Day 91, Sunday, November 24, 2019
Today is our last day of holidays! After packing our suitcases this morning we go out to visit Vienna’s Christmas Markets and see some of the Christmas lights. The first market we visit is near the Parliament Building. 
There are 150 booths here but I was a bit disappointed as the majority of them sold Christmas decorations and there were very few other handcrafted items. I was hoping to find something special as a souvenir for us.
We were pleasantly surprised though to find that food here was reasonable. I bought a cone of yummy hot roasted potato slices for just 3 euros. There were lots of other affordable food options as well as hot chocolate and hot alcoholic drinks and mulled wines for 3 to 5 euros. There are so many people here that sometimes it is difficult to get to the front of a booth to see what is for sale.
We enjoy wandering around and as it starts to get dark the Christmas lights come on.
Near the booths is an area with beautifully decorated trees and ….
a skating rink! There is a 3,000 m² artificial ice rink with skating paths throughout the park. We watch the kids learning to skate, everyone is having a good time.
This all takes place under a canopy of the most beautiful trees, all lit up with thousands and thousands of white lights.
Just take look at the size of this tree! It is enormous! 
A special attraction is the tree of hearts, and we see couples taking selfies here.
I love all the lights and there is Christmas music playing, children laughing and everyone is enjoying the evening. I am beginning to feel Christmassy!
As we leave the market, I take one last photo looking back towards the Parliament Building…
then we walk down a tree lit path to the next market a few blocks away.
This is a smaller market, only 70 stalls, and the only decorated trees are the man-made ones. 
We see a booth with goods from Bomo Art, the little handmade book store we visited in Budapest.
There are also some pretty crazy animal candles, cute stuffed gnomes, blue and white pottery and wooden boxes and cabinet with drawers. The tall one with six drawers is ‘only’ 350 euros! That is about $500.00 Canadian. Still nothing I really love to take home with us though.
These little pink snowmen were kind of cute…
and a tree decorated with bird ornaments is different. Only at 10 to 15 euros a bird this would be a very expensive little tree! There are at least 150 birds on this tree, so it would cost between 1,500 and 2,250 euros, which is $2000.00 to $3,200.00 Canadian! No bird trees for me!
The booths are centred around this big fountain…
and there are lights projected on a nearby building, adding to the festive feeling.
It isn’t very warm, the high today was only 9° and it is colder now that the sun has gone down. We want to walk and see some of the streets lit up for Christmas …
but we are both getting chilled so we head home to finish getting ready for our trip home tomorrow.
It clears up for a bit but then we drive back into the band of smog that stretches across the countryside. We have never seen anything quite like this before.
One of the many small villages in Croatia. Most of these villages only have one row of houses along the highway, no side streets at all. Notice the pretty yellow and purple chrysanthemums growing along the fence. We saw lots of these flowers along the way.
One fairly long stretch of the road has a shrine every 300 to 500 metres, and each one had fresh flowers placed in front of it.
Another little village. We don’t see many people about and think that they probably have a hard time keeping people from moving to bigger urban centres.
The highway mainly passes through farmland, and I quite like all the trees along the side of the road.
We finally get a bit of sunshine. There are winter crops planted which are just beginning to grow that are many different shades of green.
We get to Bratislava about 3:00 pm, return our rental car and catch the Flixbus one last time back to our apartment in Vienna. We are surprised how quickly it gets dark now. This is photo taken on the bus just after 4:30pm.
We catch an Uber from the Main Bus Depot. Twenty euros well spent. We are dropped off at our apartment door, which is the same apartment we had a couple weeks ago in Vienna. It almost feels like coming home. In three more sleeps we will really be home.
When we get to the airport we are worried because the Budget Car Rental booth is closed! Turns out the attendants are out in the parking lot so after a short wait we pick up our car and head back to Vienna. I noticed this big mural last trip and managed to get a photo this time. It is dark by the time we get back to Vienna and we spend the rest of the evening cleaning our apartment and packing for our drive to Budapest tomorrow.
‘Mother and Child’ is a well known painting. I do love how expressive Schiele’s hands are.
Schiele’s 1912 ‘Self Portrait with Chinese Lanterns’ was painted as a companion piece for the ‘Portrait of Wally Neuzil’ who was his muse and partner from 1911 to 1915. Both these paintings have a gentleness and sensitivity not found in all his work. I like these very much.
Quite different from this self portrait completed the same year. Schiele was born in 1890 and died in 1918. He was only 28 years old when he died, yet he created over 3,000 works on paper and around 300 paintings! I wonder what he would have accomplished if he had lived longer. He died during the Spanish Flu Epidemic, just three days after his six month pregnant wife Edith.
‘Reclining Woman’ was bigger than I expected. Originally the woman’s genitals were exposed but Schiele added the white cloth covering in order to be able to show the work at an exhibition in Vienna in 1918.
There are several landscapes, and most of them are quite large.
‘The Small Town IV’…
and ‘House With Shingled Roof’ were two that I particularly liked. Although Schiele only painted for such a short time, his work laid the foundations for the Viennese Expressionist movement as well as inspiring other future movements, such as Abstract Impressionism.
