Austria: Vienna, Hungary, Slovakia & Rachel's Birthday

The secret is out.... We Love Vienna!

We wore these 'Hey, we are tourists' shirts just so everyone would know we love Vienna.  Oh, we love the city too ;)

June 16

Last Sunday we attended church at the Vienna Community church which rents space from this Lutheran church in the center city and does its English speaking service at noon...

They asked Sarah to light the candles at the beginning of the service..

and AJ loved children's time later in the service.  I didn't get a good picture of it, but he started roaring like a lion to the guy on the front row.  The pastor was asking the kids what they thought the best job in the world was and AJ said "Garbage truck drivers... and Mommy's are yummy!"  This statement made us all laugh!

Family pic inside the church...

We attended services with one of Rachel's good college friends, Joe Olefirowicz.  The man is a brilliant musician and now conducts a number of productions each year in Vienna.  It was a lot of fun getting to know him.

We went out to lunch and later he treated our family to desserts at one of the famous Vienna cafes (Cafe Central)...

That night I took Rachel out on the town for her birthday (which was the next day).  The kids hung out and watched a movie at the apartment...

...while we attended a Mozart concert in a place where Mozart lived for a few months and was a favorite performance place for him.  The acoustics were perfect and the 90 minute concert of primarily Mozart music was wonderful...

Rachel's Birthday

The next day, June 17, was actually Rachel's birthday.  So, we took the whole family to an 11am production of the Mozart's 'The Magic Flute'  We managed to go to the Volks Theater instead of the VolksOper initially, but we only missed about 15 minutes of the 3 hour production.  It REALLY helped having the wikipedia write up about the synopsis of the opera so we could understand what was going on as each scene played out.

Joe had told us the previous day the country supports the arts with a relatively large sum of money compared to the size of the country.  In other words, the goal isn't to run the arts at a profit.  The goal is to embed appreciation for the arts into the citizens of the county.

There is no way this particular show could have been run at a profit because our entire family of 6 people went to the show for a whopping 6 Euros (you read that correctly...six euros...which is about $8 US dollars...for ALL of us!).  I'd say that was one of the best deals of the trip right up there with the $250 worth of Turkish airline tickets (advertised on popular US based travel sites for $1,500) that got all of us from Istanbul to Izmir, Turkey.

The girls really loved the production and they looked great in dresses we bought when we were in the Ethiopia airport on our way to Kenya.

AJ was pretty amazing during the production.  He was fascinated by it and even told the teenagers around us to 'be quiet' as the opera was going on!  LOL

Late that afternoon we headed to Bratislava, Slovakia to celebrate Rachel's birthday with dinner in a different country.  As we were looking at the map, we realized we could celebrate Rachel's birthday in Hungary as well.  But we didn't want to just drive in and drive out without doing something.  AJ said "Let's go to a park!"....so that is what we did in Rajka, Hungary.

The girls like to say "We went to Hungary to get hungry for dinner!"

I just think this is a hilarious picture with all of us 'big' people playing on the playground and AJ on the outside....

 Sequence of pictures showing how AJ used Mommy as a slide (notice the baby bump stops him on the way down....LOL)

"You ok Mommy?"

After getting hungry in Hungary, we headed to Old Town Bratislava, Slovakia for dinner.

Found a great place with traditional Slovakian cuisine....

...and really funny bathroom signs...

3 countries on one birthday!  It was a good day, and I'm so thankful Rachel came into the world XX years ago or my life would be very different today.  June 17 = the day an angel was born.

Old town Brataslava

Last Day in Vienna

June 18 was our final day in Vienna.  Our friend Joe was able to get the girls and Rachel backstage at various places around town that they never would have been able to see otherwise.  He is preparing right now for a fall production and allowed the kids to sit in on some of the early music rehearsals.

Backstage at the Volksoper...

Joe really has a remarkable life right now as he spends 4-5 months a year in Vienna and the rest of the time in New England where he works as a music director for a church.  They actively recruited him and he agreed to a lower salary so long as he could continue to do this kind of work oversears 4-5 months a year.

Joe is about the most brilliant music man I think I am ever going to meet.  Rachel said in college he could hear a new piece of music one time and then sit down at the piano and play the whole thing.  When she told that story the girls said "That's what Mozart did in the movie we watched about his life!"

After having lunch with Joe, Rachel and the girls headed to one of Beethoven's old homes in Vienna.  To get there they had to go to the tram stop where I was playing guitar and singing for money when I met Rachel.  The girls were sitting on what we now call the "Family Memorial Bench" which the city placed there after we left.  Rachel snapped this shot & made it black and white.

I love this shot...

Beethoven apparently was a difficult tenant and lived in many places around town.  The place the girls visited is the one he lived in the longest, primarily because the owner of the apartment was an admirer and let him live rent free...

The Justin Bieber of his day....

His piano.  He wrote his only opera, Fidelio, using this piano...

The opening number for Fidelio is simply brilliant.  I remember hating classical music before my time of study in Vienna.  As any 'hard working overseas student' would do, I took a music appreciation class....and actually learned to appreciate classical music!  Beethoven, Strauss, and Mozart were my favorites.  And this Fidelio piece was definitely one of ones that changed my mind about classical music.  Kudos to you Mr. Beethoven for writing something that still resonates with all kinds of generations 200+ years later...

Turn up your speakers and hit 'play' on the Youtube video below.  Listen to the Fidelio opening as your read the rest of the blog post....  Here is the link if the embedded video doesn't work http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_H9xI7BC3A

Pictures Rachel took on the way to meeting AJ and me at the Prater...

The Prater

If you are ever in Vienna (especially if you are with kids), go to the Prater.  It is a landmark amusement park area that is free to enter.  You pay for whatever rides you want to go on and they range in price from 1 Euro to the kiddie rides up to 5 Euros for some of the more intense rides.

This area has been in operation since 1873 when a World Exhibition came to town.  As a family, this was the PERFECT way to end our trip in Vienna.  So. Much. Fun!

Is it fair to call the rest of the family 'Photobombers' if I purposefully took the picture when they were in the background of the Merry Go Round AJ was on?  Yeah...look at those posers!

When getting on this ride, the man at the start said "Be sure to hold on tight!"  AJ didn't quite hear him right and turned to V and said excitedly "They have frogs that bite!"

Impossible to explain how CRAZY this twirling ride really was.  Upside down, sideways, slow twirls, twirls so fast you feel your face stretching.  If Rachel had gone on this ride we would have been cleaning up the vomit for days.  It was brutal...

...but fun...

Another hilarious ride.  Rachel gets on this with AJ thinking it is going to be a little po-dunk choo choo train going around the track.  It starts back going backward pretty fast and then proceeds forward not like a little po-dunk choo choo train ride but something more like a little roller coaster.  I wish I had filmed this ride as the look on AJ (and Rachel's) face was just hilarious.  Total shock for Rachel, total fear for AJ.

S and me on swings.  Notice the kids in the swing behind looking up.  That's because this swing goes....

about 100 meters into the air!  It was quite a view of the entire city of Vienna...

We didn't see V and AJ waving at us, but they were...

AJ was understandably all smiles...

As stated above...a perfect way to end our wonderful stay in the city where it all began for our family, Vienna...

Til next time, God Bless...