"Vienna - a place very close to my heart " a Vienna Travel Page by margaretvn

..........and We have been lucky enough to have visited this wonderful city many times. It is a favourite place on earth for us. We love its rich and musical history and every time we visit we find new things to enchant us.
We also love the surrounding countryside so that is always included in a visit to Vienna. A walk through Grinzing or the old part of Heiligstadt, a day out to Baden or Modling .... fantastic. One stop is always the Central Graveyard and a moments pause in front of the grave of our favourite composer Beethoven, strange perhaps but it always seems as if we are visiting the grave of a much loved family member. Plus we find it a great place to park the car while exploring the city, we take the tram from there to the centre.
We found this statue of Beethoven in a local garden centre a couple of years ago and just had to buy it. He was in our garden surrounded by flowers and often attracted the attention of people passing by. Now though we have moved him indoors the local youth knocked him over a couple of times. Later we found out that it had been wrongly priced and should have been double the price we got it for!

We keep on returning to this beautiful city - which really is one of my favourite European cities.
Of course our love of classical music keeps drawing us back but the city itself is wonderful. We love the old palaces and there are so many museums and parks. The many coffee houses and the surroundings - in short a fantastic place.

I copied this wonderful drawing of the Maestro with Heiligstadt in the background - I did it to pass a miserable wet sunday afternoon once. It hangs in our livingroom. His music can always move me and however I feel there is always something to suit my mood.
please look at my travelogue for more photos etc.....

I love this statue of Beethoven and we often sit at his feet with a cooling drink and a sandwich for a lunch during our sight seeing. Two places we always visit every time we go to Vienna is this statue and Beethovens grave.... strange but it is just like visiting a friend or a family member. We used to have a "life" mask of Beethovens face hanging along the staircase.... until one night when the street light shing on it scared me me to death. I thought someone was coming up the stairs. It quickly got moved to another place in our home. Koos just said he would have liked to meet Beethoven. Now to go with the "life mask" we have a copy of the mask of the Maestro's face that was taken just after his death. I have always thought that it must have been so frightening to have that plaster over your face while you were alive - I would be afright of not being able to breath.