‘The Blind Man’ was first exhibited in 1898.
‘Death and Life’ won the Gold Medal at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome. This painting and ‘The Kiss’, that I saw at the Belvedere, are two of Klimt’s most well known paintings. I feel very fortunate to have seen both of them in person, as well as all the other amazing works of art I have seen on this trip.
As we are leaving the Leopold I notice this painting, which makes both of us laugh! It is by Albert Birkle and is titled ‘Man with Fur Cap’, or ‘My Brother the Animal’!
Near the metro station Bob notices this crane which has just been erected. Neither of us have seen one with so many arms before.
When I saw this building our first day in Vienna I thought it was the Hundertwasser House but it wasn’t. Turns out that it was designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser! It is the Spittelau Incinerator which is used to handle Vienna’s garbage. The environmentally friendly plant produces enough energy to heat more than 60,000 households in Vienna in a year.
I have one more life drawing session tonight at Kaffeebar Quentin. I have attended many life drawing sessions in bars or pubs and the model is always at least partially clothed, so I was quite surprised when our model is completely nude. We are in the back of the bar, but the model is still in full view of all the other patrons as well as anyone who happens to look in the windows. Wish I had a scanner, as it would improve the quality of these photos, but I don’t think I can haul one around on holidays! These are all 5 minute poses.
Two ten minute and one twenty minute drawing…
and we finished the evening with a twenty-five minute pose. The people at this session were very friendly and I had met some of them at the other two sessions this week. I will miss Vienna, they have so many life drawing opportunities. There is a session almost every day of the week, and lots of them have interesting themes. 
No photos are allowed and I was very good and didn’t try to sneak any! It would have been so nice to have a few photos though. These two photos were taken from posters advertising the performances. The stallions are gorgeous! 
I did a bit of sketching during the training and that was OK but it was hard to draw and watch what was going on a the same time. After a bit I decided to just enjoy watching the training session and forget about drawing.
Next stop is the State Hall of the National Library. It is so amazing! It is hard to describe such a magnificent place. The pictures probably do a better job, so here they are. This is our view when we enter the library. We both just stop and stare! This library is nearly 60 metres long and 20 metres high and contains over 200,000 books!
One of the first things we see are these ‘secret’ doors the open into rooms with even more books.
The cases Bob is standing by held illuminated manuscripts. I would have loved to be able to climb one of these ladders and pull a book or two off the shelves.
These are from 1400 and 1260!
The globes have been in this spot since the mid 1700’s.
This statue is in the central oval of the library beneath a painted domed ceiling.
We sit for a while just absorbing the atmosphere.
Looking towards the entrance from where I was sitting…
and towards the back of the library.
The second level is just as ornately decorated as the first. I wish we could have gone there as well, but it was not to be.
One last photo before we leave. Here is 
When we leave the library we pass the Lipizzaner stables.
I zoom in on these two beauties.
We stop at the Minoritenkirche because Bob says it has a mosaic life size replica of The Last Supper.
It appears to be painted on tiled panels rather than being a mosaic made with many small tiles.
We didn’t get to see The Last Supper when we were in Italy. We didn’t know we had to get tickets far in advance, so I guess this is the next best thing.
where there are lots of people sitting enjoying the sunshine.
I was surprised there were so many yellow roses in bloom so late in the year. Do you notice all the little white signs in the background? This is a memorial garden and each rose is planted in memory of a person who has passed away.
It is a beautiful sunny afternoon. Warm for November, but we still need our coats.
We stop at the Naschmarkt for something to eat. This roast pig is for sale by the piece, starting at the back end. Interesting but we decide on something a bit less exotic.
A ten and twenty minute pose.
I think I liked these two 5 minute drawings the best. It was a good night. 
As we get closer to Bratislava the fog lifts, but it is still a very grey day.
This is the border crossing into Slovakia. Because of the European Union there are no border checks or stops, but I do miss getting a stamp in our passports though.
We return the car, and catch a FlixBus back to Vienna. Just as the bus pulls up I realize I have lost a pair of sunglasses somewhere in the airport, but there is no time to go back and look for them. These buildings under construction near the Bratislava bus terminal have scaffolding all the way up to the top! I can’t imagine having to work on scaffolding that high off the ground.
There is lots of construction in Bratislava, which has a population of 425,000. 
We get settled into our apartment and then head out to a life drawing session at 6:30. When we find the Kaffeebar it is in, we find out that the session was cancelled because it is Halloween. Oh well, we got to figure out the way there and I will try again next Thursday. Halloween in Austria is a time when adults get dressed up and party but the children do not go door to door for treats like they do at home.
I liked this one of the young man with the bandaged nose.
Our drive to Vienna was long and uneventful. We stayed on the freeway and it still took us about 5 1/2 hours. We had to wait about an hour for our Airbnb host to meet us, but we found a parking space just outside the apartment and our car was warm, so it wasn’t too bad. It took forever to figure out how to pay for street parking but we finally sorted it out. We take our rental car back tomorrow so we just need parking for one night.
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