Tiring.

I stayed up late to watch the end of the Switzerland-Turkey match. It was tied till the 92nd minute, when Turkey scored a second goal. Most of the crowd was for Turkey, so they´re all out dancing singing and and drinking and honking their car horns.

Before that, I went to the ballet at the Vienna Opera House. Before that, I spent three hours in the Albertina Museum: Rubens, Albrecht Dürer (wow), Michelangelo (also wow), Egon Schiele (whom I love), Renoir, Monet, Degas, Toulouse-Latrec, Cézanne, Matisse, Signac & company, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Chagall, Miró, Picasso... they also had a huge Klee show, and some of the state rooms were still open and as they were when the wing was built. The Albertina Museum is part of the Hofburg, the Hapsburg city residence, aka the Imperial Palace. It was built for some queen-type person. The really nice-looking (neoclassical?), semicircular wing is my favorite, though. Franz Ferdinand built it while waiting for his turn, but he was assassinated (WWI!) before Franz Josef I finally died of old age. Anyone else miss AP Euro? Anyway, it was a nice addition to the palace.

Before the Albertina, I was having a Viennese lunch. They put potatoes, corn, and lentils in their green salads, then drown them in dressing.

Prior to that, I spent all morning in the inner sanctum of the Hofburg, looking at all of Emperor Franz Josef I and Empress Elizabeth´s belongings. I cannot begin to describe the size and complexity of the imperial dinner service. They had between eight and thirty-something courses per meal, depending on whom they were impressing, and I lost count of how many different types of plates there were. The decorated porcelain services were outstandingly well painted, but the silver and gold sets were jaw-droppingly shiny. I can´t think of any better way to show off such massive wealth.

The staterooms were neat, too. The exhibits reminded me about the lives of the Hapsburgs, then took me through the daily life of FJ I and his wife. It turns out she was fanatical about exercise, unheard of for a woman in those times. She had a pull-up bar and gymnastic rings in her study, between her writing desk (poetry, mostly) and her massage table (for after all that exercise, of course). Rings are ridiculously difficult. I had a hard time imagining an empress up there, doing all those shoulder and ab exercises, and it only became more difficult to picture when I saw her workout skirt.

Before that were a few churches, including the one they built as thanks for a failed assassination attempt on FJ I, and the Parliament, which is tying their tour into EuroCup 2008 to try to get people in the door.

So. I´m somewhat tired from staring at things all day. But I´m still excited for tomorrow.