James teaches on Tuesdays.  As a “reward” and a treat for the whole family, the kids and I take the tram across town and meet him for supper at 6:00 at Bella Casa, a restaurant near Johannes Kepler University.  Every Tuesday we have been in town, we have done this and have had the same waiter each week.  We don’t know his name, but he knows our drink (4 Cokes, 1 Coke light, 2 glasses of leitungswasser) and that we’ll want 3 Margarita pizzas. (Libby and I sometimes order different things. Like tonight–I had lasagna!) 

I think he enjoys the Americans who don’t speak any German. (His English is limited.)  Tonight, he appeared with five plates of tiramisu with whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate. “I wanted to bring these to you last time, but you left too fast,” was what we believe he said.  YUM!  And what a nice treat! Five free desserts!

Since we only have two weeks left in Linz, we took our camera and asked if we could get a picture with him. He seemed embarrassed by the request at first, but he called a waitress over to take a picture of the whole family with him. 

 

We love our Nameless Austrian Waiter!

The Vienna Zoo (also known as Zoo Vienna, Tiergarten Schönbrunn, or the Imperial Zoo) claims to be the oldest zoo in the world.  

    

 

It was begun in 1752 as an imperial menagerie.   I have lots of pictures of the zoo and not a whole lot to say, so I’ll caption where needed and let the pictures do the talking!

 

       

 

The peacocks just wandered around, occasionally going into an animal enclosure.

   

 

Michael touched this albino peacock!

 

Libby kissed a frog to get her prince. But it stayed a frog.

 

They had lots of penguins, but sadly the polar bear enclosure was under construction.

      

 

PANDAS!

 

        

 

The lions were asleep (as they often are). 

 

What was neat was that you could go UNDER their enclosure and look up through plexiglass to see what you could see. What did we see?

 

A sleeping lion!

 

Rachel found someone to listen to all her secrets. 

 

I found a new pet. 

 

I think James would like to have seals in the backyard. He loves to watch them.

   

 

SEAL FIGHT!

   

 

Now, kiss and make up.

 

Need a bathroom break?

I promise I won’t butt in on you.

 

 

I am including this picture, not because it is particularly good, but because it has a story. I sat down on this wooden bird to pose, began to slide off the dumb thing, grabbed on, kept sliding, and wrenched my back!  It was fairly hysterical. 

Rachel had no such difficulty.

 

Maybe if she had tried to sit on the real birds, we’d have had two good stories.

 

   

 

We liked posing. 

 

        

 

They had an aquarium you could walk under (and through). 

 

Hallo, reptile friends! Smile for the camera!

     

 

The hippo pen was crazy. Those things were so close, and only a Plexiglass wall separated us. (And you could go over it or around it if you really wanted!)

 

This hippo walked right over and laid down in front of James. Females are always falling at his feet. 

 

Look! More animal pictures!

 

               

 

We all really enjoyed sitting and watching the elephants eat. Perhaps it was because they were entertaining. Or maybe it was because there were benches, and we’d been walking all day.

    

 

Either way, you’ve got to love an animal that can pee a heart. 

 

One visit to the gift shop and two stuffed animals purchased. Then, it was–

 

THE END

ZOOM!

         

 

Sisters

 

What on earth is this statue? It looks like a couple in love embracing. 

Until you notice they are sort of sitting on this guy.

Um, hey, guys? I’m down here.

 

Sort of put me in mind of this picture. 

(if you don’t see it, look under the mom’s knee.)

 

      

I’ve got cute kids for sure! 

The maze at Schönbrunn was originally made in 1698. It was a fun time for the royal family and their buddies.  I guess it got dull, because they kept cutting parts out and finally cut the whole thing down in 1892. But, never fear, historians!  They regrew the maze in 1998, modeled after historical documents of what the maze looked like. It’s 18,640 square feet of fun!

We went to a maze in England at some palace, and we figured it out pretty easily. This one had us turning in circles for a long time. 

The goal was to get to a center viewing platform. The kids beat me to it and took pity on me and gave me directions to join them. 

 

It was  a pretty maze on a pretty day!

         

 

James opted out of the maze to rest his feet and to take advantage of the free wireless. If you ask Michael what the best part of the day was, I don’t think he’ll say the maze or the palace or the zoo. It was excellent, free wireless!

My family doesn’t really like audio guide tours. Two people in particular REALLY don’t like them (cough. rachel. cough. michael.)  So when they found out we were doing a FORTY room tour with an audio guide, faces fell. But it turned out to be one of the better tours we’ve been on.  As Michael said, “When there was nothing to say about a room, they just told you to go to the next one. It was great.”

You weren’t allowed to take pictures on the tour, but I got a few from the internet of our favorite parts. 

