Europe Post #10: Monday and Tuesday (2nd and 3rd of July)

Monday:

We made it back to Vienna about 8:30 am.  After running home for a quick shower, we had class and then went for a tour of a Turkish Mosque.  Now, I've known we were going to the Mosque for a week or so, and I was kind of disappointed.  A Mosque is where Muslims (followers of Islam) worship.  As you can see in the picture below, we had one of the Islamic leaders tell us a little bit about their faith.  He spoke only Turkish; the lady in the middle translated from Turkish to German; and our tour guide for most afternoons (on the left), translated from German to English... So basically it got complicated.  The building was not elaborate from the outside.  It just looked like an office building.  But this picture is taken from the prayer room.  We had to take off our shoes to enter.  This Mosque has a lot of cultural elements that churches in the States do: a school, holds weddings, organizes pilgrimages to the Holy Land, holds social events, has a cafeteria, and worship services.

Tuesday:

This morning we went to Stephansdom.  It's the beautiful cathedral right in the heart of Vienna.  It was built from 1100-1500 ish, so it has lots of different architecture types.  The church began Romanesque and progressed to Gothic and finally Baroque, although the church is primarily Gothic.

A Gothic pulpit.

Sorry about the crooked pictures, I'm averaging over 1000 pictures per week and just don't have the time patience to edit everything thoroughly.

Mason marks from the apprentice who built this statue.

The Baroque alter.  (Some of the original Gothic statues and most of the Gothic stained glass was "updated"/removed with Baroque elements in the 1600.  Some of the original stained glass is in the Wien Museum.

The Romaneque facade (the original front of the church before the Gothic parts were added later).

Some old (~ year 1000) ruins (as seen from the U-Bahn station).

This afternoon we went to the Wien Museum.  2 of the 3 floors are currently closed, but here is a picture of some art originally in the Stephansdom.

Naturally, the group was more interested in playing with legos than looking at old art.  (For a Liberal Arts trip, we sure do have a LOT of engineers.)