Day 4 aka Wien Day 1 @ Night

And so...We spent the whole morning in Wien investing money on concert and opera tix to absorb the music culture. =) I think twin ended with Stephensdom. So I shall continue from there I guess. (We are all clearing backlog here so we can go Germany without increasing the load laughs) Okay after the touristy but lacking in serenity church, (guess there were really too many trigger-happy tourists almost all the time, and the added gift shop within the church), since there was still light, we left for Museumsquartier.



No this is not museumsquartier but the road across which we think is the chocolate museum but we cannot confirm because it is not open. (we have terrible navigation skills la we always get lost de haha!) Anyway, the color seems to be proof enough.



On the way to Museumsquartier with pretty pretty trees along the walkway!




We saw the owner and this dog outside the museumsquartier. One thing we noted was that pets especially dogs are very common here in Europe! Haha, well dogs get to take metros here too unlike in Singapore =) And big dogs too if they are muzzled up. So all the people who are scared of dogs shall have to live with this when they visit Europe. (No probs for us, we love dogs esp twin who snaps photos of all the cute dogs she sees! haha)


Museumsquartier is this place where all the museums 'congregate' and they are just facing Hofburg! Haha, which is the place of the opera performance the next day. And they have all kinds of exhibitions. We were there to visit the Leopold museum because we heard a very good review on it from one of the hostel staff.

Photo of museumsquartier
Wikipedia on Museumsquartier:

The Museumsquartier (MQ) is a 60,000 m² large area in the 7th district of the city of Vienna, Austria; it is the eighth largest cultural area in the world. The Museumsquartier contains Baroque buildings as well as Modern architecture by the architects Laurids and Manfred Ortner (Ortner & Ortner).

And according to it, the place cost 2 billion euros to build too! wow that is a lot of money isn't it? like esplanade to singapore, museumsquartier to Vienna!

And Leopold museum is actually an art museum showcasing art pieces that Dr Rudolf Leopold, a passionate art lover collects. An interesting fact to note is that Dr Rudolf Leopold only started becoming passionate about art at the age of 22 - it was not cultivated from young. Also, his favourite artist (they have 3 rooms of his paintings) is Schiele, who was I think not popular until Leopold's exhibition. Schiele's paintings fall into the genre of expressionism, which is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an emotional effect - it is a subjective art form. And usually, expressionism displays angst. I guess its because sad and tormenting emotions inspire, whereas cheerful thoughts inspire sharing in language rather than other forms of expression like painting. (Gosh think I'm tired so I'm babbling here)

And this is the inside of the Museumsquartier! And some of these interior places are ach residences. It must be really cool to stay here and have your place mistaken as a museum. At any rate, they stay near the museums and get first hand info about exhibitions!

Okay this is one of the interesting art exhibition posters we saw! Haha imagined being crushed by wintermelons! Coolness, this poster that is.

Laughs. Well, in the end we did not go to the Leopold museum because we reached only half an hour before the museum's closing time, and thought that half an hour would not be enough for us to at least try to appreciate the pieces. Instead, we went to appreciate this:

Isn't this little girl cute? Haha, when we went out of the museum, we saw this little girl play football with her brother. Erm perhaps the situation accurately portrayed is that she was chasing the ball and her brother all the time (the brother hogged the ball!) so we only saw this little 'dumpling' bouncing around.

We headed (with a little time left before the concert at Musikverein) to the Rathaus and this is the correct one (pardon me) that shut the door on us at approximately 6 pm. =(

Seeing that we still had a bit of time before the concert tonight, we went for dinner! And had what they call schnitzel with pommes which is chicken with fries haha. And its very very nice! Made 2 girls very very contented and happy at night =) what miracles chicken and potatoes can perform =)

And with that we went on for the concert at Musikverein! Haha and it was a concert with a bassoon quartet! With a very interesting compere who spoke in Austrian or German (its a foreign language that we cannot understand) 3/4 of the concert sadly for us, because unlike the natives, we could not appreciate his humor. =( (Well, this was also the case for the Japanese boy standing next to us)

This is the TOILET! Super nice! I like.

And then we went home or rather back to the nice nice clean and pretty hostel. =) All in all, tiring day wor!