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.

Field Trips in the Czech Republic: Kutná Hora and Český Kras/Hrad Karlštejn

Although this was one of the few weekends I have left in Prague (don't get too jealous when I tell you that next weekend I'll be in Vienna, the following one in Budapest, and the one after that in Berlin!), I spent it mostly exploring some of the non-metropolitan towns of this country. 

KUTNÁ HORA (Friday): 

On Friday, we went to Kutná Hora which, among other things, is famous for the Sedlec ossuary (bone temple).  When I first heard that we were going to a "bone temple," I pictured something in line with tooth fairy castles made of teeth. Obviously I was wrong--the temple is not made out of bones. But it is decorated with bones. Skulls, ulnas, radii, pelvi (pelvises?), etc. Here you can see the "chandelier" and the surrounding chains of skulls.... Post jokes in the comments, or, if you're uncomfortable putting them out for the public to read, send me a personal message. 

Crest made out of, what else, bones. Look, there's a pelvis!

Didn't expect to find a Blues Cafe in Kutná Hora, but we were so happy that we did! I wish I knew about a place like this in Prague--there's a cafe set up, but also crates upon crates of records of all kinds of genres (Muddy Waters, Middle Brother, Pete Seeger, and more). Unlike most of the places I've been to while in Europe, the owner let us look around and browse for 30 minutes, and didn't once come over to ask if we wanted to order anything. Plus, he let us use the bathroom.

Looking over from the Italian Court (formerly the HQ of the central mint) towards the St. Barbara Cathedral and the Jesuit College, which now houses the GASK gallery of modern art. 

In terms of world history, Kutná Hora is probably most significant for its role as a medieval silver mining town that was one of the wealthiest cities in Europe and minted silver groschen for all of Bohemia. We took a tour of the mines--hard had, white coat, lamp and all, which reminded me a lot of the Mining Museum I went to when I went on a "math team exchange" junior year of high school with a school in Salgótarján, Hungary. At one point, our guide had us turn off our lamps to simulate the limited amount of light the miners would have had; answer: minimal (they identified silver ore by smell and sound). Then she turned off her lamp, too, to show us what would have happened if the miner ran out of fuel (ie: animal fat) for his candle--a darkness so black that we couldn't even see our hands in front of our eyes! Photo by Larissa Szyszka.

Looking out at the Italian Court from the courtyard outside of St. Barbara's Cathedral. The Italian Court  is designed in "old gothic" style architecture, in contrast to... 

St. Barbara's Cathedral, which is "new gothic"--it has many more frills, and huge flying buttresses.

All of the pews in St. Barbara's Cathedral are bookended with handcarved designs/images, none of which is identical to any of the others. This guy was one of my favorites. It took more than 5 centuries (yes, 500 years!) to build this church--they started in 1388, and didn't put on the final touches until 1905. Thanks, Wikipedia.

Although the stained glass was bright and beautiful from the inside, I found it much more interesting from the outside. What was cool from the inside was being able to walk in the "attic," above the vaulted chapels, and to see how those were constructed. 

Some of the gargoyles on the sides of the St. Barbara Cathedral. When I see things like this, I forget that I'm not actually back at school, though Princeton's gargoyles are much funnier than these.

With the Jesuit College and the Italian Court in the background. (Lisa, I use your Cookiehead Cookies tote bag all the time.) Photo by Tyler Jacobs.

HIKING IN CESKÝ KRAS (Sunday):
Last Saturday, a group from my program went on a hike to the Karlštejn Castle, only a short train ride outside of the city. I couldn't go (thanks, JP!), but the pictures that friends put up looked beautiful. So when I saw that the International Club at Charles University was organizing a 12 mile hike culminating at the castle for this weekend, I signed up immediately. It was a little intimidating to decide to go on a trip with a club at a university I'm not actually part of, but I was sure I'd meet some great new people and it had been way too long since I'd gone hiking. When I got to the train station there were lots of people hanging out in groups of twos and threes; luckily, three girls in the film studies track of my program had seen my post in our group and decided to come along, too, so we gravitated towards each other.

As soon as we set out on the trail, I knew that I'd made a good decision. All over the place was proof that spring is (finally) upon us!

Some pretty vines crawling across the wall. 