The ballroom

  

 

The room that looked like painted porcelain 

 

A random picture of some room in the palace

 

You get the general idea. It was pretty and elegant and interesting. I enjoyed the paintings. There were loads of Maria Theresa and her family, and since I’m reading a biography (In Destiny’s Hands by Vook), I felt like I knew what was going on. 

After, we had a snack and headed to the maze!

 

     

 

At Schönbrunn, they had a nifty train that drove around.

   

 

Sadly for us, we ran out of time to take the train the whole way around, but we had fun while we could! We paid our money and got hand stamps.

 

 

We had some fun waiting for the train ride to start.

 

And then it started! We saw the eagle at the entrance.

 

The greenhouses in the garden. (Never did get to tour the gardens…)

 

 

And very cool shadows on a wall cast by a row of trees. 

 

We made it as far as the Gloriette, got out to take pictures, and then had to walk back to the palace for our 2:30 tour.  Since the train closed at 6:00 and we wanted to go to the zoo, we never had a chance to get back on. But, that’s okay.  We still like trains. 

What’s a gloriette?  That’s a valid question. I wondered the same thing myself. Gloriette is French for “little glory” (no, really?). It’s a building in a garden and/or on a high elevation. They can be just to look at or might be picnic pavilions or things like that.  It’s the rich man’s gazebo! 

 

The Gloriette at Schönbrunn was built in 1775. The family used it as a party room for dinners and as a breakfast room. 

 

  

 

It was fun to picture all those royals and their friends in fancy clothes traipsing up the hill to have croissants and chocolate. 

 

The building was dedicated as “A Monument to Just War.” In other words, “To wars that bring peace.”  

 

 

There were some great views from the top! (in the picture with James, you can see Schönbrunn Palace in the center.) 

        

 

 I like playing with exposure!

 

I was so grateful for a day of good weather!

        

One day, I decided to pull out my Vienna guidebook and see what we hadn’t seen.  I came up with a list of about 15 things. “Wow, that’s a lot.” I thought we should try another trip to Vienna, and the #1 destination on my list was Schönbrunn Palace.

 

     

 

What is this place, you may ask? Well, it’s a big, yellow palace. (Oh, those wacky Habsburgs and their love of yellow…)  It was where a lot of the Austrian ruling family lived in the summer including Maria Theresa (about whom I am reading a biography).

It’s where Marie Antoinette (of France) grew up. She was Maria Theresa’s daughter. 

 

Also, Empress Elizabeth (known as Sisi) lived there. She’s an interesting duck for sure. 

 

“Schönbrunn” means “beautiful spring” as in “there’s a well of water in the front yard, and it is awfully pretty” sort of spring. 

 

They had fountains, but I don’t think they were the spring.

 

How many rooms would you guess are in this palace? (That’s the family by the first set of steps!)

 

If you guessed 1,441, you are RIGHT! 

 

The palace was laid out with the palace and walking area. (This is the back of the palace. The “ruin” are the statues along the sides.)

 

 I am not sure where the “Roman Ruin” was (something they built to look like a Roman ruin, but was not at all.) This is a picture from the internet.

 

Off to the right of the “ruin” was a maze. Then, you’d hit a fountain, a small, steep hill, and then the Gloriette.

 

We had a royally good time!

 

The skyline of Linz is dotted with many church spires. But one stands out. It’s the Mariendome or the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

 

The building was begun in 1862 and was dedicated in 1924. At the time, it was the largest building project in Europe.

       

 

Peter holding the keys to the kingdom looks over the front door. 

  

 

One of the first things you see upon entering are stone carvings (or maybe just plaster to look like stone?) of the 14 Stations of the Cross. 

   

 

 

This place seats 20,000 people!! Temple University’s football stadium seats 20,000.  Lakewood Church, Joel Osteen’s Huston mega-church, seats 16,800. Willow Creek Community Church (Bill Hybels) only seats 7,095.  In other words, it’s a HUGE church. (But Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome is by far bigger.) 

          

 

I can’t say the church was particularly “pretty,” although there were lots of stained glass windows depicting events from the history of the Catholic church. 

            

 

There were also some “design only” stained glass. (That’s not really a term!)

 

Now, don’t go believing that I thought the place was ugly. It was just that it was more austere and imposing than other churches we have visited. 

 

       

 

We were supposed to go on a tour to the bell tower, but we found out the only way to do that was to pay for a one-hour tour all in German. So we opted out. I am sure we’ll climb another bell tower someday!

 

 

With the Penguins in the playoffs back home, it only seemed right to talk about our adopted town of Linz and their hockey team, The Black Wings.  

 

On April 2, they won the Austrian Hockey Championships!

 

Saturday night, they had a big rally in the Hauptplatz (the city square). The girls and I went to see what was going on. 

   

They had a big screen showing the team playing hockey. Some of the players spoke. 

But by the time we got there, mostly it was people standing around drinking and smoking and littering. 

 

       

 

We bought some t-shirts and headed home.

 

May the Penguins be as successful!