Vienna is truly an incredible city, a world class capital of a country I could definitely return to and spend a lot of time in. The last few days have been relaxing, and at the same time, full of activity. The public transportation system is simple and makes it so that you can access every sight in the city with ease.
I went to the opera two more times - once to see a ballet (Onegin) and the third time to see another opera (Faust). For the first two, it was quite simple to get tickets for the standing area.
Faust, however, as a premiere of a famous opera, was a totally different story. We had to wait in line for about an hour, just for the standing room. Once we got our tickets, and they led us inside the main theater, people starting pushing and shoving, literally, to get the best spots. The worst by far, were the old ladies. These harpies would knock you over if you didn't bodily prevent them from doing so. Inside, people scrambled to tie scarves to the banisters, thus marking your position. Shouting matches broke out as scarves overlapped, and security had to be called. All this in one of the most revired opera houses in Europe. Amazing.
Like I said earlier, Vienna is truly a grand city. I spent most of my time here wandering around the city on foot, tram, and bicycle. The old city used to be walled for protection, and crammed within these walls are innumberable churches, museums, shops, and other sites waiting to be explored. In this modern era, the walls have been replaced by a wide road that rings the city center. Along this ring-road are many of the huge and impressive buildings that Vienna is famous for.
I particularly enjoyed the Volksgarten, once the private grounds of the Hapsburg Palace, it is now a public garden. Mozart is memorialized here in a fancy marble statue with pink flowers planted in the shape of a musical note at his feet. The locals gather here to enjoy the off-leash dog park and sit on the benches or at the base of the statue of the Emperor to bask in the setting Autumn sun.
I also went to the Freud museum, a small house/office that Freud used to live and practice in. As a museum, it wasn't the greatest, but it was interesting to see his famous couch and to read about how he lived his life. To me he seemed more quack than genius, he relates every psychological issue to a deep-rooted sexual perversion. They had a small library where you could read his books. Of course I immediately gravitated to On Dreams, and On Sexuality, collections of essays.
In Dreams he explains the symbolic meaning of objects in our dreams, and most of them seem to be about genitals and their castration. In Sexuality I read about penis envy as the plight of all females, and about our sexual obsession with our poop as children, and how that shapes our adult personalities. Very interesting... The most telling was perhaps a sentence in Dreams where Freud lamented the publication of these essays, as they would reveal a great deal of his inner psychological workings.
My favorite of all was a letter from one of Freud's contemporaries discussing a hysterical woman (to them all women were perverts or hysterical). In it, the good doctor stated that he could not prescribe any medicine to help cure her hysterics. Instead he recommended the following, "normal penis. repeated application." Hah! I love it!
Some of the other things I did/saw - cruised around town on a rented bike...checked out the crypts where the Hapsburgs are buried...ate fancy chocolate Sachertorte cakes at fancy chocolate restaurants...finger sandwiches at the buffet (thats where the same of those little vanilla creme cookies comes from)...palled around with statues at the Belevedere Palace...examined Van Gogh at the Albertina...the list goes on
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