Vienna: art, music, books, palaces, and delicious dessert!

At 6 on Thursday evening, Gaby and I pulled out of the bus station at Florenc, in Prague. The ride was four hours, and we hopped on the Ubahn (subway) and found out hostel--a really funky, "eco-friendly" hostel with musical instruments out and gardens with huge backgammon and chess boards--really easily. 

FRIDAY:

On Friday we started by attempting to do a self-built walking tour of the Innerestadt based off of one we'd found online, but didn't really end up sticking to it. Instead, after seeing (the outside of) the famous Wiener Staatsoper (State Opera House), we went to see the galleries at the Albertina, where we saw Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Rembrandt, and some of the work of the surrealist Max Ernst...and more. Here's Monet's signature!

After lunch (I found myself staring face to face with an entire trout...), we headed  to Cafe Sacher, home of the original Sacher-torte. It was delicious, though definitely not the best chocolate cake I've had. DD, you've still got them beat with some of your creations, I think. 

Stephansdom at night. St. Stephen's Cathedral is the seat of the archbishop of  Vienna. We kind of stumbled upon it by accident; earlier in the day we'd seen the two towers poking through the sky and assumed it must be something significant. When we were walking around all of a sudden we found ourselves in Stephansplatz, the courtyard that surrounds the church. 

The roof of St. Stephen's Cathedral, during the day.

Inside St. Stephen's Cathedral; the stained glass was very bizarre here. It seemed like it wasn't actually stained glass, and instead the windows were clear glass covered in huge sheets of colored cellophane. The colored light coming through and bouncing off various surfaces was still beautiful, though!

On Friday night, Gaby and I went to services at the Stadttempel, the Central Synagogue in Vienna. We got there a bit late, unfortunately, but it was still enough time to enjoy the voice of Cantor Shmuel Barzilai. This photo is from the second-tier of the women's section. It makes a complete ellipse, and I walked around to behind the Ark, where you can neither see anyone else nor be seen by anyone, and just listened. I think it must be one of the focii of the ellipse, because from there it sounded as if the choir was right next to me.

We went to the home of one of the Chabad families for Shabbat dinner, which was wonderful. We got to see an entirely different neighborhood of Vienna, and to enjoy delicious food with a really nice family! On our way back to our hostel, we hopped on a tram and were pleased to find out that it dropped us off at the subway station we wanted to get on at.

SATURDAY:

This is the painted domed ceiling of the State Hall of the National Library. If the ceiling alone looks like this, just imagine the rest of the library! (I know, that's probably difficult, which is why I'm including the photo below).

The center "room" of the library. It's the largest one in Austria, and contains some 7.1 million volumes.  Princeton's Firestone Library has got it beat, though: 7.3 million volumes.

Yum, cheese spätzle with fried onions for lunch! I figured since I couldn't (wouldn't) eat the wienerschnitzel (who knew that "real" schnitzel is made with veal, not with chicken like it is in Israel!), I should ad least have something representative of typical Austrian cuisine. It was delicious, though a bit heavy.

The Imperial Silver Collection (Silberkammer) at the Hofburg Palace is impressive. I have never seen so many different sets of dishes or cutlery, even on the Crate & Barrel website! There are everyday silver place settings and dishes, pretty porcelain ones used by various monarchs on individual (or very infrequent) occasions, gilted sets...plus the large numbers of beautifully-embellished chamber pots. 

I'm assuming that this is where the guards of the Hofburg Palace used to stand, but now they're mostly for tourists who want to take pictures (ie: me and Gaby). Upon trying to get down from my perched position, I realized that my shoes were stuck in the teeth! 

As we left the complex of the Hofburg Palace, we saw these guys doing some incredible Rollerbade tricks.

When we left Peterskirche (St. Peter's Church) on Friday afternoon, we saw a sign advertising a free organ concert on Saturday night, so we made note and came back for it. The concert was for organ (obviously) played by Christopher Klöckl and french horn, played by R. Horvath.

If you look closely, at the center of the painting in the middle of the photo (which is above the altar at the front of the church), you can see the Tetragrammaton painted. Really not sure what it's doing there. (One of the other altars, in the smaller side chapels, also had Hebrew calligraphy painted, though neither Gaby nor I could figure out what it was [supposed to be] written.)

