Medieval Festival and Heiligenkreuz

First things first, we finally had a nice day on Saturday, so here is a photo of the front of my residence, which sadly, I have to move out of at the end of the month.
I'm not sure where they're moving me yet, but I should know by tomorrow, hopefully.

Saturday was the final day that our Summery tickets were valid, so we decided to go to a medieval festival in a small town about one hour north of Vienna towards the Czech Republic. The majority of the inner city within the old city walls was closed to cars, and swarming with people, most of whom got the decreased entrance fee by dressing in period costume. The streets were littered with straw and occasionally cabbage (thrown at the prisoner wagon on the way to and from re-enacted trials). There was a ton of delicious foods ranging from a lamb cooking on a spit, to home made potato chips and desserts. To drink there was to met (mead, wine made from honey) and met bier (honey beer), both of which were good, although the beer was very sweet.
The entertainment included Gypsy magicians, tight-rope walkers, fire breathers, a cool medieval bag-pipe and drum band, sword fights, witch trials, traditional dancing, and a lot of skits performed in German.
The town itself was the perfect backdrop for the festival because it too was medieval. It was odd to think that everything being portrayed at the fair actually once happened there, within those city walls.
Between the inner and outer city walls we happened upon this man stoking this oven. We were going to get a closer look and ask him about it but were asked to move out of the way. Apparently we were between an amateur axe-thrower and his target...
On Sunday Laslo (who is the younger brother of my coworker Szilvia from Serbia/Hungary, and who also worked in Wiener Neustadt, but downstairs with Cora) drove Cora and I to Heiligenkreuz because he wanted to check it out, and we thought a road-trip would be fun.

On the way there we got lost in Baden, but found this cool castle crumbling away on top of a hill.
Driving into Heiligenkreuz we noticed hundreds of cars parked along the street. Apparently the Pope (who had been in Vienna Thursday-Saturday) was at the monastery we had planned to visit, but had just left a few minutes before we arrived. When we walked in there were hundreds and hundreds of people, many of whom were priests, bishops, monks, and nuns wearing all sorts of robes all in different colours and styles.
We went into the main church. It was eerily beautiful because the architecture was simple but stunning, the windows were meticulously patterned with stained glass, and there was a choir of nuns singing softly in Latin(?).On the drive out I snapped a photo of Heiligenkreutz in the valley below.