Aaaah.... Vienna!

13 June 2008
(just back from) Vienna, Austria

Guten tag, y'all. Mum and Dad and I have just returned from four glorious days in Vienna, which we all agree is one of the best European cities we've ever visited, and probably the highlight of this trip. Dad even said something alone the lines of "If we go home now or drop dead, then we would still have made the best part of the trip".



Vienna often gets passed over by the European jet set for being too tame, too staidly pretty, and too much like an eccentric old grandmother or a huge pastel coloured Faberge egg. Austria has had some bad press in recent months, what with some of its male citizens locking up young girls in cellars for years on end, and I was looking forward to making a few cellar jokes while I was there, though my Austrian friend assured me that the locals probably wouldn't find it funny.

We were all blown away by Vienna's beauty, its scarily efficient public transport system, the pristine cleanness of its streets and buildings, the cool elegance of the locals, and its waves of tall blonde waiting staff with perfect teeth and even more perfect English who were happy to give us directions or bring us coffee and strudel.



After the grime and general white trashiness of much of London, spending a few days in Vienna was as different to me as spending time in New Zealand, or maybe Mars. Vienna is what Paris could be if it had less attitude (and dogshit), and what London could be if it wasn't filled with eight million people who think that sweatpants and trainers are couture.



We got in on a sunny Monday afternoon, and checked into our hotel - like most of Vienna's buildings, a turn of the century building with clean lines, gently ornate window and door carvings, and painted a rather bouyant shade of daffodil yellow. I'd managed to talk Mum and Dad up to a 3-star hotel that was centrally located, which paid off over the next few days.

While Mum and Dad were checking out the Viennese bedding and playing with the nifty automated screen on the window, I went down to reception and asked the obese bleach blonde hotel concierge if there was somewhere nice nearby to grab a bite to eat. She smiled through clenched teeth and said, "Ya, just go around zee corner and there are lots of nice places, cheap, wit zee fresh food".



It wasn't until much later that I realised she must've meant me turn an immediate right into a lovely little square with apartments painted olive green and a strip of cafes and bistros with outdoor wicker tables and sun umbrellas. Instead, I walked Mum and Dad straight down the street and turned right, past huge posters of drag queens with pink feather headdresses, and a sex store with Live Peep Show! ads. Hmmmm, I thought. This is going to be an interesting neighbourhood to ferry Mum and Dad around in.

As it happened, we found ourselves in the Naschemarket, a long strip of delis, restaurants and bars that were reasonably priced and seemed reasonably "local". We walked past tables of chain smoking Austrians and I chose a small tavern which advertised "Menus in English". Again, we struck gold, as the proprietor, a tough-looking woman in a tank top, served us up some tasty little platters of Austrian meats with mustard and brown bread, and went off hunting for eggs so she could whip up a curd strudel for Dad. (Curd strudel seems to be the lesser-known cousin of apple strudel, and is served warm with vanilla ice cream, and for my money is damn better). Washed down with a hearty half-pint of Reininghaus beer, was the perfect late afternoon snack, and made me lament, yet again, why England can't produce food this cheap and fresh and neatly portioned more easily.

The hotel was also around the corner from the Secession Building, an Art Nouveau landmark designed by the painter Gustav Klimt and friends in 1897 as an act of protest against the artistic establishment. (Only in Vienna could an act of protest result in building an art gallery, rather than just grafittiing a wall or smashing in a few windows). The gold leaf dome is affectionately known by the Viennese as "the golden cabbage", and it became our compass for the next few days. Here's Mum and Dad standing in front of it after dinner.



That evening, we met up with an old university friend of mine, Nicole, and her Austrian husband Billy, who have just moved to Vienna after five years living in Wellington. Billy and Mum took to each other immediately - Mum felt reassured by having a friendly six foot three chap around who spoke German, and Billy appreciated Mum's frequent compliments about Vienna's attractiveness and cleanliness.

After demolishing several calves worth of wiener schnitzel, we walked Mum and Dad back to the hotel, and Nicole Billy and I took a stroll through the (still very balmy) night to see Vienna lit up at night. Somehow, I had managed not to notice that Vienna was co-hosting the European football championships which had just started that week. True to form, the Viennese had built temporary outdoor stadiums with mammoth TVs to watch the game, and everywhere people were gathered in their linen suits, sitting demurely on wicker chairs outside restaurants watching the game and applauding politely. No lager loutness, and not a drop of litter anywhere. If this is the upside of a slightly too authoritarian society, I was ready to strap on my black leather boots and join the goose stepping parade.



Tuesday morning was the Mother of All Sightseeing Days. I took Mum and Dad for a stroll past the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna state Opera House), a gorgeous green roofed baroque building smothered with black marble statues and gold leaf. Famously unpopular when it was first built, the two architects of the building committed suicide and and had a heart attack within ten weeks of each other, and before the building was complete, which was a little grim. Public opinion improved, and after the Second World War, when it was partially destroyed by American bomber planes, the Viennese agreed to rebuild it in its original likeness. It's now one of the busiest opera houses in the world, producing an opera almost every night of the year.



