Do you know what today is? Today is the day my beloved sister enters her third decade of life! So please join me in wishing the lovely Keri Elizabeth a happy 20th birthday :)
We're still wandering Vienna! On our way to the cathedral we stopped by a quiet little square that is now a very desirable place to live (it has quiet and parking!). The buildings used to all be part of the old Jesuit church here, but are residences now; the church still stands and is connected to the local University. We also passed Vienna's statue of Gutenberg, to whom I owe most of the childhood I spent reading. Mural on the wall of the old Jesuit complex Gutenberg! Then we went for a tour of Stephansdom, or St. Stephan's Cathedral. It's as big as a soccer field, was originally built in 1147 in the Gothic style, and was restored in the 1600-1700s with Baroque influences. The north tower, however, was never finished due to a lack of money. Mozart is buried there and his kids baptized there, and the archbishop lived right across the square. The Nazi SS actually had headquarters right by our hotel which is very close, so this area was heavily bombed. When...
As is my approximately yearly wont, I am re-reading the Harry Potter series. This tends to worry my husband, who doesn't quite understand why I might read a series (or any one book) over and over and over again, when there exist millions of other tomes worthy of my attention. However, the HP series is special. The books came out at such a time that book Harry and real-life Sam were within a couple of years of age, and they were exactly the genre that I simply adored (and still do) - fantasy, magic, hidden worlds, romance, all the good stuff. I remember praying for my letter to come via owl; I remember waiting in line Up North with Dad to get the 4th book at midnight, after which I read the entire 734 pages in about 24 hours; I remember reading either the 6th or 7th book with my best friend but about six hours behind, and wondering why she was crying. I still cry every time Harry goes into that forest at the end! I was originally going to write a post about the things that the ...
Our last two days in Austria have flown by! Yesterday we started by visiting Esterhazy Castle in Eisenstadt. The castle's origins are from the 13th century, but it was expanded over time. In 1622 the Esterhazy family took possession of the palace and it has been held by the family ever since! Haydn was the palace musician here, and as such there is a Haydn museum inside. I couldn't take pictures, but trust me when I say the museum's design choices were questionable...wallpaper full of Haydn's face is not exactly what I would have chosen. We then moved on to the Vienna Central Cemetery, which is one of the largest cemeteries in the world and completely amazing. It contains 3.5 million people's remains, and was shelled with 500 bombs in WWII because Vienna was the seat of the Gestapo at one point. It contains big Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant sections, and more recently has added sections for Muslim, Orthodox, Buddhist, and Mormon folks. We specifically saw th...
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