Culture Vulture

At the end of last term I went to the theatre with Good School, and on the walk home one of the teachers was berating me for not having done anything cultural in Wienna. She was practically shouting at me that I should make more effort to go to the theatre. So I went to the opera (see previous post). In the same week, I have also been to an art gallery AND a church. Times are a-changin' people!

On Thursday afternoon it was absolutely chucking it down with rain and I of course was not wearing sensible shoes. Despite this, we decided to go to the Oberes Belvedere which is an old imperial palace

It is now an art gallery where some of Klimt's (famous Austrian painter) paintings are. After trying to con the woman at the desk into giving us student tickets, citing my NatWest Railcard as my student ID, we begrudgingly paid for full price tickets. Just because I'm no longer an actual student doesn't mean I am rich! While it was not worth 9€50, it was still nice. We were there about an hour and a half and looked at a lot of paintings. My favourite bits were the Klimt bits obviously because I am not an Art Lover. The Kiss (most famous Klimt painting) was v impressive. There were lots of boring landscapes and portraits which I was not that fussed about but there was an exhibition about Mahler and Music which had lots of paintings by Max Oppenheimer which were really good actually, there was a brilliant one of an orchestra. I would copy and paste one from Google images but that is probably infringing some kind of copyright so go and look it up, I think it was called "The Philharmonic" or something like that.

The rest of the week was much less cultural (ie I spent a lot of time watching trashy TV and lying in bed) but on Sunday Abby and I decided to go and see the Otto Wagner Kirche which is a Jugendstil (think this is Art Nouveau in English) church in the grounds of the Otto Wagner Spital which is a psychiatric hospital. Typical Austrian weirdness. Anyway, as you walk up the hill, this is what you see:

 Now, I am not a big fan of churches AT ALL (seen one, seen them all etc) but this one is B E A Utiful. Seriously.

 It was particularly nice because it was super warm and the sun was shining. There is loads of gold and turquoise (perfect colour combination if you ask me!). It was a bit sad that we couldn't go inside as it is only open on Saturday afternoons for tourists. Either that or 9am Mass on a Sunday but I do not think I am that bothered. I will go again though because inside must be stunning.
As most of you know, I got a new camera for Christmas. I love it because it has an LCD display on the front. I realised I needed something like this about 4 years ago when Al and I went to Rome and were trying to take an arms-length photo in front of the Colesseum. It did not go well. I thought a camera with two screens would solve everything. Our visit to the church seemed like the perfect time to test out my new skillz. It did not go so well. A lot of hilarity (and unattractive photos) ensued...

 ...

 ... but we got there eventually! Kind of.