19. August--Schonbrunn und Fussballspiel

I finally made it out to the Schonbrunn palace today. Schonbrunn used to be the imperial summer residence palace of the Habsburgs. Under her reign, Maria Theresia expanded Schonbrunn in the Baroque style to emphasize the Habsburg's claim to power. Napoleon actually lived in Schonbrunn when he conquered Austria. His son grew up on its grounds, but as his coming of age coincided with Napoleon's defeat, he didn't leave the palace for fear of being recognized. He was plagued with health problems and eventually died at age 21. I didn’t actually go into the palace, but toured the gardens

and walked around the palace’s backyard/park. The gardens themselves are amazing. They are kept up in the French style, meaning that everything is neatly shorn, there is nothing overgrown, and most of the shrubs are small, excluding the surrounding hedges. This style is supposed to impose authority on nature and keep it under control.

One of the members of my program is a big soccer fan, and today the Vienna Rapid club was playing Aston Villa from England, so we got a group together to go to the game. The game itself was sold out, but we were hoping we could scalp tickets off of people at the stadium. Armed with me as interpreter, we tried unsuccessfully to find someone that would sell us four tickets. Five minutes before the game started, though, we managed to get tickets in the Visitor’s section, meaning we were sitting with all the crazy British fans screaming obscenities and trying to start fights with the Viennese supporters. The game itself was a lot of fun to watch and it ended it a 1-1 tie. After the match, we were let out of the stadium last (so the british fans don't start riots, I guess) and were escorted out with at least twenty police officers. Soccer is obviously an important part of Viennese life. Vienna's team isn't even that good, yet there were probably a good 15,000 screaming Viennese supporters.

Das deutsches Tagewort ist 'möglich.' In English it means 'possible.' Ich glaube, dass es nicht möglich ist, alles in Wien zu sehen, wenn man dort nur ein Monat bleibt.