also to decide which sites were worth paying to enter.

We visited the Imperial Apartments which I felt was about the same as the State Apartments we visited in Innsbruck, nothing really stood out for me. There were 19 state and private rooms of Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth, aka Sisi which we were allowed to view. In its entirety, it is a whole lot bigger than the one we saw in Innsbruck but because we are only allowed entry to those few places, the things we saw were more or less the same. Most of the apartments today house a range of museums as well as offices, government ministries and the presidential chancellery, so at least they are making full use of the really huge buildings.

We also visited the Sisi Museum which I felt was rather small. There were only six rooms for the public to explore the personality and life of the empress, who was apparently quite the sensation in her day. The exhibits included a copy of the dress she wore at the ball given before her wedding, her jewellery, parasols, fans etc. From the exhibits and write-up, I kinda got the impression that modern day Austria doesn’t like her much, though people back then were probably quite captivated by her. She did look rather pretty from the various portraits of her though she probably suffered from some type of depression. She was probably a bit like Princess Diana, thrust into the life of a monarch from a young age and unable to cope with it.

Beautiful sunset

Other than walking around and doing the usual touristy stuff, one of the more interesting things we did was to watch opera at Wiener Staatsoper. They sell standing tickets for only 6 euro! It was definitely an affordable and easy way to try out opera and see if you enjoy it. I must say people there really dress up for the opera, it was really obvious who were in the cheap seats, or in our case, the standing seats. Of course this doesn’t mean that everyone was lovely, we witnessed this lady who was late in entering but who insisted on getting to her seat though she should have waited til an appropriate break. The usher was helpless and it just goes to show that all the money in the world cannot buy someone manners. It was really horrible for a while cos she just refused to listen and kicked up a fuss. In any case, the opera we caught was Parsifal which was super long, clocking almost five hours in total, and not very accessible. Needless to say, we didn’t stay til the end and left after catching 2 acts (or at least I think it was 2 acts, I could be wrong). Perhaps next time, we should choose a more accessible opera like Carmen or La Boheme and give it another go.

Inside the opera house

On the whole, Austria was pretty enjoyable and it was nice to have that as our last stop before we ventured to Eastern Europe.