pris

i'm planning my trip to vienna (probably will visit salzburg as well). unfortunately, i can spend only 3 days there. any suggestions for the trip?

Operaman

3 days is awfully short for Vienna, if that is all you have, I would omit Salzburg and save it for another time. What are you interested in seeing while you are in Vienna?

pris

i am a musician and i want to have a music/ culture trip. and that's why i so wanna be in mozart trail and sound of music sites. yet i know i just can't have it all with my limited time

ira

Hi P,

Have you looked up Vienna under "Destinations"?

Operaman

Go to:
http://www.nethotels.com/release20/e...amp;idlng=2057
Enter the dates you';; be in Vienna and it will list the musical venues...avoid the ones done in period costumes, they're for the tourists and not very good. If you buy a book called Vienna A-Z from the tourist office (behind the Staatsoper) it lists all the various composers buidings in town...all are denoted bt prominently placed flags on the outside. Do you know where you are stating at in Wien?

grsing

As a fellow musician, I'd try to see an opera at the Vienna opera house, standing room tickets are really cheap, and so are the cheap seats (google it, they've got a reasonable website, if you need help with the German that some pages are inexplicably only in, just ask). I also found the Haus der Musik very interesting (they also have "happy hour" I believe on Tuesday evenings, but you should double check, where it's half price, if that's a concern). You can run around Vienna chasing former houses of composers, but frankly, it's kind of pointless, most of them had lots of houses, and they were inhabited by a lot of people both before and after them.

Christina

I'm a musician, also (not professional, though), and I think 3 days in Vienna is enough. It was enough for me, I didn't like it that well.

And I don't agree that it is pointless to visit former houses of muscians -- I love doing that. It isn't just a bare shell, a good museum in the home of a former musician has some artifacts of the person (perhaps even instruments), scores, and I enjoy being in the same places my favorite composers have lived. It doesn't matter to me that others have lived there since.

I liked Mozart's house in Vienna and in Salzburg. They just redid the Vienna one quite a bit, from what I've read, and there should be some interesting new features there. In Vienna, I actually enjoyed the Brahms/Haydn house very much. They had some nice old photos and one of Brahms' actual pianos. He is one of my favorite composers, though (not Haydn), so it meant a lot to me. They have a Brahms room or two in the house where I think Haydn lived. that's a bit out of the center, but I got to it by tram or bus, can't recall.

As for concerts, I was in Vienna in July which is why I wasn't that enchanted with it. There wasn't much going on in terms of performing arts or major concerts, they close that season early in Vienna. I always look for things in the local paper that sound good, and went to something in St Stephans cathedral, as I recall. A chamber music group doing some Schubert and other things, it was quite good.

I didn't go to any performances in Salzburg, that was just to look at thing. Not sure if there were any other than those tourist things which I won't go to. I don't care for opera, either, so wouldn't have gone, but I don't think there was any in July, anyway.