Wednesday, January 23, 2013

January 23rd


Today we spent the morning at the central cemetery which is one the largest cemeteries in the world at about 590 acres. It was established in 1863 and has burial grounds for many different religious such as Catholicism, Judaism, Protestantism and many other denominations. There are also multiple churches and a military section in the cemetery.  We first saw the Catholic section that also has the resting places of many of Vienna's important citizens as well as some famous composers. There are two Jewish sections in the central cemetery the newer one was opened in 1917 and is still used. You can tell that there was a some damage to these sections in particular during the Holocaust and especially the night of broken glass. You can also see the visible effect of graves not being maintained because there are not a lot of surviving family members around to keep up the graves and keep plants like ivy from overtaking them. When we were in the Jewish sections you could tell that very few people had been there recently and we were the only people in the old section. I was overwhelmed by how huge the cemetery was, we took the trolley a few stops from where we started out to the Jewish sections, I was also surprised at the fact that you could still see some visible damage to graves from the war.
After the central cemetery we went to an all you can eat Asian buffet and then went on the famous ferris wheel, the riesenrad which is huge and dates back to before world war one. It was destroyed in the war however it was rebuilt and runs all year. 



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