Vienna

The main reason I wanted to go to Vienna was to see Beethoven's final resting place. For those of you who don't know, I played violin for 10 years and during that time I was part of the Canberra Youth Orchestra Society. Every year for three years we'd learn a new Beethoven Symphony and these were always my favourite pieces to play. Besides, we were so close to Vienna anyway that I figured I'd go pay my respects.

I wish I could say that we had a great time in Vienna but the truth is we didn't. I think it was more to do with our lack of planning though and not necessary the city's fault. The first thing that went wrong was that we missed out on getting concert tickets at one of the concert halls. All the websites said to just turn up, line up and you'll get standing room tickets. We did, we did (for over an hour), and we didn't.

The second thing to happen was Alice got stuck in an escalator at the train station. Well her dress did anyway and it made quite a scene. We had to hit the emergency stop button which sounded an ear-piercingly loud alarm that went on for a few minutes. We tried in vein to salvage the dress but it was wedged into the teeth of the escalator, it wasn't going anywhere. In the end I had to rip a massive chunk out of it and being one of her favourites, Alice was not happy.

It doesn't look like much but there was actually about a foot of fabric underneath that escalator!

Then to make matters worse, a lady who worked at the station had a go at Alice and then started waving a piece of paper around at us. She said "You are not leaving until you sign this paper to say 'Your dress was too long and it wasn't our fault'". Pfft. We had absolutely no intention of complaining, we just wanted to get out of there so this waste of time was also quite annoying.

The one positive was the cemetery. It was so peaceful out there and there were some amazing tombstones. This one stood out in particular because of the amazing detail in the veil.

When we made it to Beethoven's grave we were pleasantly surprised to discover that not only was this the final resting place of the man himself, but all together in this one section of the cemetery - like buddies who all fought in the same war or something -  also lay Mozart, Schubert, Brahms and Strauss.

Schubert's Grave

Mozart's Grave

Strauss' Grave

Brahms' Grave

After the cemetery we walked through the grounds of a palace, ate some Sachertorte, saw the river and went to a music museum (probably the worst museum we've ever been to).

Mmm ... the Sachertorte was delicious!

Like I said before, I'm sure Vienna is a lovely city with loads of things to do but we went in underprepared and came out being less than impressed. We definitely learnt our lesson and since then have made sure that we do at least a little bit of research before arriving in a new city.