From Opernstrasse, we took a stroll up the pedestrianised inner city, passing some beautiful stores (including one incredibly opulent glass and crystalware store, in which Mum and Dad walked around with the reverence of churchgoers, and Mum whispered "Isn't it embarrassing how far behind the rest of the world we've become?". I told Mum to wait until we got to Prague where the crystal was much cheaper, and manouvered them up to Stephansplatz, flanked by the 13th century Gothic St Stephans Cathedral and the unofficial town square of Vienna. We were dazzled by the easy sociability of the city, the orderliness of the people (though that may have had something to do with the numerous Polizei toting handguns), and the thoughtful dotting of coffee shops and restaurants every ten paces.



I managed to get Mum and Dad to sit down in one of them, which they did on the condition that we only drank mineral water. This being Vienna, it wasn't just mineral water, of course, but mineral water served in a beautiful green 33 cl bottle with a matching green glass tumbler. Rehydrated, Mum and Dad headed inside to use the bathroom, and were sucked into the impressive gorgeousness of the 19th century wooden interior and the deliciousness of the tortes and cakes selection. It was at this point, I think, that they became officially hooked on Vienna.



Further dazzlement was to come when we rounded the corner, past the designer Cartier and Dolce and Gabbana stores, and approached the Hofburg, the massive imperial palace of the Holy Roman Emperors, and later the summer residence of the Hapsburgs, who ruled the Austro-Hungarian empire from the early 1800s until the FIrst World War. As the pictures show, it is an unbelievably grand and impressive building, as much due to its clean lines and symmetry as for its ornate decorations and sheer bloody hugeness.



Eyes popping, we walked through the St Michaels entrance, through the Swiss Courtyard (now the home of the Vienna Boys Choir) and out into the Heldenplatz, around which sit the National Library, and two identical buildings which face each other symmetrically - the Academy of Fine Arts and the Natural History Museum. Dazzled and slightly overwhelmed, we made it across the road to the Museums Quarter for a spot of lunch in the shadow of a couple of modern art galleries, before heading home for an air-conditioned nap.

In the afternoon, we headed back to the Academy of Fine Arts, to view some of the Hapsburgs' booty of Flemish and European art. Mum and Dad love looking at paintings of peasants ploughing fields or peeling potatoes, so they were in heaven with a room full of Pieter Brueghel's paintings.



After a few moody landscape paintings, innumerable bleeding Jesuses, and a couple of great Rembrandts, we spent about half an hour hyperventilating in front of the gallery's most prized collection - "The Artist In His Studio" by Vermeer, made even more famous by the success of the movie Girl With A Pearl Earring. We kept an eye on the CCTV cameras and pinched a cheeky photo of Mum and Dad with the Vermeer:



In addition to the beauty of the building and the dazzling collection of art, it was also one of the most comfortable and considerately designed art galleries I've ever visited - air-conditioned, with each room containing comfy velvet upholstered sofas so you could sit, rest your legs and contemplate a painting quietly.

Then we had a restorative cup of tea and a mean slice of torte in the gallery's cafe, an extravagantly beautiful area which is lavishly decorated with black marble, gold leaf, stucco ornamentation and statues, and possibly one of the most glamorous tearooms ever made. Here's Dad enjoying some apple strudel.



Back we strolled in the (still blazing) afternoon heat for a pre-dinner shower and nap, and then we headed back to Helga the waitress in the Naschemarket for some more sausages. I was very keen for Mum and Dad to take in a little bit of Viennese nightlife, and to take an evening stroll and grab a late night coffee. We made it as far as the end of the road, and had a marvellous cup of coffee. Here's a once in a lifetime photo of Dad sitting outside at night and smiling:



On Wednesday morning, we decided to give Dad's legs a break, and brave the U-Bahn, Vienna's public transport system, which was fast, efficient, unbelievably clean, and delivered us to pretty much every public landmark in the city. We headed a little further north to the Rathaus, Vienna's magnificent Gothic town hall, and down to the Parliament and the Royal Courts of Justice.



We wanted to take a stroll through the Volkspark, the public gardens outside the Rathaus, but it was closed off for the football that night, and our options were to be body-searched by large female security guards with moustaches, or not go in. We decided to flag it, and headed back to Stephansplatz for some very tasty sandwiches and chicken salad coated in aspic (I know, I know, it sounds gross, but it was fantastic). On the way, Dad got overtaken by a very old but very persistent Austrian:



In the afternoon, we wanted to head to the Schloss Belvedere, another of the Hapsburg's imperial palaces just to the south of the city, which hosted an art gallery (including Klimt's "The Kiss"), huge gardens and, we were told, a fantastic view of the city from one of the balconies. We made it almost all the way there on the U-bahn, but as we were chugging down towards the Subhandorf, thunder struck and we got drenched in a rain shower. Unfortunatey, it was the one day where Dad had ventured out of the hotel without his raincoat and big comfy woolly jersey, and my £5 Marks and Spencer umbrella wasn't quite up to sheltering the three of us, but we made it back to the underground without looking too much like drenched otters, and decided to head back to the hotel.

