An elevator brought us up one tower where we found ourselves on a rickety round catwalk that trimmed the spire, as we marveled at the sweeping city panorama.

On the second day, we met up with our tour guide, Emmi Glatzer, for our first official group tour to Schoenbrunn Palace and a few pages back in our history books.

The Habsburg Family ruled Austria for 600 years. Their summer dwelling, a mere weekend getaway of several hundred rooms, of which 20 are opened to the public and are known as the State Apartments, are overwhelming and indescribable in opulence. Queen Maria Theresa spent her summers here. There are walkways in between the walls so servants of long ago could stoke the fireplaces without disturbing the royal household members or their guests. It is a visionary overload of cherubs, chandeliers and gold inlaid furniture. Some of her china reminded me of my late mother’s Bavarian china, which, coincidentally, the pattern is also named “Maria Theresa”. Maria Theresa ruled in the 1700s, a time when the Habsburg Empire was weakening because of Prussia’s power. While the palace rooms were breathtaking, it was the Widow’s Room, black and somber, though still ornate, that impressed me most. One can feel her grief over the loss of her husband. I knew instinctively before the tour guide said so.

Emperor Frances Joseph, her husband, spent the end of his life in the sprawling Schoenbrunn Palace. He enjoyed walking in his garden where he was hidden amongst the many rose bushes. The second story of the right wing had an apartment known as the Imperial Apartment, accessible via a courtyard entrance and up a flight of marble steps. It consisted of a reception room, office and royal bedroom.

Historical legend tells that blackbirds swarmed the palace grounds and then disappeared upon dissolution of the last remaining vestige of Habsburg royalty. I saw some blackbirds out back. under a misty, damp, gray sky and bone-chilling cold. “Back” stretched for many acres of rose gardens, hedges, mazes and a monumental, columned structure that trimmed the landscape.

As a contrast, our tour stopped in a Soho-type section of Vienna that housed unusual colorful buildings of pop art and deliberate crooked floors by a whimsical artist-architect with sense of offbeat humor.

The following day brought us to the exclusive “suburbs” of the Vienna Woods some forty minutes outside of the city. The bucolic countryside served as inspiration and subject of many songs written by the great composers, among them, Johann Strauss, with its charming villages, hills and turns. A most magnificent sight was a medieval castle perched erect on a hill that dotted the landscape of pines and hilly horizon. We went to the Abbey of Heiligenkreuz, a monastery, where we drank from a natural spring water well shared by monks six centuries ago and poked through rooms of altars and carved pews and wooden statues of Christ and saints, all hand-carved by monks of long ago. The dusting of snow set the mood perfectly. Outside in one of the courtyards is a monument to the Plague of 15th Century Europe, identical to the one in the square in the city. They build these monuments hundreds of years ago to thank God for all who did survive the scourge that claimed the lives of thousands in Medieval Europe.

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