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Last day in Vienna and the night train to Venice

Writer's picture: Zanna WhiteZanna White

16 January 1977 - Sunday

Our plan today was to check out, leave our bags in the Pension office, and go to the Vienna Boys’ Choir. As usual, we were running late, so I went to the place to buy tickets, but it wasn’t open yet. There were several American students also waiting.


They were part of a group of some 60 students from a college in Texas on a study tour of Russia and Austria. I was talking to the boy in the group and he suggested he could buy my tickets while I went back to the pension (they were also staying in the Pension Pentschyafser). I got Susanna and Alice and we got back to the chapel (very close to the pension) before 9:20. We left our bags in the room.


It would be stretching the lexicon to say we “saw” the Vienna Boys’ Choir (Wien Sänger Knaben). Our 25.- shilling tickets put us in a gallery (the Hausoratorium) where we could only glimpse the vaulted ceiling of the chapel. We were on the second row; people behind us hardly saw that much. There was a black & white TV screen in each gallery so that we could get an idea of what we were hearing. Susanna discovered she didn’t care for the choir and was quite fidgety throughout the whole ceremony. (It was an actual mass, with as many as 12 priests performing.)


From there we went to check out. On the way we ran into the man and boy (Kevin) we had talked with in Salzburg. His name, we found out, is Gene Conroy and his wife’s name is Eleanor. They are realtors in Los Angeles and decided to close up shop and travel before their son went to school.


After checking out, Susanna and Kevin played in the snow while we talked with Gene. Then I went to the museum that I thought was the art museum but had armor, weapons, and musical instruments. Most of the armor and weaponry was renaissance (16th & 17th century). The musical instrument collection was not noticeably better than Arnie Larson’s in Vermillion.

Playing in the snow in Heldenplatz, Vienna with Kevin Conroy (not the one who voiced Batman)
Archduke Karl statue in Heldenplatz

Kevin hit Susanna in the face with a hard snowball (leaving a scratch). So she didn’t want to play anymore. The Conroys returned to their room and we went across the Ring (street) to the art museum. It was 12:30 and[1] the museum closed at 1:00 (Sunday), but we saw several rooms, including the room full of Breughel[sic] paintings. They are quite impressive in the original.


From the Ring we took Street Car #58 to the Schönbrunn Palace. We still haven’t quite figured out whose this was or why it was built. We looked for a place to eat, but nothing seemed open. We then walked perhaps ¾ of a mile to the zoo where we found a snack bar (buffet) and had salami sandwiches. The tour included a large aquarium, birds, elephants, even reindeer; we couldn’t think of any more animals not extinct, but there were parts of the zoo we didn’t see.

It was interesting, on our return walk, to see how many people, especially older people, were out walking. The day was pleasant, but there was ice and snow on the ground. These people seem to be promenading through the Schönbrunn Gardens as a sort of sport.


We got to the palace after the last tour, so missed that, and everything was closing down. We managed to catch #58 back to the Ring, and, after some looking, found a restaurant near the Opera house. It specialized in quickie food, but we stalled as much as possible (it was 5:30 and we had until 11:00 to get on our train). Then we walked back toward the Pension and stopped at the Albertina Keller (across from Opera House) for wine.


While there a couple with an eleven-year-old son sat at our table. We discovered that the father’s name was Donald and that his father was an American who stayed in Austria after the war. Donald’s wife and son, Rudi, spoke no English, but Susanna and Rudi drew pictures for each other and had a good time.


At the Pension we picked up our bags and got a Taxi to the South Station (Südbahnhof) before 9:00. We could get on the train at 10:00. So, we sat in the waiting room and wrote postcards for an hour. Our car (#393) was for second class, but we assumed it was correct, which it was. In our compartment were six couchettes, two rows of three, with a ladder for the top two sets. We had the middle. We thought we would be okay, but before we left, two more people got in our compartment. One was a young man who, I think, only spoke Italian.


The other was a young woman (we never got her name) who was French but born in Venice and lived in New York, where she was a student at Columbia Univ.

The night was very rough, especially for Alice, who couldn’t turn over because of the narrow berths (she was sleeping with Susanna). The train made many stops, and it was not very smooth; we were crossing high mountains, and when we could see, we saw very deep snow.

[1] Most places in Vienna seem to have free admission on Sunday (also Saturday), but are open for limited hours.


 

16 January 2022 - Sunday

Dad mentions Arnie Larson in the Journal, favorably comparing his collection of instruments to the collection at the museum he visited.

When I was growing up there was a Carnegie built building a little over a block away that housed the W. H. Over Museum. The museum had a big stuffed bison in the room just to the left as you entered the building. There were many treasures to be found, but upstairs there were several rooms dedicated to the musical instruments Arnie Larson collected from around the world. As I got to the end of High School, the musical instruments had taken over most of the museum and it was split. The W. H. Over Museum was moved to a new building on the north side of town. The Carnegie building was converted to be exclusively a music museum. Arnie has been gone for many years, but the museum is going strong. It is now known as the "National Music Museum" and is world-renowned.


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