A video clip I took during Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

SUNDAY:

Our day on Sunday started with a leisurely walk around the border of the Ringstraße (that funny ß-thing is a double "s"), which I learned about in one of my classes in Prague. It turned out to be a good decision to save the Ringstraße, garden, and Schönbrunn palace tours for Sunday, because the weather was gorgeous! Our first stop was at the Burggarten imperial gardens. That's where the famous statue of Mozart is--he played for the court at age 6, and quickly became a celebrity--but also where this beautiful, blooming magnolia tree is. I was getting a bit jealous looking at everyone's pictures of campus in the springtime, so climbing this tree made me especially happy!

On Saturday we'd seen the top of the Rathaus (City Hall) from the Hofburg Palace, but didn't make it over there, so this was our first view of the immense building structure. I do have a picture of the entire building (ie: without it's noggin cut off), but this one is of me and Gaby together, and I figure you can imagine what the top part of the tower looks like. You never get a perfect shot when you ask strangers to take pictures, but that's okay. 

It was such a beautiful day out! For the first time the whole weekend, there was no threat of rain, and I was wishing I'd kept my Chacos on instead of chickening out and wearing sneakers in the morning. 

Looking down one of the hallways on the porch (for lack of a better word) of the Rathaus is kind of like looking down a hall of Holder Courtyard, no?

Hundertwasserhaus is a bit far from the rest of the things that one generally sees in Vienna, but it was definitely worth  going. It's a regular old apartment building where normal people live, except that it's designed by the funky painter-turned-architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. There's apparently a "Modern Art Toilet," but neither of us wanted to pay .6 euros to use it.

Johann Strauss, immortalized in the form of this kitschy statue in Stadtpark. There's also a statue of Schubert, among others, but we wanted to make sure we spent enough time at Schönbrunn Palace, so we walked quickly.  

We were impressed by the expanse of the Schönbrunn Palace when we approached it from the front, until we went around back and saw this view. Huge, beautiful (though without their usual spring flowers yet, apparently) laws leading up to a hill scattered with picnickers and sunbathers, atop of which stands the Gloriette.  Though it was a bit of a hike to get to the top, the view we got while picnicking (last picture in this post) was well worth it. 

Our lunch, mostly scavenged and saved from our huge breakfasts that we got at our hostel. Delicious chive bread, blueberry and apricot jam, Nutella, cream cheese, butter, and apples! Yum. It was hard to make ourselves get up from the sunny lawn and go inside to do the tour of the palace (essentially a sequel to Saturday's tour of the Hofburg Palace, complete with very similar audio guides, it turns out) because it was so beautiful out!

Before we went back down to the palace, I went all the way up to the Gloriette.  On my way down, I saw this woman teaching a bunch of kids how to make bubbles! (There's a whole series of these photos, which will appear on Facebook when I finally post pictures from the semester.)

The funny faces are because we're staring directly into the sun. But this is what we got to look down on while we were eating our lunch: the palace with the whole city behind it! We had just enough time after finishing our tour to get apfelstrudel (yum!) before heading to pick up our bags at the hostel and (barely) making our bus back to Prague.

#100: Purim comes to Prague

I learned on Facebook that the kindergarten at Akiba Schechter is about to celebrate its 100th day of school, which I remember as being a Very Big Deal from when I was five. The participants in the thread were discussing possible items that students could bring one hundred of in order to mark the occasion (I don't remember what I brought, though probably something like 100 M&Ms, or 100 paper clips). On the same day as I read that conversation, I realized that my next post would be my one-hundredth blog post since starting when I went to Israel three-and-a-half years ago. One hundred is a pretty special number, so I knew that the hundredth blog post had to be pretty special. Purim is special, so I guess that works.

And so I bring you....Purim in Prague! [Plus a couple other things. Like snow and glass harps.]

It all began last weekend, when I bought all the ingredients for Dad's/The Bubbe's hamentashen recipe. Because I knew that if I bought them, I'd have no choice but to make the dough and filling! So on Wednesday I got my hands dirty and did all the patchkey-ing that comes with kneading dough by hand. And since don't have a food processor either, I chopped the raisins, prune, and walnuts as best I could for the poppyseed filling. On Thursday night, my roommate Sara and I made them--they weren't exactly the same as at home (for one, I forgot to glaze them) but still, they were delicious!

[This is not about Purim.] It snowed today! A lot! I'm not the best at estimating depth, but I'd say by the end of the day there was probably at least 5-6 inches. For the first time this year, I got to see a substantial amount of snow falling from the sky. It was quite exciting, and justified my decision to wear my hiking boots to shul with my dress. My friend Gaby, who is studying abroad here on another program, got this picture of me eating snow off a car on our way from services to Kiddush-hopping/Shabbat lunch. (Shabbat lunch, by the way, was wonderful. There's an Israeli man who has lived in Prague for quite a while, and his brother and his band was visiting Prague this weekend and they sang the most beautiful harmonies to Shabbat songs!)

