Wien

What you should know about Wien (German name for Vienna): It looks a hell of a lot like Germany, the accent is different, and they aren’t so keen on the recycling and Pfand thing.

The phrase “auf Wiedersehen!” (“see you again!”) seems more popular in Vienna than in Germany. Around Würzburg, we mostly get “Tschüss!” as a good-bye, though old women on the bus like to say “Tschüssie!” to each other. American girls have adopted this and think it’s cute.

I attended my first Catholic mass. It was in St. Stephen’s Cathedral. (Pictures here.) As far as church buildings go, it wasn’t that nice. On the outside, it’s got that ugly Gothic thing going on, the interior has all the overwrought guilded junk you’d expect. Of course, it still beats the metal-building-church-on-the-highway style that America invented.

I opted not to eat the cracker/flesh or drink the wine/blood. But I did do some standing, sitting, standing, sitting. Clayton, one of the Americans on the trip, met up with his Methodist church’s choir which was invited to sing at St. Stephen’s. So I got to hear them during the mass. I don’t usually care much for the church-music genre, actually. Big exceptions include the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou and that Bach mass.

So much for mass, but you know what I do like? Jews. Christa and I toured Vienna on our own, and because she’s so Jewish, we visited all the big Jew sites.

The Jewish museum had a lot of money put into it. It’s an ultra modern, bomb proof, concrete and steel building with hologram displays, movies, thousands of artifacts, and a nice cafe inside. Fun facts: Jews did not start the plague, they secretly all make fun of Christians, and while they can join me in eating a plate full of kangaroo, it would not be kosher to drink milk at the same time.

I also visited the opera house. It was fancy, shiny, big, etc. So, I guess I’m all classy and stuff now that I’ve been in an opera house. I did not watch one live, thankfully. I had a history of music class a few semesters back that required me to watch operas on DVD, and I can report that I don’t care for it. Some of the arias are memorable, but why not just listen to that on CD? Come on, be a Philistine—opera’s not good!