Die lange Nacht der offenen Kirchen

Ah summer is coming and Vienna is filling with obnoxious tourists. There are pluses and minuses. On the minus side are the obnoxious American girls who just finished their first year of college loudly complaining about their less than stellar grades, and the ever growing packs of Mozart impersonators that prey upon them by getting them to buy over priced concert tickets (come to think of it that might be a plus), but on the plus side there are some cool events going on like the long night of the open churches. Rather like the long night of the museums earlier this year, on the long night of the churches churches are open much later than usual with special concerts and lectures going on and with things like the crypts being open and free of admission. There is also some free food and the whole thing also has a "Seeeeee, church is coooooool, you should come more often. It is sooo always like this, yeah with rock star lighting. Yes." Unlike the US, the proselytizing is pretty harmless, though you do sort of want to take those people out for a drink and get them some friends.

So yes churches. Well I saw a crypt, but they had redone it so there was only one room with bones all over the place. Bit of a let down really. I did, however, finally see the church where the hearts of the different Hapsburg emperors are kept. Yes, the hearts are kept separately from their bodies. I think it would be a great place to take your sweetheart on Valentine's day. The hearts were in a really small room and you had to look through a whole in a thick door to get a look. The urns they were in were pretty small, but there were a lot of them. All together, so sweet.

The other really cool things was at one of the Cathdrel's near me (Karlskirche). I have been there before, but on the inside it isn't that nice right now because they have been renovating and there is scaffolding going all the way up to the top of the dome. Well yesterday they were taking people up in an elevator and letting you stand right under the dome while an art historian lectured about its history. It was pretty cool.