I think my favorite thing about the route of our hike was that there was a great balance of walking through forests and walking in or near villages and towns. It's nice to see what non-Prague Czech Republic looks like, and this town seems to be a pretty good representation, based on my small sample size of Zuzana's village and...well, nothing else, really. 

I really know nothing about this canyon/gorge (name, location, etc.) except that it's beautiful. After we left the gorge, we continued in the direction we had been going, but every few minutes our leaders stopped and pulled out their maps. As an OA leader--and just in general as a person with common sense--I had a feeling we were a little lost. A few miles back we'd seen a sign with "Karlštejn" written on it, pointing the other direction, and sure enough when we turned around we headed almost right back to where the sign had been. Turns out we weren't really lost, though--going to the gorge had been an intentional loop in the trail, but we'd gotten a bit turned around finding the correct path back after the view.

I met some lovely people! Sophia (left), Nicole ("BADD" hat), and Kacey (sunglasses in the back) are students in the film (Sophia and Kacey) and photography (Nicole) tracks of my program. Here we're with two of our new friends, from Portugal (next to me) and Hungary (in the front). Photo courtesy of Nicole Lewis.

There it is: the Karlštejn Castle! Named for King Charles IV, obviously, and built in 1348. We didn't do a tour of the inside, but I hear there's not much there, anyway. On the final stretch of the hike leading up to the castle, I ended up walking with a French medical student who I gave a Judaism 101 Crash Course too. She was very curious and, having grown up in a very agnostic family, knew very little about Christianity, too. It was really interesting to try to explain things to someone without even a basic knowledge of terminology (although she did know "kippah"--watch at least a few seconds of that one, you won't be disappointed). I had to explain the Rabbi as "sort of our version of a priest, but not." I think it's the first time that I've been the first Jew a person has met, and although I was often looked to in high school to explain the wierd things we sometimes do, it was strange to be someone's sole source of information on Judaism. I hope I managed to present Judaism positively while also giving honest explanations...and hopefully not making up too many things. I really enjoyed talking with her, and we had a really honest conversation about spirituality, which was wonderful--hiking is the best time for those conversations, I think.

Me with the castle, and so happy that the weather was so beautiful :) Photo by Nicole Lewis, a photography student at the San Francisco  Art Institute who is studying in Prague this semester. You can see more of her work on her website: http://www.dancingshutter.com/

Here's the whole group of hikers. It's easy to spot me--I'm next to the woman in the bright blue pullover (she's from Finland, and does capoeira). Photo courtesy of Nicole Lewis. 

Kacey, Nicole, Sophia and I headed back to the train a bit early and had the chance to walk through the  town which was only a little too touristy. We walked into a couple great bazaars, and drooled over all the food stands. When we passed this guy, making sweet crepes, we couldn't resist. The flavors looked incredible, but I was mostly intrigued by his impressively meticulous gestures for making the crepes. Look, he's using a squeegee to spread the batter over the perfectly circular griddle! We got strawberry and nutella filling in ours.

Once the blue decided to poke through the clouds, the river made for a pretty mirror. It was a great final view of the town before we got on the train back to Prague.

Although it's not related to Kutná Hora or Karlštejn, I tell you a little about my day yesterday, since it was the first time the weather was really perfect. I woke up to a blue sky, put on my brand new leather "Jesus sandals" I got in Israel, had a couple hours of class, met up with a friend to work on our JPs, listening to a street musician play hard, played nerf-ball catch in the park at sunset. On my walk home I happened upon the most incredible, Joshua Bell-esque "street pianist" (later found out it's Peter Mešo, apparently a huge Michael Jackson junkie) playing "anything you wish" pieces on the piano just outside the entrance to Old Town--after 10 minutes of listening I asked him to play Smetana's "Vltava" so that I could sort of hear a live version of Hatikva on Yom HaAtzmaut and then stayed for another 30 minutes just listening. When I continued walking, I ran into a woman who looked lost; after passing her I turned around, asked if she needed help, and ended up walking her all the way back to her hostel because it was sort of in the same direction as my apartment--and found out that there are two great flea markets/bazaars right near where she's staying! Good weather clearly has such an impact on peoples' actions. Serendipity :)

As a final note: When I came home from yesterday's events, I was shocked to hear about the two bombs that exploded at the finish-line of the Boston Marathon. Thanks to the efforts of runners, volunteers, EMTs, firefighters, policemen, Twitter, Google, and many individual people, help and information were dispensed efficiently. I don't think this is the right forum to make any commentary on the attack, so I'll just leave this at hoping to contribute to creating a world where things like this don't happen. 

