{"id":2599,"date":"2016-05-22T02:53:55","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T08:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=2599"},"modified":"2016-05-22T02:53:55","modified_gmt":"2016-05-22T08:53:55","slug":"budapest-on-steroids-and-the-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=2599","title":{"rendered":"Budapest on Steroids and “The Boys”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quite simply, Vienna is spectacular.\u00a0 We arrived in Vienna Thursday afternoon and wandered around the city in absolute awe.\u00a0 The central district of Vienna is full of palaces and gorgeous, detailed buildings, most of which are now museums. Vienna is similar to Budapest as to architecture due to the fact that after WWI, Hungary & Austria were one.\u00a0 Vienna has so many more magnificent buildings than Budapest that we have aptly named it “Budapest on Steroids”.
\n\u001f<\/p>\n

Vienna’s District 1 is the central district and and a large part of it is recognized by UNESCO.\u00a0 As a result of the UNESCO label, there cannot really be any architectural changes to any buildings within this district.\u00a0 The streets are spotless, most of the buildings are cleaner than similar buildings in Budapest and the shops are numerous.\u00a0 Vienna clearly has more wealth; as, all of the very high-end retailers & designers have large stores here.\u00a0 Prada, a few blocks from us, has the largest store we have ever seen.\u00a0 All streets in District 1 are overflowing with fabulous small restaurants, antique stores, clothing stores, bakeries and a surprising number of flower shops.\u00a0 Even Vienna’s City Hall is comparable to the nicest churches in exterior design.
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\nWe were reminded on our walking tour today that the Austrian empire once controlled the better part of Europe and only shrank back to today’s size after Austria lost WWI. (We often forget that the Austrian archduke’s (heir to the throne) assassination was who really started WWI).\u00a0 It is interesting to us that in 2016, Vienna is celebrating the 100th anniversary of King Franz Joseph’s death.\u00a0 We don’t understand “Why”?\u00a0 Franz Joseph was the king that made the fateful decision that lead to WWI and the end of the Austrian empire.\u00a0 How different the world would be if Franz Joseph had made some better decisions!
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\nOn Friday night, we had the great pleasure in going to a Vienna Boys’ Choir concert.\u00a0 It has been a long-time wish for Lesley to see the Vienna Boys Choir in person.\u00a0 This performance did not disappoint.\u00a0 What a magnificent experience to listen to this choir in a small venue that only holds 400 people.\u00a0 The boys operatic voices and solos brought tears to our eyes.\u00a0 One cherub-looking boy, probably around 10 years old, played a spectacular solo violin piece with orchestra accompaniment and the choir.\u00a0 Such incredible talent from someone so young.\u00a0 That same boy sang a solo of Ave Maria.\u00a0 It was unbelievably impressive.\u00a0 The Vienna Boy’s Choir consists of 4 choirs of 25 boys each ranging in age from 10-14 (or until their voice changes).\u00a0\u00a0 The boys all live at the VBC boarding school and annually travel throughout the world.\u00a0 It was so much fun hearing them and watching the interaction between some of the boys while they sang (“boys will be boys”).\u00a0 We were so fortunate that Lesley happened to stumble across this regular Friday night concert on the internet; as, these concerts are not advertised anywhere in Vienna.\u00a0 There are competing classical concerts every night in Vienna with the tickets being sold on the street by young men in period dress.\u00a0 Clearly the sales commissions must be substantial because they are at least a dozen of them in each of the larger tourist gathering spots.
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\nVienna is the city of museums.\u00a0 It is quite overwhelming to us.\u00a0 The challenge is trying to decide where to spend our time in the next few days!<\/p>\n

\"Austrians<\/a>
Austrians love the gold highlights on statues, etc.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Austrian<\/a>
Austrian national emblem added to St. Stephen’s Catholic Church roof – interesting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Entrance<\/a>
Entrance to Albertina Museum – last queen, Sisi, highlighted<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"We<\/a>
We were there at the Grand Palace<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"More<\/a>
More gold outside another museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"City<\/a>
City Hall with a beer garden on a Thursday afternoon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Sisi<\/a>
Sisi Museum (last queen of Austria-Hungary)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"National<\/a>
National Library – one of the largest book collections in the world<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Lucky<\/a>
Lucky statue for women (this was banned and in storage from many years)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quite simply, Vienna is spectacular.\u00a0 We arrived in Vienna Thursday afternoon and wandered around the city in absolute awe.\u00a0 The central district of Vienna is full of palaces and gorgeous, detailed buildings, most of which are now museums. Vienna is similar to Budapest as to architecture due to the fact that after WWI, Hungary & … Continue reading Budapest on Steroids and “The Boys”<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Si9J-FV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2599"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2612,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2599\/revisions\/2612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}