August 28 and 29

On Thursday, I went to the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien(Vienna History Museum) because we had no class and the tour of the Leopold Museum with Dr. O got pushed back to 4 pm. This museum is located practically right next to Karlskirche, so it was easy to find. I liked this museum because it was very well planned out. Each floor had artifacts and descriptions from the different periods in Vienna’s history, such as the Biedermeier period and the Baroque architecture period. I thought the first floor was interesting because they had some cool medieval knight’s armor on display, and they also had some of the original stained glass windows from St. Stephen’s Cathedral. There were also many models of the city throughout the museum that showed what the city looked like at various stages in its history. I liked seeing the city how it was when the wall and the mote surrounded the main part of it. There was another model that showed the city when the Ringstrasse was being built. These models helped me understand Vienna’s development and growth over the years.
Later on in the day, we went on a guided tour of the Leopold Museum with Dr. O, our favorite tour guide. This museum is unique because it is mostly made up of the private art collection of Rudolf Leopold and his wife Elisabeth. They also helped design the unique building that the collection is housed in. Dr. O told us that there are some paintings here that the Belvedere museum would kill to get their hands on. There are paintings in the museum by many famous artists, such as Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Moser, and Schiele. One of the most famous paintings in the museum is “Death and Life” by Klimt. It depicts a death-like figure on one side and multiple versions of life on the other side of the canvas. I like this painting because there is multiple ways to interpret it. The death figure could either be seen as playful or sinister. I also liked some of the paintings by Schiele, the famous Austrian artist who died at the age of 28. His paintings were usually pretty bizarre. Many people liked the “Cardinal and the Nun” because it was obviously influenced by Klimt’s painting, “The Kiss.” I think that many of these artist’s paintings are a reflection of the times. The beginning of the 20th century was when most of these artists were in their prime, and it was also a time of change and chaos. The working class was growing, more people were moving to the cities, different political parties were forming, and the Habsburg empire was about to collapse. Many of these paintings definitely reflect the confusion of the times.
On Friday, I pretty much just walked around the city looking for areas and places that I hadn’t seen yet. I was starting to get sad that we had to leave in 2 days. I ended up walking around in the inner city. I found a cool church that I had never seen before near the Hofburg, but I couldn’t figure out the name of it. It was definitely built in the neo-Gothic style, but it was much more subdued than the Votivkirche. I also found a flea market, where they were selling lots of random things, such as opium pipes. I ran into a seller here who was very anti-American. He was getting angry with me for all the problems that America has. He blamed me for electing Bush to office twice, and he tried to convince me that Obama was a drug addict. I was annoyed and amused with the guy all at the same time. I listened to his babble for a bit and then left. That was the first time on this whole trip that I had come across someone who was so anti-American. Some people have been a little rude to me because I was American, but never so overtly so.

The German word of the day is wohnen, which means “to live”.
The German word of the day is Freundschaft, which means “friendship”.