Old music and old Vienna

So when you hostel right across the street from the expansive Saturday flea market that the Naschmarket becomes, you start your first Vienna exploration day wandering the stalls. And when you find old piano sheet music of Chopin, Liszt, Strauss, and Beethoven, among others, for only € 1 apiece, you grab four of them in a mad dash of excitement.

Vienna is replete with museums. It's hard to throw a stone without hitting some old palatial building that has been turned into a museum (although that would probably result in a fine). We took the metro, which was quite nice, as far as metros go, to the Museumsquartier. Guess what they had there.

This would be the Leopold Museum. This museum has been set up to showcase the best and the brightest of Austrian artists, most notably Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. I'd heard of Klimt before, but that was as far as my knowledge of either of these artists goes. Both are fantastic artists of the highest caliber, and I would have to say that they add to an already impressive curriculum vitae that Austria has amassed when it comes to the arts. I was particularly taken by Klimt, but there was no let down when a Schiele would be next on the wall.

We thought we were going to be the artsy lucky ones, as there was another museum, the Kunsthalle, which was boasting a Salvador Dalí exhibit as well as a space exhibition. The Dalí was decent, especially sketches that he drew for a surrealist book. There were also some pieces by followers and disciples of his but nothing nearly as impressive as the man himself. The space exhibition definitely got off on the right foot. As we climbed the stairs, we could hear the strains of The Blue Danube and turned the corner to be greeted by a large projection of the scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey the song plays through, while the spaceship spins in Earth's orbit like a majestic metallic ballerina. Unfortunately, this was the best part of the exhibit. The rest was interesting at times, disappointing at others, and a bit odd in between.

But with two museums under our belts, we were famished. The prosciutto and cheese on baguette picnic that ensued right in front of the Hofburg Palace really fit the bill:

The rest of the evening provided a smidge more relaxation and reading. That night, I somehow managed to finish my 4th book of the trip. And I only brought 5. I've never underpacked on vacation books. But something about these afternoon relaxation sessions really let me plow through the printed word...