This morning five of us went to Klosterneuburg to watch their kind of festival mass, where canons took their vows to continue serving for a few years, and where the big festival organ was played, as well as some choir/orchestral music. The mass was very long, about two and a half hours, and all in German. The organ music was nice though. There were lots of people there. After mass there was a free luncheon, but there weren’t enough seats for us, most of them being reserved for the guests for the canons. So we went to a little café and got quiche and banana shakes. The shakes were definitely different than in the States. They were very thin and not too cold; they contained a single floating ice cube. But they weren’t that bad, and the quiche was very good.
After the café we strove to find our way home. At the bus stop we met these little old ladies who were also going back to Vienna where they lived. They were adorable and I had a German conversation with them. With the passage of time, we suspected more and more that sitting at this bus stop would not result in our being transported back to Vienna, so we asked directions from a Polizei and eventually found the correct stop and got back to Vienna. Sidney and Diane decided to go shopping, and I accompanied them because they promised to go to their favorite coffee house afterwards. However, the clothing store promised to take a great amount of time and prove incredibly boring, so I elected to do my own shopping: looking around for a suitable beer stein. I ended up not finding one that was in German and cheap. At my favorite Würstelstand, the one by the classroom, I ordered a Bratwurst mit Brot und Senf (with bread and mustard). I think it must have been a touristy thing to order, because he asked in English if I wanted anything to drink, even though I’d ordered in German. In the States “bratwurst” means a particularly thick sausage, or at least that’s how I’ve always tried it. In any case bratwurst are sold at most grocery stores in the States, next to the hot dogs. So I had to try the Austrian bratwurst at this fantastic stand. The bratwurst proved to be okay, but very thin. It was much thinner than the other sausages at the stand. Kind of funny that bratwurst means opposite things in Europe and America. Oh well.
After this I returned to the clothing shop and found it to be closed. So I went to the tourist office and asked in my most polite German if the man working there could direct me to Café Oberlass. It turned out to be very nice. My Einspänner had far more whipped cream than coffee, which is delicious if not entirely healthy, and I ordered Esterházyschnitte (you may recall that the Esterházys own Eisenstadt and employed Joseph Haydn). It was a delicious multilayered cake. I loved it.
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