I've been in Vienna since Monday afternoon.  It's a great city.  We took the Orange bus from Budapest to Vienna.  It was easy, quick and they serve coffee on board the bus.  (I don't know of any trains in Eastern Europe that do this!)

The rest of the week has been devoted to getting to know the city, seeing as many museums as possible and drinking mulled wine at every opportunity.  I read somewhere that Vienna is one of the 10 best museum/art cities--and it's true.  There is so much to see.  There are also Christmas-Markets everywhere so it's not to hard to find hot mulled wine either.  Oh but a word to the wise, the Lions Club has stands up all over the city and they make some of the best mulled wine/hot punch I've had in Vienna--so look for them.  I assume that they are doing good things with the money they earn.

The big surprise has been that Bulgarian comes out of my mouth quicker and more automatically than German does.  Yes my vocabulary is much bigger in German but the it's the Bulgarian that is on the tip of my tongue.  It's made for a lot of laughs.  Well my friend Robyn laughs at me while who ever I am trying to talk to me just stares.  At this point,  I usually get embarrassed that I've just said something indistinguishable in Bulgarian and then can't say anything in either German or English.  <!--more-->

After the first two days it's gotten better but it's strange that the first greetings that come to mind now come in Bulgarian rather than in German.  I never thought that would happen.  But it has.  I am learning Bulgarian.

Anyhow, what I really want to write about are the amazing museums in Vienna.  There's a great area of the city called the MusumsQuarter Wien or MQ for short.  We went to see the Leopold Museum and liked it so much that we are going to go back to see the Hopper exhibit in another one of the MQ museums.  The great thing about the Leopold Museum was that the art was well labeled in both German and English. We saw a retrospective of Christian Schad; he had a long varied career as an artist.  It's worth checking out.  Also in the museum's collection are a number of Schiele and Klimt pieces.  Apparently the museum has the world's largest Schiele collection.

After this we went across the street to the Kunsthistorishes Museum.  The name of the museum is translated into English as the Museum of Fine Arts.  This museum has so, so much stuff.  First off the building is beautiful both inside and out but at Christmas time the windows that look out onto Maria Theresien Platz look down on a beautiful and well lighted Christmas Market.  Wow.  If that sight doesn't get you in the mood for Christmas there is something wrong with you.  We spent most of our tie in the Gallery of Paintings and then walked through the Egyptian-Oriental Collection.   Not being a museum curator or an art historian, I would also add that the Egyptian-Oriental Collection seemed to have a lot of Greek and Roman pieces as well but maybe I should have expected this.  I am not sure.

Then on Wednesday, we got up early and took the metro and then a tram (number 71) to go to the Belvedere.  This is the upper and lower Palaces of Prince Eugene.  Now they are art museums and offer beautifully kept and maintained gardens and walks that you can also explore.  One thing to note is that it wasn't clear to us that we should buy the combined upper and lower ticket and by the time we figured it out we had already bought the upper ticket and then had to buy a second ticket.  Luckily we were able to qualify for the student ticket prices but we could have saved a fair amount of money by buying the combination ticket.  So buy both.  It's worth it.

There is a lot of art here--some of the rooms are labeled only in German and some in both English and German--but the main  focus of the Belvedere is once again the artist Gustav Klimt and his contemporaries.  He's one of Vienna's hometown boys and everyone seems to love him--from art enthusiasts to souvenir vendors.  They love him so much so that it seems like it would be sacrilegious not to come home with a piece of Klimt be it a postcard, a book, a printed tie or a rub on tattoo of the Kiss (yes, they make those).

I have to say, seeing Klimt in person made me finally understand what all of the "hype" is about.  Sure I'd seen copies of the Kiss before seeing it in person but the copies I'd seen had always been hung on a the wall of one my college sorority sisters rooms--nice but cliche.  However to see the Kiss and frankly all of Klimt's other pieces in person changed the way I thought about him.  His paintings are electrifying and I've never seen a print that does his work justice.

Finally tomorrow we will be going to MAK (The Museum for Applied Arts and Contemporary Art).  They have an exhibit titled Recollecting: Raub und Restitution/Looted Art and Restitution.  Apparently the show "presents art and everyday objects from Jewish possessions and their history between robbery and restitution."  I guess that this sounds like it could be a depressing show but it seems really interesting and appeals to me as the daughter of an antique store owner.  I think that history, art and the personal history of these objects in fascinating.  That and the posters that were created for this show are pretty catchy so we'll be checking this out too.

Here ends what is the first of what I assume will be a couple of postings on Vienna!!

Oh yeah, and  if you can't tell I am having a great time!!