Luckily, the U-bahn was so impressively ventilated that even Dad dried out within twenty minutes, and with a fresh burst of energy, we decided to go instead to the Albertina, a palace in the Hofburg complex which was once the home of Prince Albert of Saxony, Duke of Teschen. Albert was a ferocious collector of art, and started collecting what is now one of the world's largest collection of prints and modern art.



We started with a coffee in the unbelievably chic cafe, constructed with burgandy marble and packed with supermodel waitresses serving coffees almost as chic as they were.



The central part of the Albertina is the Duke's old residence and state apartments, lovingly restored to give you some sense of the opulence of their former owners.



Mum almost collapsed with excitement when she saw these Austrian blinds, though we did speculate for some time about how she could possibly reach to get them down and start cleaning them.



The star of the show was the Albertina itself, which had a fantastic rooftop terrace giving fantastic panoramic views of the city and surrounding buildings. After a couple of hours gallery mooching, we headed out onto the terrace in late afternoon, enjoyed the sun and the views, and went a little photo crazy before heading home for dinner.



After dinner in a nearby restaurant (our only experience of bad service while we were in Vienna, as our over-smiling waiter brought us bread we didn't ask for and then charged us for it), we headed back to Museum Cafe for coffee and cake, and then I took Mum and Dad back to the hotel and went out with Nicole and Billy for a quiet schnapps.

On Thursday, we only had the morning to look around, as we were flying out mid-afternoon, so I took Mum and Dad back into Stephansplatz by U-bahn for a quick look inside St Stephans Cathedral (a very beautiful Gothic church, rather overrun by tourists) and a mid-morning coffee. As we discovered, the football game that night was between Austria and Poland, and the streets were rapidly being overrun by hordes of Polish football fans, all wearing red and white scarves and football jerseys, staggering around drinking beer at 10 in the morning and hollering "Polska" loudly. In a place as genteel and orderly as central Vienna, this looked a little like the rampaging of the Barbarians, and the well-dressed Viennese were turning up their noses at this distasteful display.



To go inside somewhere and avoid the heat and the smell of the football fans, we went into the Imperial Apartments at the Hofburg. Thank God we did, as Mum and Dad loved this almost as much as all the strudel we'd been eating. We started with a tour of the Imperial silver, glassware and crockery, all meticulously presented in display cases with little labels in German and English explaining which glass went with what liquor and how cases of crockery and gold-leaf cutlery were boxed up and taken onto the battlefield so the Royal Family could eat on the road in style.

On and on it went, rooms and rooms of it, all immaculately preserved, and we wondered how the Hapsburgs (who lost their throne in 1918 after World War One and went into exile) managed to hang onto so much booty without it being pillaged by the peasants, or, later on, the Nazis. Maybe this is why the Austrians are so fond of cellars...



From there, we went upstairs into the Imperial Apartments proper, which have been lovingly preserved to show the state rooms of Emperor Franz Joseph I and his wife Elizabeth (known as "Sissi"), a rather impressive woman who became empress at 15, asked her husband to give her control over the education of her children and the right to live where she pleased, travelled extensively, went horse riding, hiking and fencing, learned Hungarian and Ancient Greek, wrote poetry, and had the first bathroom installed in the palace (still on display) and even designed her own travel apartment on the Imperial train. Sadly, her eldest child died, her son the crown prince killed himself, and she herself was stabbed to death by a Swiss anarchist in 1898, partially triggering the political unrest which lead to World War I and the collapse of the monarchy.

Well, at least her house looked fantastic. We weren't able to take any photographs inside the Apartments, but, like the ones in the Albertina, they were ornately furnished in greens and reds, with cream-coloured walls covered with gold leaf and massive chandeleirs in every room.



Unlike Versailles, which is completely over-the-top and smothered with gold and frou-frou accessories, these apartments were elegant and tasteful without being garish, and somehow gave a sense of their being working state rooms, rather than just dust-covered relics of a past that no longer exists. The final, brilliant piece of curation was to display a fully set banquet table in the final rooms, incorporating all of the amazing table ware, crystal glasses, gold punch bowls and assorted bling. We were dazzled.

To cool down after exposure to so much gold leaf, we had a little coffee in a cafe facing the Hofburg, and Mum and Dad congratulated themselves on their good fortune at being able to visit Vienna, and that we were leaving before the football invasion. Back we headed to the hotel, for a taxi back to the station with a driver who cheesily but rather sweetly played Strauss waltzes at top volume as we sped along the perfect, pothole free highway.