(8/15/12) To the Alps!

Today, we were Alps-bound. I really didn’t know what to expect, other than the intimidatingly steep gondola ride to the top of the mountain. Tomorrow, we’re getting a chance to hike and explore the alps, so I’ll touch upon all that later.

Having fun on the gondola ride...not.

Most of today was consumed by a visit to Eisenstadt, a beautiful town in Austria and the former seat of the Eszterhazy noble family (Haydn also lived here under patronage from the Eszterhazy family). It’s very small, with a small number of inhabitants, and we spent about six hours there, giving us a chance to explore the whole area. It was August 15th, though, which in Vienna is the Ascension of Mary, one of the biggest holidays of the year. On a personal note, I felt extremely nauseous after consuming the popular digestive yogurt product Activia, and found my approach to all the events in Eisenstadt rather negative because I just wanted to curl up into a ball all day. 

The culprit.

Despite my personal, digestive struggles, I still found the small town enjoyable, and was most especially drawn to the Jewish portion of the tour. We visited a synagogue, and when I wasn’t doubled over in pain, I was in awe of the intimate size and the gorgeous design. The tour guide asked us (in German, which Kathy translated to English for us) what makes the synagogue we were in an Orthodox synagogue. The answered lied to the right of where I was sitting, a little segment of the room closed off by a gated wall. This area was designated for women to sit, since Orthodox Jews make women and men sit separately during services. When this was revealed as the answer, my reaction was a “duh” moment, as I was raised Jewish and am fairly familiar with the traditional practices of Orthodox Jews (this was not the case with a couple of my friends in the program, who were shocked to hear that even to this day, women and men had to sit separately in an Orthodox synagogue).

This orthodox synagogue made me think about the Jewish population in Vienna and in Austria. Vienna is traditionally very Catholic, so I thought maybe the Jewish population would be defined by the most traditional sect, which would be Orthodox Judaism. But upon a little research (thanks Wikipedia!) I learned that the biggest population of Jews in Austria is in Vienna, and that population is defined by both reform (the more liberal Judaism that I was raised in) and orthodox Jews. Who'd have guessed?

The Orthodox synagogue we visited in Eisenstadt.