We arrived today at our final destination of the tour: Vienna. The train ride was filled with flashes of snowy hills and rooftops between stark deciduous trees (not nearly as many conifers as in the PNW - it makes winter look significantly harsher) and I ate some delicious potato leek soup (train food is good in Austria).
After checking into our hostel (spacious rooms and right next to the train station = excellent choice), we headed to St. Stephen's Cathedral. We found super awesome cheap pizza and then wandered into the church where we found what I had been anticipating and looking for this whole trip: CATACOMBS!! The real ones. We're not talking about any of that fancy marble tombstone, swept-floors, and pretty stained glass door nonsense; there were ancient brick and mortar passageways like in Edgar Allen Poe's "Cask of Amontillado," terrifying darkness, the remains of corpses, rotten wooden caskets, and literal walls made out of bones from the 15th century. It was epically awesome.
First, we saw the newer part of the crypt where archbishops from the past 400 years are buried, and then moved into another chamber where urns filled with the organs of the embalmed Hapsburg rulers were. Clearly, no one was getting into those, because they were shelved behind wrought iron coverings that had no key holes or screws to pull out, but appeared to be built into the walls.
Then we descended even further underground. This is where the walls turned to brick and the lighting was confined to a few lone lamps above us. Kai, Caleb, and I were at the back of the tour group and stopped to look at a sort of window in the wall with an iron grate in front of it. We couldn't see beyond the bars because it was too dark, so Kai shined the flashlight of his phone into the hole...
Bones. Piles of broken, ancient bones. That is what we saw. We all emitted cackling sounds that were somewhere between surprise, awe, and fear. We were NOT expecting that! From that point on, the tour was filled with bones, much to our delight. We saw skeletons in deteriorating coffins (one coffin even had the soles of its owner's shoes still stuck to the wood), crypts piled high with victims of the plague, a pit with a skeleton at the bottom, a trough of bones, and walls that had formed due to the compacted piled bones and sculls of the dead. It was ridiculously creepy and ridiculously awesome. My morbid dreams had been fulfilled. Sadly, however, I did have to pay the guide so I could get out, though I would have been totally fine staying the night in there. Oh well.
Afterwards, we found the opera house where we will be seeing Boris Gudenov on Friday night, then stopped at a coffee and pastry shop to warm up. I ordered hot chocolate, and it was heavenly. Eric got a strawberry chocolate tart. I wanted to try it, but I only had a spoon and didn't think to ask Eric for his fork, so I just set about trying to cut a strawberry on the tart in half with a spoon. While holding the plate in my hand, not setting it on the table. Maybe not the wisest decision. After sawing about halfway through the strawberry, the plate wobbling, my spoon slipped and the entire strawberry fell THUNK right into my full cup of hot chocolate, splashing everywhere. Dr. Powell, Taylor, and Caleb were all dying but the particularly embarrassing part was that two Austrian ladies next to us were laughing just as hard, if not harder. I'm pretty sure one of them was wiping tears from her eyes. I sheepishly waved at them while hiding my red face. Typical Americans. Or, more likely, typical Melanie.
No comments:
Post a Comment