The next couple of days were pleasant just as the first, and maybe even more because my lovely friends accompanied me around town and showed me some cool places. More excellent food was eaten, of course, thanks to my italian food expert. He was also generous enough to cook two amazing dinners of fresh pasta to die for. Happiness in my belly!
I also developed a special appreciation and slight obsession with Prosseco, after trying some Italian one from a company called Canella.
I visited the Schoenbrunn Palace where the last emperor Franz Joseph used to reside before the abolition of the monarchy. It was a very interesting tour across the various rooms in the palace which displayed the possessions and habits of the royal family. Franz Joseph’s grandmother, Maria Theresa, for example, had something 16 children, 12 of which were females. She married all but one of her daughters to princes/ dukes of other nations for political reasons when they were 15 or 16 years old. One of such daughters was the famous Mary Antoinette. Anyways, back to Franz Joseph: Franz was married to Elizabeth of Bavaria who was an extremely beautiful woman, nicknamed “Sisi”. According to the tour guide, Sisi was obsessed with her looks and used to exercise a lot, spend hours attending to her hair, and often was absent from family dinners. She also seemed to not be too interested in her husband and chose to travel a lot and spend as little time as possible at Shoenbrunn. She was said some things about the institute of marriage, which I found amusing for someone of her epoch to say: “Marriage is a preposterous institution. You are sold as a child of fifteen, you swear vows you don’t understand, and you regret them for thirty years or more, but you can never break them.”
On the way back to Tel Aviv, I had an interesting incident in the boarding line. There was a group of girls, aged 16-17 or so, that I am guessing went to Vienna for a tennis tournament. They were accompanied by their coach, a lady in her early 30’s. I was standing and minding my own business when I hear one of those girls, after helping one of the chaperons fix something on his iPhone, come up to her coach and tell her in full arrogant “I -know-it-all” tone: “Let me tell you, YOUR generation, you don’t know ANYTHING about technology!!”. Wow.. I really wanted to punch this little brat.
I also enjoy my Continental Gold status access to business lounges and have some thoughts on this which I may share in my next post..
Grobetrotter 