[The following video is not about Purim either, but it's something cool I saw.] The "Czech buddies" (Czech students who live with us) organize Czech Tables a few times every month, and you can go to as many as you want. In theory, it's supposed to be an informal gathering at a cool local place where you can practice your Czech, but in reality is just a way to hang out with people and get the program to pay for things. This afternoon I went to the Grand Orient Cafe, which is located in the House of the Black Madonna, a cubist building constructed in the early 20th century. (If you're interested, the crepes I got there with hot raspberry sauce, vanilla ice cream, and whipped cream were delicious.) On my way to the cafe from Shabbat lunch, however, I passed this guy playing wine glasses:

Okay, back to Jew-y things.

The Masorti (Conservative) community has services every Friday night, which I'm really glad I found out about because the Old New synagogue has tiny holes for the women to look through. No fun. Somehow I got myself into "interning" for Masorti Prague Abroad, helping organize and publicize events for students here for a semester. This Shabbat was the first time we had an event (services followed by dinner at the Dinitz kosher restaurant. Such good food!). For the first time ever, I led Maariv, and this was what I got to look at as I led! It's the Vysoka (High) Synagogue in the same building as the Jewish Town Hall. This weekend was actually a Double Shehecheyanu for me, because I also read Megillah for the first time! (Last year doesn't count, because it was three verses.)
Besides Gaby and me, the other person to read Megillah was Shumi [Insert Last Name], who used to carry Shlomo Carlebach's bags for him. I'm not sure what his story is, but he seems like an interesting guy who I'll get to know more, because he seems to be around all the time. There was also a wonderful Israeli family visiting Prague this weekend who invited me for a meal when I go to Israel to visit Naomi, et al. over Passover!

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Except for one kid and a few scattered adults with masks, the four of us were the only ones who dressed up for Purim. Maybe costumes are not a thing in Prague? (Though we found out later, at the community's Purim party, that that's not true. So many just no one wore costumes to our service). The four of us are all studying abroad here on three different programs.  It was great to meet some students from other study abroad programs, because mine is so small and it's nice to expand the circle a little bit, and I think that my "internship" (yes, the quotation marks are there for a reason) will help me meet more people than I would have otherwise met.

In case you couldn't tell what my costume was from the previous picture, it's my usual: pregnant religious woman. Comments/questions I received: "Is it real?" "Is it by King Achashverosh?" "Wait, you weren't like that this morning!"

After the reading, Gaby and I headed downstairs to check out the community's Purim party. Our first site: The Tall Man playing violin. Later in the night, he danced to the music of the jazz band playing upstairs, and it was hilarious to watch because it looked like his "knees" were always buckling backwards. 

A Purim spiel, as performed by Divadlo Feigele, a children's theater company formed about 30 years ago in the Jewish community! This is the scene of the beauty contest, where King Achashverosh is picking his new queen after throwing Vashti out of the palace. In the red is Esther, and next to her Mordechai is trying to convince her to put herself in the running. The little girls are the princesses, and there are also hand-puppet/marionettes!

The whole cast of Divadlo Feigele. 

Obviously we couldn't understand many of the actual words that were spoken in the spiel, but it was really cool to be able to follow nonetheless, because we're so familiar with the story. The video below is the scene where Haman is forced to lead Mordechai around on a royal horse wearing the King's clothes proclaiming, "This is what is done for the man whom the king wishes to honor.":

Gaby and I decided to venture upstairs, and what we discovered there was the real party! Karaoke, a bar, and lots of local Jews our own age (who knew those even existed!?). After a while we noticed this bizarre portrait of Franz Josef, the last monarch of the Hapsburg Empire. He was relatively tolerant of the Jews (we just read his edict of "semi-emancipation" of the Jews in one of my classes), so I guess that's reason enough to have a portrait of him? The room, one the fourth floor of the Jewish Town Hall, was quite extravagant--red wall-papered wall, gilded paint, big crystal chandeliers....

The flutist (floutist? flautist?) was excellent! I don't think I've ever heard jazz flute before, and if you haven't either you should take a look at this (short) video:

Gaby and I with Rabbi Michael "Einstein" Dushinsky. Rabbi Dushinsky (he goes by "Dushi," which sounds like another word that's not so nice) is quite a character. He's also the one who helped me learn the part of the Megillah that I read.

