Very appropriately for the religious nature of our destination, we were slightly hungover due to visiting a friend of my buddy's house and drinking tequila with some friendly Iranians. Ahem. Anyway, Klosterneuberg is possibly a more normal Austrian town, with a sleepy feel which, although I am sure was exaggerated by the day of the week, definitely marks it out from the main city. Even here though, the hand of the invisible person whose job it is to make sure that all of Austria is pretty can be seen.
The focal point of the town is the monastery complex, situated on a steep rise above the main street, with its imposing spires and a substantial group of surrounding buildings. Up close the towers are even more impressive, lots of nice embellishment going on there:
Note that one tower is a different colour, we'll come back to that later...
As we arrived, the main church of the monastery (the thing above) was emitting an impressive choral noise, so we decided to wander inside. It turns out that the interior is even more impressive than that of the Karlskirche. Go back and look at a picture of that, then imagine if it was longer, and all the marble was replaced with more gold leaf and paintings and astonishingly detailed carvings and other casually accumulated pieces of votive art. Woah! just about does it as a descriptive word. Adding to the atmosphere was the fact that it was the Sunday communion mass, so the local orchestra and choir were singing, the church was full, and there at the front was the priest in his robes blessing the bread wafers while the altar boy waved the incense burner around...
After this incredible experience, it was clear that we (well I) needed delicious chocolate cake in order to be able to appreciate any further magnificence. Luckily this sort of thing is not hard to find, and indeed we ended up in a rather cool, jazz oriented cafe where they served the tea with 4 different types of sugar and 3 hour glass timers for 3, 4 or 5 minutes so we could brew our tea to our satisfaction. Awesome.
Klosterneuberg has long been a place where the leaders of Austria have chosen to live or worship or build things, and one of the more impressive bricks in their wall of grandeur is the unfinished 18th century baroque palace of Kaiser Karl VI, planned to equal the Escorial palace in Spain. After he died with it unfinished, all work stopped, as neither the monks being forced to finance it nor his son (who was more interested in Schoenbrunn) wanted to carry it on. Only one of the planned four huge courtyards was built, but it is still huge. The picture above is of the unfinished saa terranum (or something like that) which is supposed to be a ridiculously epic room leading into the garden. Those 'atlantean' statues are REALLY big, and there's 8 of them in total round the room... Below you see the outside, which helps you understand the odd contrast between superficially finished exterior and bare brick interior seen through lots of the palace that was only recently opened up. Monks used it for wine storage! Note person for scale.
The reason I know so much is that you can only go round this place with a tour, and due to the time of year and the fact that it happened to be the english tour that was about to start as we came in, there were only three of us in our tour group. An old Austrian lady took us on a winding tour through the various phases and buildings of the monastery, palace and cloisters. All the doors were locked, so it felt very special, as we'd all have to wait for her to get a key out and open the door to some treasure before we went in, and then of course we were the only ones in there. There were painted figures, stained glass from the 12th century, a huge gold and enamel altar by a man called Nicholas of Verdun, roman artefacts etc etc. The sheer weight of history impresses me, and I find it hard to imagine what it is like for Mirva, as in Finland they don't have the same legacy of ridiculously old things as we do in other parts of Europe.Finally, here is a view north, if you look carefully you might be able to see some huge castle looming romantically on the hoizon!
Not much to report this week. Work still very interesting. A finnish friend of Mirva's is visiting, she is called Outi which is pronounced like oaty with the t like a mixture between t and d and the emphasis completely on the first syllable. Weather nice.
Ummm.... bye!
PS if you are still wondering about the different coloured towers, it's because some guys who built the second tower in the 17th century didn't bother to colour match the limestone with the first tower! Basically it is a mistake/ labour or money saving device which is still glaringly obvious after 400 years! I think that this fact is very telling about humanity. I can't help but imagine whoever was building it loking at the pile of stones being delivered and thinking: 'oh crap'
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