Vienna is the city of musicians, or at least it was centuries ago. But though I don't think there were Beethovens or Mahlers or Schuberts living in 1996 Vienna, numerous remembrances of them do. Schubert's birthplace, Brahms' grave, Beethoven's toilet...we didn't care what we saw, as long as a famous composer had some part in it. So, armed with our Vienna A to Z book listing dozens of such historical places, we looked forward to trekking around Vienna, in search of anything and everything having to do with composers.

After breakfast in our hotel[110], we set out for the Hofburg palace, which contains political offices, the Vienna Boys choir, the Spanish riding school, royal apartments, and various museums containing everything from the crown jewels to the crown silverware. What we cared most about was the Neue Hofburg, which had the Treasury, the armory, and, most importantly, the world's best collection of musical instruments! Now how do we find the darn thing? Oh, it was easy to find the huge collection of buildings called `The Imperial Palace', but all the confusing hallways and lack of signs made it pretty impossible to find our beloved wing. We did find the Esperanto museum, but it was closed despite the fact that the sign said it should be open. Hard to believe this was the city with the most organized subway system in the world!

A striking resemblance between my sweetie and Franz Schubert when he stands next to his piano, don't you think?

We also had a great time examining the weapons, suits of armor, and costumes in the armory, as well as the famous portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte on his throne. What shocked me the most about the armor, besides the fact that they had lots for horses, was the incredibly small size of the suits! I don't think I would fit into many of them, and I am only 5'3"! And the people that wore them were supposed to wield those 6 foot weapons, which looked like they easily weighed 200+ pounds?!? I can barely bench-press 40! That was definitely a different society back then--what an insightful experience it was to see such history first hand!

I think we spent at least two hours in that first wing, `huging out'[113], amazed that there were very few people in this museum[114]. Even the bathrooms were cause for great enjoyment--they were made of gorgeous marble, and had those individual room-stalls that Doug favored so much. About the only thing we did not like were the bitchy museum guards, who had a total cow whenever you so much as walked too close to one of the exhibits. Fair enough, but they didn't need to be so rude when I obviously had tremendous respect for the treasures there. Despite the fact that they would have yelled at me if they saw me, I managed to sneak a low A on Mahler's Steinway!

Speaking of treasures, we found our most expensive, and possibly most valued souvenir, in the gift shop afterwards. Surprisingly enough, they had no hard- or soft-back books about the museum or the instruments there...only a two-CD and book set of many of the unusual items there. Though the narrations on the CD were in German[115], the book also had translations in three other languages, including English of course. With pictures and quality samples of many of those musical oddities, it was definitely worth the $50!

After our hamburger lunch that we purchased, of all places, at a liquor stand in the labyrinth that is the Hofburg Palace, we finally found the Treasury behind a wall of construction. Funny how the crown of the former Holy Roman Empire lies behind yellow construction tape and particle board walls. Anyway, I think we paid twice as much for this museum, and got about one-tenth as much enjoyment from it. Though many of the extravagant robes and ceremonial weapons were interesting, they had a lot of oppressive energy in them--we found it disturbing that supposed men of the cloth would perpetuate such a divided society and hoard the country's limited wealth for themselves. The other riches there, including many golden altars created to house bones of Saints, also seemed so contrived and self-righteous that they were not as much fun to look at as the musical instruments, which were created out of love for music. Boy, aren't we being spiritual about this! Well, any society who boasts having a unicorn horn[116] to promote their power is pretty sick, you must admit.

I must say, though, that it was intriguing to see the crown jewels; I originally thought this meant a chest full of jewels passed down among the royal family[117], but these merely included a gold crown with incredibly fake-looking jewels on it, a gold saber/ruling baton-type thingee, and an `apfel'. This last item was particularly confusing, since that means `apple' in English, and we thought it funny that generations of kings would hold sacred the `Royal Apple.' Luckily there was a person behind us listening to us laugh about that, and he explained that it was figurative for the world-- this meant that in ceremonies the king would wear the crown, gesture with the saber, and hold the apple, meaning holding the world, in his hand. Suddenly all the portraits of Emperors past made total sense to us, including the one of Napoleon later on in our trip!

After finishing our museum tour, we continued with our quest for famous, dead composers. And what better place to find dead composers than a cemetery? So we took the tram--presumably at first the wrong one but it turned out to be okay--to the southern-most part of the city to the Central Cemetery, the final resting place of the lost ark...I mean, many famous composers. It was very fitting that it was raining and gloomy at that point.

Fresh flowers and a huge headstone monument adorn the grave of Ludwig Van Beethoven

Emotionally cleansed after that experience, we went out in search of some not-so-dead performers, and found one! There was to be a Wednesday evening organ concert at St. Stephen's, and for only 100 AS ($10) each! After we went back to our room to change into something more suitable, we bought our tickets[119], then succumbed to the many advertisements we had seen around town and decided to eat at Wienerwald[120]. We actually ended up ordering from the German menu because we discovered that the English menu did not have the lower-priced selections on it! Though the sauces for the chicken were unusual indeed[121], the food was excellent and quite inexpensive ($16 total for the two of us, I think), but it could have been expensive if we had assumed that the bread and chocolate bars sitting at our table were free of charge[122].

St. Stephen's was nowhere near as packed for its weekly Wednesday night concert as Salzburg's Dom had been for that Premiere concert, but I was still quite surprised at the good showing. I was also very surprised to see that the organist was not in a tux, nor even a suit for that matter. I think he may have even been wearing jeans! Equally as surprising was the fact that the more modern pieces on the program were by far the best. He rocked on the selections from Mendelsohn and Hindemith[123], and snoozed through Bach and classical pieces which should have made the organ sing! Oh, but the improvisational finale was definitely the most interesting to Doug and I, who have never heard of a performer becoming a composer at the end of a concert[124]. His 5+ minute piece utilized a variety of styles and genres--going from modal Renaissance to harmonic minor Slavic--yet somehow, it all worked! Once again, it was obvious that the organist knew how to get the most impressive timbres out of the instrument, because the acoustics in the cathedral just exploded. Our search for composers was complete, because this one was actually alive!

We ended the evening at a small, smoky pub, Doug treating me to $5 hot chocolate[125] while he sipped his $3 beer. Backwards, isn't it? Only in Europe. Anyway, we didn't stay very long, because, like in the States, the obnoxious rock music blasted us out. Oh, where was one of our dead composers when we needed him!?!