11. August--Eisenstadt, Alps Day I

Today we had to be packed up and ready to go by 8:30 in the morning. We went by bus to Eisenstadt, the city that the Esterhazy family of princes lived in and where Haydn worked as court composer. Originally a medieval fortress, the Habsburgs conquered the town in the 15^th century.

In the Esterhazy family, Nicolaus I was the main patron of Joseph Haydn. At this time there was no private music market, so composers had to be attached to some sort of commissioner. This began to change with Haydn, as he accumulated a large amount of wealth after he was dismissed from his position. In Eisenstadt there are 14 Haydnorgel that the master himself played on. For a few weeks in September every year, these organs, situated in various chapels around the city, are played, and you can wander from chapel to chapel, listening to Haydn’s music.

In addition to the Esterhazy castle, we also visited the Kavalierenkirche. This church was inspired by the Stations of the Cross and features life-sized replicas depicting Jesus’s suffering or something like that. We also visited the mausoleum where Haydn’s remains are kept. His skull was stolen some time ago and replaced with a fake one, and it was only in 1954 when all of his remains were reunited.

Our tour guide for this city was pretty bad. Professor Stuart kept interrupting to point out facts she should have mentioned. She could have given us a tour way better than the tour we got from our guide.

After the tour we hopped back on the bus and took off for the Alps. It was cool to finally get out of the city and enjoy the scenery, even though the weather was pretty rainy. We took the Seilbahn up to our hotel in the Raxalpen. The hotel itself was old and reminded me of the house in Haderslev. I couldn’t wait to start hiking, so a friend and I decided to brave the rain and hike to the next hotel, Ottohaus. At this house there is a female cat named otto, named after the hotel. After staying at the Ottohaus for a while and playing a game of chess (which I won), we left, pretty much running through the rain, which by now was on the verge of storming. For dinner, I had Wiener Schnitzel and, you guessed it, Kaiserschmarrn (mit Rosinen). Kathy told us that the word Kaiserschmarrn is made up from Kaiser-(emperor) and schmarrn- (nonsense). So Kaiserschmarrn is imperial nonsense, or something like that.