Isru Chag(ue) on the Prague Blague*

Passover began for me months ago, when I first started to think about going abroad for the semester. When I spoke with a friend from Chicago who had also spent a semester in Prague, one of the first things I asked her was how feasible keeping Passover was going to be. She assured me that there would be food. There was, though certainly nothing like the quantity available in most urban supermarkets in the States. A 1 pound box of matzah costs $5 here, as do packages of kosher-for-Passover cheese and chocolate bars. 

So instead of making myself eat cheese slices on matzah all week, with a some boiled potatoes for variety, I went to Israel to visit Naomi. Both Gideon and I were lucky enough to have relatives visit us during our gap years in Israel (for Gideon: Grandma Helene, Grandpa Bernie, and Uncle Danny; for me: Grandma Helene, Aunt Emily, and Gideon), so this visit made sure Naomi got some family time in, also. Since she's been awful at communicating this year (ahem!), this post will function as a semi-update on her life, too. 

I went to seders hosted by the Masorti (Conservative) Community both nights, held at the home of Shumi (pictured on the left). On the first night I missed Eliyahu's visit, as per usual (but the crowd gave a round of applause when he left!), but on the second night I managed to catch a glimpse. There were about 60 people crammed into Shumi's living room each night--a combination of locals, study abroad students, and visiting families. Gaby and Alyssa (pictured in the Purim post) and I sat with two brothers and their mom who were passing through Prague, and the post-seder singing we did made it feel a lot more like home. 

On Thursday night I headed to the airport, and my flight arrived in Israel at 4:15 am. Somehow, I completely missed daylight savings time everywhere--Prague changed the clocks while I was in Israel, and Israel changed the clocks while I was in the air. Galya (woah, I'm wearing the same shirt in these pictures) came to pick me up because her Kibbutz is 10 minutes away from the airport, and we went to sleep immediately upon our arrival at her Kibbutz. But when we woke up we made matzah pizza (in a microwave) and salad (in a bucket, because there were no big K-for-P dishes), in typical Abby And Galya fashion. We continued the day in Tel Aviv, and then I went to Jerusalem to meet Naomi.

Little did I know that Galya and my friend Ariel (back row,far  right in the next picture) had spoken, and Ariel was waiting for me at the bus station! [Sidenote for OSRUI friends: Ariel is on the mishlachat for this summer as media specialist.] Which was good, because I couldn't remember how to walk from there to my friend Amir's house, where I was staying. Apparently, Ariel couldn't either and we got a bit lost--luckily, we ran into Naomi who was walking around carrying her map. Naomi and I had a wonderful Shabbat dinner at the home of a family I met a month ago in Prague on Purim, and lunch with the Kochins (all 6 of them!) the next day before hanging out with friends from her Midrasha. [Since around October, Naomi was a member of the first year of Midreshet HaShiluv, a program for Israelis deferring the military service for a year in order to study Jewish texts. Uniquely, the Midrasha is coed, and has both religious and secular participants. It's located, temporarily, at Kibbutz Mevo Hama, on the southeastern part of the Sea of Galilee, so Naomi got to do a lot of nice hiking up there. And despite what Facebook might say: no, it's not in Syria, don't worry.]

With friends from my gap year at Mechinat Nachshon! It's hard to believe that I haven't seen any of these folks (with the exception of Shani, who visited me at Princeton) in two years! The great thing about Israel is that everything is kosher...even on Passover. So we met up at Tmol Shilshom, one of my favorite cafes in Jerusalem. It was so wonderful to see everyone and to get a chance to catch up. חבר'ה, תודה רבה שבאתם. מאוד שמח אותי לראות את כולכם, ואני מקווה שכשתבוא לארה"ב הדבר הראשון שתעשו יהיה להרים אליי טלפון. כי אין מצב שלא נפגשים...

