Day 2 in Vienna

Our second day in Vienna was on a Sunday. And yes mom, we went to church. Three times, actually. They were all Catholic churches but churches nonetheless.

Unlike the US, most places shut down completely on Sundays. Shops, a lot of restaurants, etc. I think it is so refreshing. Granted, as a tourist who wants to eek all she can out of a place the short time she is there, I sometimes find it a bother. But for the most part I think it is really nice that somewhere the sabbath is still the sabbath and people close things down to go home and spend time with their families and relax. At least that's how the scenario plays out in my naive and hopeful little mind.

The first church to which we went had Mass going on so we sat down and listened for a while. It was in English (is that strange to anyone but me?) so that was easy. It actually felt like being at my home church at the end because the pastor-guy announced that they were going to have a pizza party for the choir at 7pm at such-and-such's house to celebrate a job well done.

The next church was getting ready for Mass and a choir was practicing so we listened to that for a bit. Not wanting to sit through another Mass, we left.

The third church we went to twice. First to look around inside. Mr X decided that it would be a good church to go to if you had kids because you could look around for hours inside this place - it was so intricately decorated. A concert was scheduled for later on in the evening on the pipe organ so we decided to come back for that. It was a nice concert and the organist played some classic pieces and some original ones he wrote.

The three churches mentioned above were all situated around the Hofburg complex, which was the seat of Austrian power for something like six centuries.

We also stopped by Karlskirche (Karl's Church) but they were charging for admission and we are too cheap. But it was built after the plague epidemic of 1713 and dedicated to St. Charles Borromeo, the patron saint of the plague. I had no idea there was a plague patron saint...

After that we stopped by the Soviet War Memorial.

We walked through the Volksgarten. (No that's not cotton candy - it's a piece of Shokobombe cake and Schwartzwalden Torte which were oh so incredibly delicious later)

And we topped it all off by happening on an Audi car show that was happening in yet a different church parking lot area. The cars were absolutely beautiful, as you can imagine. But they had these security guard types there and when people started speaking German to us we quickly 'Danka'-ed and left.