10/08/08 - Mass in a 900 year old Gothic Cathedral.

Rise and shine at 07:15 today because we are off to church. High Mass
in fact at Saint Stephen's Cathedral in the centre of Vienna. I am
very excited because it is a full Haydn mass with a orchestra and
choir. We arrived half an hour early whilst the musicians were warming
up and the sound of this huge Gothic Cathedral filled with music, just
as it was written 300 years ago, was magic. It was fortunate we
arrived so early as we have almost front row seats for this a
experience of a lifetime, so I hope Daniel appreciates it too.

(Daniel takes over now) - My appreciation wasn't quite up with Marea's
enthusiasm - the choir was definitely good, but at the end of the day
it was a church service and it did drag a bit - still, I made it to
the end, and didn't even resort to blog writing ;-)

Once this was over we experienced another Vienna institution - the
coffee house (although we didn't order coffee). But we did get to
watch a bit of Olympics - the only problem was that in each event that
we happened to see, a British athlete won!?!? Boohoo (yeah I'm a sore
loser).

Then it was back to our 24 hour hop on - hop off ticket, where I can
finally claim to being ahead of Marea on a bit of artistic knowledge -
our commentary was talking about the modern architect Hunderswassen.
Marea looked at me as though I was barking mad when I said that he was
the guy who designed the famous Kawakawa toilets in Northland, NZ.
The look soon left her when the next bit of commentary talked about
his links with New Zealand - ha ha :-)

A break between hop on - hop off tours, we strolled around the
Stadtpark - home of many of many memorial statues of famous composers
who graced Vienna, including Straus and Schubert. Then it was back on
the bus and out to the Schloss Schonbrunn. This 1440 room mansion was
the summer palace to the mighty Habsberg dynasty and where a six year
old Mozart made his debut. Too cheap to go inside, we were happy to
be out in the hot sunshine, enjoying the extremely large gardens and
views of Vienna.

Feeling we had given Vienna a pretty good go (although like all the
other cities - you could be here for a week and still find new stuff
to visit). We headed out of town and into the Austrian countryside.
Being careful not to be without a camp spot before dark, we found a
nice little parking area right on the Danube!! Perfect, except when
the huge barges came rumbling past at 2 in the morning.