Sunday afternoon, Naomi and I met up with some friends of mine at a spring on the outskirts of Jerusalem called Ayn Sapir. When it came time to jump in (it was hot!), I counted to three and ducked under. Naomi, on the other hand, pulled that nasty trick that big kids do to little kids and pretended to go under but didn't actually. "I already showered today," she said. And then corrected herself: "I already showered this week." (In Israel, every drop of water counts, right?)

Sunday I went to stay with my friend Ofir in Haifa. This is the view from his window. We actually didn't end up spending much time in Haifa because one of our friends from the Mechina had been in a car accident in the army and was in the hospital, so we drove down to visit him. Incredibly, despite three broken vertebrae, he's doing fantastically and has full range of motion in all his limbs! 

Oh, and since Passover ends a day earlier in Israel than it does everywhere else in the world, I got to break Passover in Haifa on a delicious sandwich whose contents I'm still not quite sure of.

Isru chag*: Abby and Naomi bike around bike routes in Jerusalem currently under construction, which will eventually create a Yam L'Yam bike path (from the Sea of Galilee to the Mediterranean Sea), and will also connect Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, the paths aren't finished yet, and we had to turn back at the end of this section, but thanks to Naomi's handy-dandy bike map, we found some sections that were rideable, though still unpaved, and got in a good deal of wandering around parts of the city I'd never been to. The bike Naomi's riding is one she bought at the beginning of the year from someone in Tel Aviv; the one I rode belongs to the family she's been living with in Jerusalem for the past three weeks during the interim between the end of the Midreshet Hashiluv program and the beginning of the Midreshet Lindenbaum program which she starts next week. Itai is a good friend of hers from the first Midrasha, and she's taken over the loft bed and one of the shelves in his room, and even has a key to the house! He's in the army most of the time now, anyway...

I just really liked this contrast.

Outside Ayn Yael, another spring close to the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. The gate was locked, but Naomi and I had a nice adventure there anyway. I'm not sure what she's using to pick her nose with, but nearby was another plant whose name I forgot that she kept peeling and eating; apparently, you can make pies out of them. I guess living near the Kinneret and doing lots of hikes teaches you about the edible plants!

It was hot outside, so we continued our bike ride along dirt roads and ended up at this spring. I can't remember what it's called, but it's more like a pool than a spring. When we got there, it was filled with ultra-Orthodox boys/men. I told Naomi that if she jumped in, they would disperse pretty quickly...

and they did.

"אבי, את ישראל, man". Transliteration: "Abby, at Yisrael, man." Translation: "Abby, you are Israel, man." Okay, so it actually says "Avi" not "Abby," but they're spelled the same way in Hebrew and I like my version. 

Wednesday morning I had the opportunity to interview Ernest Stock, a member of Princeton's class of 1949, at his home in Ramat Gan, pictured here with his wife Bracha. In 1946, six years after coordinating his family's escape from Nazi Germany, having learned English attending night school in New York City, and having served in the United States military, Stock was accepted as a sophomore at Princeton through the GI Bill. Upon his arrival, he founded the Student Hebrew Association on campus, the precursor to Hillel (now the Center for Jewish Life) and the first long-lasting Jewish student organization at Princeton. For my second junior paper (and likely for my senior thesis) I am writing about the development of Jewish communal life within the student body at Princeton. 

The rest of Wednesday, prior to leaving for my flight back to Prague, was a day in Tel Aviv. It was great to be back in the shuk--outdoor bazaars are something I wish were more common in America! Except these mannequins were really creepy.

Naomi, expert shuk-shopper that she is, picked out some fantastic veggies to make us lunch: avocado, tomato, cucumber, red pepper, onion...plus some zaatar bread to go with it, and a handful of strawberries for dessert. Once we got to the beach (five minutes away), we sat down for some lunch and a dip in the sea. 

There she goes! This girl brings her bathing suit everywhere.

If you look closely, you can see the Chaco's tan line that I got after only 5 days in the sun. Czech Republic, step up your game! Let's get some shining sun and warm weather happening. (And yes, I finally succeeded in getting a new pair of "Jesus sandles" to replace my beloved broken ones).

Coming full circle: Masaryk St. in Jerusalem. Thomas Garrigue Masaryk was the first president of independent Czechoslovakia, and was really good to the Jews. The restaurant on the corner of this street is called "Masaryk Italian Restaurant." Oops.

*Danny, here's your footnote. Thanks for having us over for tea, it was lovely!