06 December 2009

St. Nicholas's Day

Maria and Thomas were both pretty excited about what they found in their shoes this morning.



A couple of car loads of us went to Vienna this morning for Mass at the Stephansdom. We were lured by the promise of Haydn's Rorate Coeli Mass to be followed by visits to a couple of the city's many Adventmarkts. Beautiful as the Mass was in many ways, I must say that the alternation between spoken German and sung Latin (to the music of Joseph Haydn no less) is a little bit strange. Afterwards, when we finally made it to the Christkindlemarkt am Rathausplatz we were pretty hungry:

Huge baked potatoes piled high with chili con carne, bacon and onions, and ham and garlic sauce, respectively.

Das Wiener Rathaus

We stopped by another Adventmarkt in front of Schloss Schoenbrunn

Maria was a little bit afraid of St. Nicholas

Back at home, finally, we had a drink in honor of the good saint

3 comments:

The Grumpy Old Man said...

I'm a little afraid of that Saint Nicholas, too.

Uncle John

Fred and Sharon said...

Are these markets just seasonal? It's curious that the malt liquor has labling auf English.

Unknown said...

Curious indeed. Perhaps they mostly export. I've actually only come across this in two stores: one in Lansing, and the other in Traiskirchen