Dear Family:
Time for our weekly report from the beautiful city of Vienna. According to our favorite son from Germany, Markus, Vienna is the city in all of Europe with the highest income, lowest poverty and most cleanly. He reports that getting lost in Vienna, which we have done a few times is more of a great experience than something to worry about. I think we would echo that.
This past week started off with a three day holiday as Europe in general and Austria in particular celebrated Pentecost. I suspect the actual event of the apostles and the early Christian church experiencing the advent of the Holy Ghost is probably lost on most of the celebrants but a holiday is a holiday and we were happy to take some time to explore the city a bit as the Youth Center was closed because of the celebration. It followed a lesser celebration but still noted of Christ's Ascension to Heaven which was the previous Thursday. Most of the holidays seem oriented to significant events in the life of the Savior or the early church. We can't hold a candle in the U.S. to events that are being advertised around the city and on various signs here and there, especially while waiting for a subway to come or such like one little city that is celebrating its 900th anniversary this summer. Columbus wouldn't come along for another 378 years at that time! So we decided we'd spend part of the day exploring the Central Cemetery which was anything but centrally located. Still it was the Main Cemetery and we knew there was a section where many of the great musicians were buried such as Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss (both father and son), Schubert and even a nice memorial in the same section to Mozart who apparently was buried in a pauper's mass grave before the city and the world recognized him as someone we should cherish.
Earlier in the day we walked about two blocks from the stop on the streetcar that we make every day on our way to the Youth Center to the People's Garden and the Citizen's Garden. Both were very close but we'd never taken the time to walk through them. Filled with beautiful flowers and flowering trees and fountains and a beautiful Grecian Temple originally built to house the sculpture of Theseus slaying the Centaur, (nope, I'd never heard of it before either) but it was impressive enough that they have now moved the sculpture to the main entrance of the Vienna Museum, which we won't make for a while. But the temple was still there in the garden. Vienna was in the middle of a heat wave with temperatures up in the 90's so we delayed our visit to the cemetery until later in the day. We then took an S-Bahn which is faster than the U-Bahn or subway and it took us right to one of the main gates at the back of the cemetery, #11 to be precise. There was in information office right there and the attendant was very nice in providing us a map of the entire city and showing us where the great musicians were located. The cemetery was divided up into 183 sections not counting the New and the Old Jewish cemeteries and the Lutheran cemetery which were closely appended on both sides. I figure the whole area probably encompassed about 4 square miles!
The musicians were primarily in section 32A, very near the center of the cemetery and although the map was largely in green there was a bright orange section, 57A to be exact, which really stood out and was designated the Mormon section. Other sections were reserved for Islamists, Muslim-Egyptians, Buddhists, Greek Orthodox, Rumanian-Bulgarian Orthodox, well you get the idea. But we were impressed at how well the Mormon section stood out on the map. I'll include pictures of some of the sights we saw. So we got to the cemetery about 5:30 or so with several hours of daylight left, got the map and found the graves of the great musicians without any big problem. The Mormon section was about half way back to the gate we had entered and so we headed there with a lovely sculpture of the Savior with a family and an inscription around the base of the sculpture saying "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live." We subsequently talked to a young man at the center who had helped do some of the landscaping there when he was a young Aaronic Priesthood holder.
We got back to our entry gate about 7:30 to find that the cemetery had closed and the gate was locked! A young couple on bikes were just ahead of us and the sign indicated to get out we'd have to walk all the way across the cemetery, a distance of about a mile to get to gate 2. They looked at us with some concern. Could these old folks make it that far? We assured them we could make it and they drove off on their bikes toward Gate 2. About 15 minutes later we arrived to find Gate 2 was also locked! These sweet young people had waited for us on the other side of the gate and sticking their hands through the gate motioned that we should go to our right to find the emergency exit. That we did and we finally got out to find the couple gone. We were quite impressed that they had waited for us to arrive to make sure we were OK and we have found this is not atypical of the Viennese. Several times they announce on the streetcars or subways to be on the watch for old folks or handicapped people who might have greater need for your seat than you do.
Last Sunday we went to the Vienna First Ward where I was asked to say the opening prayer in Priesthood Opening Exercises and your mother was asked to say the opening prayer in Sacrament Meeting.. Then on Thursday we had our first Zone Conference and finally met our mission president and his wife, Pres. and Sister Miles. She is a cousin of Tom Rohlfing and specifically asked to say hi to Laurel. Again I was asked to say the opening prayer at the conference so they're giving us a good workout. They leave for home in 2 weeks about the same time that Warren and Marilyn will be leaving to return home but gave us an interview nonetheless with good advice about how to conduct ourselves as missionaries. We've already met our new mission president, Brian Kohler who will be replacing them. He comes with his wife and two children, a third serving a mission with a 17 year old who will likely leave from here while they're serving. Their youngest daughter is 14.
Friday nights are "Waffle Night" and we had yet to get through one of those as the last two Fridays were busy with other events. Cooking here is always interesting because most is done from scratch as far as the baking is concerned. We had never tried out the two waffle irons but the recipe seemed to work and two sets of missionaries came by expecting two investigators to come. We had been warned that the turnout might be small because all of the young people who are studying were in the midst of final exams and we were right between two BYU groups, one of whom had just left and the other not coming until tomorrow. So we got ready nonetheless and after some good advice from one of the elders about how to cook the ideal waffle, found that absolutely no one showed up! So the six of us had a good time with our trial waffles which were really quite good. No one believes in syrup here so we had interesting concoctions of caramel, Nutella, strawberry and currant sauces on our waffles. Well, will we ever be ready for next Friday when everyone is back.
Love to all, Elder and Sister Parker, Mom and Dad, Grammy and Grampa
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