Eisenstadt, to the Alps

Wednesday 11.8.2010

Went to the Alps. On the way, stopped in Eisenstadt. Eisenstadt is famous because Joseph Hadyn lived there as the court composer to the powerful Esterházy family. All of Eisenstadt’s tourism is built around Haydn. Eventually an Esterházy that didn’t like music so much took power and sent Haydn into retirement. However, because Haydn was so popular, the Esterházys continued to pay him a full salary so that they could call him their court composer; in return he composed one mass for them a year. Haydn went on to become the first composer to truly make a lot of money by composing a piece and selling it to different editors in different cities at the same time. In this way he made money off of the same piece of music in multiple areas of the world.

          After Haydn died his head was stolen from his grave by a doctor who wanted to study it. This doctor thought that by measuring the head, it could be determined whether one was a genius (Haydn’s skull was taken to be an example of a genius) and it was also thought that since Haydn spent his entire life thinking about music, some node in the skull would have formed at the musical center of the brain. Of course neither of these was true, but in any case Haydn’s skull was stolen. The Esterházy in power wanted to reunite the skull and body when he re-buried Haydn in a more magnificent grave, and sent out a reward notice for Haydn’s skull. The thieves sent him the skull of someone random, and this fake skull was buried with Haydn’s body for a few years. Eventually however it was discovered that Haydn’s actual skull was in the possession of the Wiener Musikverein, who had it on display in Vienna.

          Eventually, however, the skull was reunited with the body and Haydn’s complete skeleton is in a magnificent chapel in the church in Eisenstein. The fake skull was given its own burial. The church in Eisenstein, in which Haydn is buried, is very interesting. The roof is rather curvy, not flat or domed, and a staircase runs along the outside of it. This is because the church displays the 24 stations of the cross. It tells the story of Jesus life by immortalizing the 24 most important parts of his life in statued scenes. One can walk around the church looking at these scenes and follow the story of Jesus. Some of the scenes are in this tunnel thing inside the church, and the path going along the 24 stations eventually leads to stairs, which go up above the church, so that one can walk along the roof and get a magnificent view of the lands surrounding Eisenstadt, including Hungary (Eisenstadt is some 10 kilometers from the Austro-Hungarian border).

          After the church we had lunch in a beer garden (I had a good dark), and drove to the Alps, took a lift to the top of the mountains, where is our hotel. Sam and I took a walk through the rain to the nearest house (Ottohaus) and played chess. I think eventually we got to the point where we each had like two pieces, so we called it quits and ran back to our hotel through the rain in time for dinner. I tried something that translates to “Imperial Nonsense” and which is essentially sliced up pancakes with powdered sugar and a sweet plum sauce. It was sweet, but more of a dessert than a dinner. Tomorrow, hiking I suppose. Unfortunately I forgot my glasses and the cleaner fluid for my contact lenses, so I’m going to have to go through the Alps without full use of my sight. I might try just using water for the contacts or maybe I can find someone to borrow some fluid from. In any case it’s going to suck.

At the beer garden, we photographed our food so the locals could be sure we were tourists.

"Imperial Nonsense."