Experiential Blog 3

The main thing I noticed in Vienna is that it is very, very busy. The buildings are all very tall but they are consistent with each other. What I mean by this is that they are all blocked shaped and many of them have a palace like, dome top. I expected the tops of the buildings to look like this but I didn't expect the block like modernized look. Even though they have a modernized look I thought that they kept their culture in their architecture very well and that they didn't let the western culture influence them 100%. I also noticed that the people and the culture is very nationalistic. They seem very proud of where they come from and they show this in their buildings and their pride in their food and drinks. I also noticed that their transportation is very, very efficient. All subways run on time and are very quick. I thought that this might be due to the culture of the empire over the years.

Kafka's Contribution to My Understanding of the Gothic

Kafka and the museum dedicated to him gave me a very good understanding of the gothic. After reading a few of his writings I started to see what the gothic was more about. Gothic literature is creepy and it's supposed to envoke mysterious thoughts about what's going on and the purpose of things. The museum reiterated this concept very well in my opinion. Gothic literature is usually very dark and the museum portayed this by dimming the lights a lot and not having any windows to the outside world. Perhaps what stuck out to me most was the almost maze like, winding path you had to take to navigate through the museum. Most museums I've been to are pretty straight foward with where you go next but in the Kafka museum there was like a sense of mystery as to where you're going next. When you read Kafka's work that's almost how you feel. I thought that the museum did a very good job of creating a real life Kafkaesque feel and environment.

Ossuary of Kutna Hora

The Ossuary of Kutna Hora or reffered to as the bone church is an old cathedral near Kutna Hora, Czech Republic that is decorated with the bones of over 40,000 people. That fact alone makes it very, very gothic since you are reminded of death as soon as you walk through the door. The one thing that makes me confused about it is that the church thought it was ok to dig up the bones of people resting in peace and decoarte the interior of their church with them where people will worship god. I feel this is kind of ironic but this is also very sublime to me simply because of the fact that over 40,000 people's bones are used as decoration. It just seems insane and basically unreal to me that something like this is possible and actually happened. It's not like these people were buried in a mass grave site from like a war or the plague but these people were dug up from their graves specifically to decoarte the church. It's mindblowing and that's what makes the Ossuary very creepy and sublime.

Konopište as a Gothic Location

Konopište, which was the palace/hunting lodge of Franz Ferdinand, and the story behind it all has many gothic elements. When talking about the location of the palace, it's gothic because it is placed in the middle of the woods, in the hills surrounded by lakes and a lot of wilderness. Even though Franz lived in a nice big palace out by all of this, nature shows that it cannot be tamed by the empire which makes the location itself very gothic. Another gothic element of the palace is the amount of death and the excessive hunting that took place on the grounds. He didn't just kill a few animals but he killed more than 275,000 animals and had them as trophies lined up in his hallways. All of this death surrounding the palace definitely gives it a gothic feel and look. The story of Franz Ferdinand as well is also gothic. He didn't die a normal death. Instead he was shot point blank and assassinated, along with his wife Sophie in Austria. This event triggered WWI.

Sisi as a Gothic Heroine

Sisi is very much a traditonal gothic heroine. The first reason is because she is a very emotional woman and has deep feelings about the things she is going through and around. As stated previously, Freud considered this to be hysteria which he thought only applied to women. This sense of hysteria gives more passion and emotion to the personality and the character of Sisi as a gothic heroine. Another reason is because she is trapped in a lifestyle that she doesn't want to be in. Although she cared for Franz she was forced into marriage against her will and forced to live a lifestyle that didn't suit her persoanlity. Because of this she developed many problems including mental health disorders such as depression and also physical health issues such as anorexia. These ideas of being too emotional and being trapped against your will are two big components of a traditional gothic heroine.

Compare and Contrast Palaces

The palaces we visited were the Schönbrunn palace and the Hofburg palace in Vienna, and the Kew in London. In my opinion these three palaces had more differences than they did similarities. The size of the estates, the interior, the purpose for them, and the exterior were never the same between all three. When comparing Schönbrunn to Hofburg, I noticed that the size of the personal rooms in Schönbrunn were much smaller but that the dining rooms and meeting halls were much bigger. This was because the Schönbrunn palace was designed as a summer home and to hold important political meetings away from the public. The need was there for these great halls in Schönbrunn where as Hofburg was more of a home environment. The main similarity between these two was the size of the palace itself. Both were enormous buildings that took up a lot of space. Although they were both very big the actual size of the estates were very different. This was due to the location of the two though. Since Hofburg was located in the center of the city it was very enclosed and didn't have as much space to spread out like the Schönbrunn palace did. This palace spread across acres and had a big garden that wrapped around the palace. This is where Schönbrunn is very similar to the Kew in London. Both of the estates that these palaces were on were huge and could've easily fit a ton more buildings. But the thing that separates the Kew from both Schönbrunn and Hofburg is the size of the palace itself. The Kew was very small compared to the other two and it could've been placed in the middle of the city and you wouldn't have recognized it as a "palace". Since it was a much smaller building it naturally felt much more like a home than did the other two in Vienna. It was designed this way because the purpose of it was to raise a family and be far away from the public eye. There were never any political meetings held here, instead they all took place in Buckingham palace in the city of London.

Compare and Contrast Cathedrals

For the most part these old cathedrals had a lot of similarities. The cathedrals were St. Stephan's Dom in Vienna, St. Vitus and St. George in Prague, St. Wulfrum's in Grantham and Trinity Cathedral in Stratford upon Avon.  The main one is that they were all gothic in nature. The architecture of all of these were exteremely gothic with the pointy arches and just the worn down look of them all. Also all of these cathedrals had grave sites inside of the cathedral often in the floors or in the crypt of important members of the church or of the city itself. The Trinity cathedral included Shakespeare's and his family's graves. Many of the statues inside the cathedrals were also very gothic. The mysterious looks on the faces and the curvy shape of these statues is something else that many of these cathedrals had in common. Perhaps the most obvious similarity between them all is the height of the ceiling although the actual height of them did vary. All of these cathedrals were towering and forced you to look basically straight up towards heaven. This was designed this way to remind you of the power of god and to keep you humble. That's another reason why the designs on the celings were so intricate so that you had another reason to look up towards the sky. Another similarity that was shared between all but one of the cathedrals was the stain glass windows all over the walls. The only one that didn't have an abundant amount was St. George's in Prague. I'm not sure why this was the case but the rest of the cathedrals were covered in these beautifully designed stained glass windows that gave the church a very elegant and religious look to it.