And the Purim fun only continues tomorrow! I'll get to hear Rabbi Dushinsky read Megillah, and then there's a Chabad Purim Disco (???) tomorrow night that I think I'll go to. I'm not sure when I'll do my reading, but it'll get done. 

Playing catch-up: Bohemian Carnevale, the National Gallery, and the Charles Bridge at Twilight

It's been a rough week for me in terms of modern amenities: our apartment's hot water sort of exists sometimes, and my computer is currently "taking a break" (which might end up being permanent). No hot water is a good excuse for not showering, right? As for the computer issue, it's been a bit difficult but hopefully I'll be able to figure out in the next few days what my next step should be. Luckily, my roommate Vanessa is letting me use her computer, so I won't get any more behind on my blogging!

To make up for the delay in this post, it's extra long, super colorful, and jam-packed with videos (four of them!)!

There's a two-week long "Bohemian Carnevale" going on right now that apparently is a vestige of when Czechs were actually a religious (Catholic) nation. It's basically, as I understand it, a huge celebration leading up to Lent. In practice, it's a huge party with lots of parades and costumes and masks and performances. These "horses" were among my favorite--I'm not really sure how they work because, as you can see, the legs of the people "riding" the "horses" are on the outside of the horse...so I'm not sure what's connected to the stilts! There's definitely not another person inside there. Thoughts?

Petting my favorite horse--we match!

They really do a good job of imitating the way that real horses look when they walk; I'm still impressed when I watch this video.

High-five for the shorty!

Low-five for the super-shorty :)

This was probably the weirdest thing I've seen so far. The program for the Carnevale advertised a "racing of the golden pigs." I was really hoping that there would be real (golden) pigs set loose in Old Town Square. Alas, golden pigs are probably as rare as red heifers. 

Just thought this was really cute and/or belonged in some sort of weird absurdist magazine or something like that. 

They are literally running across the square with pig heads on.

I really wanted to dance with the bear, but I was too nervous to cut in.

I guess there can only be one sun, and since the real one wasn't  shining, this  really tall one on stilts took over (with the astronomical clock tower in the background).

As advertised on Facebook :)

Classic tourist picture, since everyone should have one. I'm really good at asking strangers to take pictures of me. 

This weekend, all of the branches of the National Gallery (seven buildings in total, I think) were free. I still haven't really figured out why, but I didn't argue. Instead, after coffee with my Czech roommate Zuzana (of Belgian chocolate fame) I walked her to the train station because it was a beautiful crisp winter day with the first blue sky I've seen since being here. Then I headed out to the Sternberg and Schwartzberg Palaces in the Prague Castle complex, both of which are branches of the National Gallery. For the first time, I brought Aunt Emily's camera with me and got to play around with it a bit, though I have a lot to learn!

The view from the top of the Prague Castle complex. Red roofs have cleared a spot in my heart right there next to beautiful doors. 

This is the first building in the Castle complex, complete with guards outside and a beautiful view of the city below.  I didn't realize how surreal it looked until I saw the picture on the screen.

In the Schwartzberg Palace, I was very pleasantly surprised when I walked into one of the gallery rooms and heard notes of music wafting through the air. Then, of course, I saw the crowd, and pushed my way to the front of the room so I could see what was going on. Still not sure why there was a concert in the gallery, but I'm not complaining! It was beautiful background music for looking at the art. 

There was also dancing!

Coolest thing ever: a spork (middle) from the 17th century! And it's foldable! Someone want to get this for me for my next hiking trip?

Upon leaving the gallery, I saw a huge line and figured I should get in because whatever they were waiting to see was probably cool. Finally I got the woman in front of me to explain, using hand motions and sparse English (felt a little like being a Chalutzim counselor) that the attic of the palace had recently been restored and contained the collection of Czech armory. This is the guns/rifle case...you can't really see any of the guns in this picture, but I thought the reflection was really cool. 

Instead of taking the tram back from the Castle, I decided to walk because it was still beautiful out and the sun  was about to set. I passed this adorable little bakery that looks as authentic as it professes to be, though it's right by the Charles Bridge so who knows.

Looking east from the Charles Bridge.

The Prague Castle at twilight

From the Charles Bridge

With one of the Charles Bridge statues in the foreground

And, of course, a shoutout to Charlotte Sall--thank you for being my first Skype date since I've been here!