JULY 2 - Another day pounding the pavement in Vienna. The storm yesterday cooled everything off, making all day in the sun more tolerable. Go back to Stephensplatz, which is eternally mobbed with tourists. A few blocks north of here, we are in time to see the noon tolling of the Ankeruhr (Anchor Clock), built in 1914. This complicated timepiece, located in a passageway between two buildings, marks every hour with the image of a famous person that moves across the display. For people who don’t want to wait 12 hours to see all the images, the clock does a special run-through of them all at 12:00.
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Behind the Imperial Palace, a number of gates open into Innerer Burghof.
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By chance we happen upon a Butterfly Museum.
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Head south again to another enormous palace complex, called Schloss Belvedere. Originally outside the city, it was built in the baroque style by Prince Eugene of Savoy, to be his summer residence.
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Vienna even has a monument dedicated to the 17,000 Russian soldiers who died liberated the city from German Nazi forces in 1945. It may have been Stalin’s intention to use Vienna as a bargaining chip in subsequent negotiations, but the city was ultimately divided amongst the four allied armies. This monument, called the Soviet War Memorial, was constructed in the Russian-occupied zone in 1945.
Today is the 90 day, or three month mark, of the trip. Where does the overall cost stand?
It is complicated, because some things are paid for that we haven’t done yet. But roughly separating most of that from what we have already ‘consumed’, the daily cost is approximately $215/day, or just under $20,000 in total.
AustriaCentral/Eastern Europe (June-July 2022)