A Week in Vienna

Vienna! The city of culture, classical architecture, wherever your eyes turn, every building a gem, fiakers with their horses, eyes shielded, patiently waiting for the next tourists, the family with excited children,the young couple in love, the old couple still in love. Fountains to cool you and sculpture to feast the eyes, parks and gardens. Museums, museums, museums. Oh, the Naschmarkt with its tastes and aromas of the East!

Vienna was the first city where we had planned a longer stay, perhaps a week we'd thought and that turned out to be just right. A fellow boater (from Vienna) whom we'd met in Krems told us of a short bit of quay wall where a couple of boats could tie on for free. Drinking water was available, and shade but no electricity and there we met Otto, skipper of a motor-sailer , who also plans to travel all the Danube and then go back but via Russia! He was a very sympathetic fellow with 20 years expereince of sailing and living on his boat 'Hanna'. His cat Janna travels with him and is a super ice-breaker and mouser. He travelled from the Canary Islands to the Antarctic and also made a round the world trip. Very impressive!

Sophia joined us again and we all cycled 7 km into the heart of the city, a route along the Danube Canal which would become very familiar. Soon enough we went down the ring road and along it, like pearls on a string, were an amazing assembly of representative palace-like edifices: the Votive Church, Rathaus, University, Burg Theatre, Hofburg, Karlskirche, museums and dozens of others. A total delight for lovers of architecture.

Vienna offered Johannes a nostalgic trip too, for he had lived and worked in this city for two years as a violin maker, 40 years ago and in all that time, he had never revisited Vienna. So we went to his old haunts and found some unchanged, like the traditional coffee house of Leopold Hawelka near St. Stephan's Cathedral where we ate 'Apfelstrudel' and drank coffee and felt like old Viennese people! Like Sigmund Freud might walk in any moment now. Other places had changed totally like the Mariahilfer Str., now a tree lined pedestrianised shopping area, its Christaian Community church now virtually invisible, hidden between teashop and physiotherapy clinic.

But other nostalgic events were more successful like Johannes' meeting with his old priest. And above all, the hearty recognition and greeting by his old colleague Peter Tunkowitsch, who has made a sterling career in violin making, repair and valuation in Vienna. We had a lovely meal with him and his partner later at the marina where he lives during the summers.

We had time for museums and spent a day at the comprehensive Museum of Art History, so many rooms, so much art from all ages, an extraordinarily beautiful building to house it all in. Even better was the day we spent in the Leopold Museum which had two exhibitions in addition to its standard works. The first was 'Hundertwasser--Schiele, Imagine Tomorrow', a dialogue between these two artists with about 170 works on display. The other one, held over because of the coronavirus, was 'German Expressionism', nearly 200 works of all the major expressionists, including many by Emil Nolde. The other two floors of the museum held again many works by Schiele as well as Kokoschka and Klimt, among others.

A bit of corona whimsy in the Art History Museum

In our wanderings, we marvelled at the Hundertwasser buildings just down the canal from us which also provide heating through the burning of refuse for a part of the city of Vienna, all decorated in typical colourful Hundertwasser style with colour blocks, unusual and varied windows and golden balls adorning the corners.

Our week in Vienna concluded with a visit to a 'Heuriger' at Kahlenberger Dorf, together with our neighbour Otto, who had already sussed out the secret places of Vienna. A Heuriger is like a pub but at the home of the vintner, who is only allowed to sell the wine which he or she makes there. We joined the group of around 40 local people, ordered our local wine 'gespritzt' with fizzy water (which is the national drink of Austria, or so we've been told) and enjoyed the talent of two musicians, a guitarist and an accordianist who entertained us with traditional Viennese songs and many jokes, all in the local dialect. It was a wonderful end to a great week.