Lange Nacht der Museen

Hallo!

It has gotten so cold in the past week!  I am sitting in my kitchen with the tea kettle on while wearing a fleece, a sweatshirt, a scarf, and sweatpants!  On Friday (October 1st), the gelato shops closed and pretty much the whole city turned the heat on.  But lucky for me, the gelato shop by my apartment is open through the end of October.  The main event of my week was probably my Vienna: Past and Present class on Wednesday.  My teacher took us to a couple of main places in the city center that I hadn't seen before.  We saw some of the oldest churches in Vienna, the Jewish Square, and even the building where Mozart gave his first concert!  I think that class is going to be my favorite because we just walk around the city most of the time.  My professor even bought us all chocolate at one of the museums!

a square in the city center

where Mozart performed his first concert!

a cool church where some Viennese monks are buried

The most exciting part of the weekend was definitely Saturday night, which was die Lange Nacht der Museen.  From 6 p.m. until 1 a.m. there were 105 museums open all over the city.  We paid one fee at the first museum we saw and then had a ticket to almost every museum in Vienna!  The whole city was insanely busy until about 2 in the morning.  I went to the Albertina Museum and saw the huge Picasso exhibit, which was AMAZING.  I would guess there were about 30 original Picasso drawings and paintings.  The exhibit was all about Picasso during the war, so there were a lot of interesting paintings and things to read.  We also went to one of the old libraries in the city center, which was absolutely beautiful and reminded me of something from Harry Potter.  Then we waited about an hour to get into the Museum of Chocolate where we got to sample some Viennese chocolates and got a wafer to put either milk chocolate, white chocolate, or dark chocolate on.  Our last stop was the Alt-Wiener Schnapsmuseum, which is a famous Schnapps Museum in Vienna.  We waited about an hour there, too, only to find that the entire tour was in German.  But everybody got to try a little sip of whatever kind of Schnapps they wanted, so I tried a flavor of my favorite type of Viennese cookie...not as pleasant as you would think!

the library...so pretty!

two of the mini chocolate fountains at the Museum of Chocolate

chocolate statues

part of the Schnapps Museum

another part of the Schnapps Museum

The night of the museums was a little difficult because I hurt my foot pretty badly on Friday night, so I was kind of hobbling all over the city.  But I'm going to keep sightseeing anyways even though I look a little ridiculous!  We will see how it goes...

Hope everything is going well at home!  Auf Wiedersehen!