Eisenstadt

I’m writing this from a rustic hotel room, looking out my window onto the cloudy night that is settling over the Austrian Alps. Much has happened today, the beginning of my first excursion away from Vienna.

For this outing, everyone is together and in the same place. I can hear my classmates’ voices echo down the hall beyond my door. But this morning we were all in the country town of Eisenstadt, with an approximate population of 16,000. Despite its small size it is notable for several reasons. One is that it is where Joseph Haydn lived, worked, and composed for the Esterházy family, who were the most notable landowners in the city. According to our tour guide, the Esterházys gained their wealth and power through carefully planned marriages, not unlike the Hapsburgs. And much of their fame came from being the patrons of Haydn, whom I think is more noteworthy today. I do wish I knew more about Haydn, or at least more of his music, before visiting Eisenstadt today. However, I am certainly inspired now to listen to his works, especially the masses that he composed on the main organ of the Berkirche, which we got to visit! Not only does it contain said organ (which can switch between Baroque and modern pitches), it also contains the remains of Joseph Haydn himself. His tomb is in a mausoleum, behind a heavy metal door. While looking upon his impressive resting place, I learned that his head was stolen eight days after burial! Apparently his skull only resurfaced in Vienna in 1932, but was not returned to Eisenstadt as the town was not a part of Austria at the time! It wasn’t until 1954 that the rest of Haydn’s body was finally reunited with his head.

After getting to look at some of Haydn’s original scores in the Bergkirche’s treasury, we were led on a tour of the church’s Stations of the Cross. These are a series of painted wooden sculptures depicting the events of Jesus leading up to his crucifixion. The sculptures are located all around the stone insides of the church, and a cryptic pathway leads to each one of them. The way all the figures are depicted, I can see how effective they would be in teaching illiterate followers what happened in the last moments of Jesus’s life. They are certainly impressive; I have never seen anything like them. Also impressive is the view of the Austrian countryside on the top of the Bergkirche (where the crucifixion itself is depicted).

Before venturing out through the country to the Alps, I used some of my free time in Eisenstadt to first get lunch at a beer garden (deer goulash!) then visit the Österreichishes Jüdisches Museum. I’m glad I visited it, though I think it could have been a little more informative. There some good models and depictions of grand synagogues that used to exist in Vienna, but the captions by them seemed too short (if I could have read them, that is). I did have an English booklet to carry through the museum, though it was more of a beginner’s introduction to Judaism than anything else, with only a few Austrian-specific pages. I will credit the museum on one thing that certainly hit me in the heart: in the corner of one room is a photograph from the 1930s over an Austrian street. A banner is shown stretched over the street, with “JEWS NOT WELCOME [in German]” flanked by two swastikas. I looked at this photograph, then proceeded into the next room, which to my surprise had black walls and was completely empty...save for the actually banner that I had just seen in the photograph, now hanging right in front of me. The experience was unnerving, but most certainly effective. Had I more time, I would have stayed in the Jewish Museum longer. However it was now time to head to the Alps.

One long bus ride later saw us in a green valley, with light rain on our heads and imposing peaks on our sides. We boarded the gondola with all of our luggage and ascended up the Alpine slopes in the air. I was excited. This – our trip to the Alps – has been one of the things I have been looking forward to the most on this trip. The view from the hotel on top of the peak did not fail to impress...once the rain clouds moved away, that is! In any case, the trees are green, the food is good, and the atmosphere has something distinctly Austrian about it that I have not found in my mountainous adventures in the States. No doubt I will have more Austrian Alpine experiences to write about tomorrow, after what I hope will be a long and satisfying hike! I can’t wait for it, hiking through some of the most famed mountains in the world...

The German word of the day is "kurz," meaning "short."