Nicole schreibt...

Vienna is a place I have visited several times during the last two decades to see whatever new musicals they have put on stage there. But for some reason I could never get "into" the town the way I love London, New York or Paris. For me Vienna feels like travelling back in time - which is sometimes nice when you feel transplanted into the imperial era of Franz Joseph (late 19th century) when Vienna was at the height of its glory, but it can also feel dull when you don't get the sense of a modern vibrant town but something stuck in the 70's with mostly elderly tourists looking for wine bars and coffee houses.
But since this was the first time in ages when I did not want to see just one but actually two new musicals, I couldn't "Fly in one day, fly out next day" but stayed two nights and since a friend came along who had never been to Vienna before and wanted to do sightseeing, we did the typical tourist things (and then some) together.
And since Vienna had never made it onto my website before, I took my camera along to capture the town. Oh, and the fat lady on the right side is Vienna's greatest empress Maria Theresia, who held the huge Habsburg Empire together in 18th century, enlarged it, defended it and still managed to pop out 16 kids along the way. And it grates on me that this woman is all but ignored in Vienna these day (except for this moment) while you run into obnoxious Empress Elisabeth who spent most of her 60 years being a selfish, whiney woman constantly travelling to avoid the court at Vienna, on every corner of the city. But yes, she was pretty and everyone knows her story from the soppy "Sissi" movies of the 50's and the souvenir industry knows what sells.

The "Hofburg", the huge palace complex of the Habsburgs, is smack in the middle of the city and parts of it are still being used by the Austrian government these days. This is also where the famous Hofreitschule is located, the imperial riding school with its dancing Lipizzaner hoses. And the smell of horses is everywhere, not just because of the Lipizzaner stables, but also because of all those Fiaker, the old-fashioned horse-drawn carriages that abound in the city to take tourists for a ride. The place here to the left is simply the entrance to the Hofburg. Inside (see below) is the "old Hofburg" where the imperial family lived (and their apartments can now be visited, including a veritable Sisi museum - since I had visited the Hofburg on a previous trip, we skipped it now).

Above is the "Neue Hofburg" which is now the president's residence and a monument of Erzherzog Karl who beat Napoleon in Aspern (some good it did the Austrians). And to the right is the Kunsthistorische Museum, the museum of art, which has a twin on the opposite side of the square, a museum of natural history. The "Kunsthistorische" as it is affectionally called, is one of Europe's great art collection and having run around the Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery, the Uffizi, the Rijksmuseum and the Eremitage, I felt I needed to add this place to my experiences. And while it did have some lovely paintings and an impressive collection from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, it was the building itself that impressed me most. See below for a picture of one of the exhibition rooms and the cafe.

After two hours in the museum we needed a break and went to a nice little place called Cafe Sperl for reasons too convoluted to describe here. It was a typical stuffy little Viennese cafe and I loved it, not to mention the Viennese combination of Sacher Cake and Melange (coffee with milk). The Sacher cake cames from the Hotel & Cafe Sacher which sadly, is quite a tourist trap these days and better avoided (see the queue of badly dressed tourists wanting to get inside the posh establishment for their piece of Sacher cake).

My friend had asked to visit the Prater, which is mostly famous for the ferris wheel that was erected in late 19th century. Quite sensational back then, it now looks rather small and tired compared to funky new structures like the London Eye. A large fairground has developed around the ferris wheel, which was quite old-fashioned and amusing to me, reminding me of the early 80's when local fairgrounds where something we visited several times a year.

After so much buzzing about, it was time to chill and following a local's suggestion we took the metro out of Vienna to a nice little suburb called Grinzing. It was quite a slog from the metro terminus uphill but ultimately worth it as this is where some of Vienna's nicest "Heurige" are located, the typical wine bars with their twee outdoor seating areas under vine leaves with solid (and cheap) bar food like roasted chicken and the famous schnitzel and of course the yummy local wine. It was really nice to chill outside the city with a warm summer sun shining and a cool glass of wine in hand, before it was time to return for the second show in Vienna, the German-language version of "Spring Awakening" at the newly refurbished Ronacher.

The first show had been "Rudolf" at the Raimund Theatre and the less is said about that soppy mushy atrocity that doesn't do Austria's unhappy crown prince Rudolf any justice the better. The poor guy (only son of Sissi and Franz Joseph) was due to inherit a huge empire in a time (late 19th century) when the old monarchies of Europe were doomed already, but nobody except him seemed to realize that. Suffering from his helplessness, an overbearing strict father and a couple of STDs, Rudolf shot himself in Mayerling at the age of 33 under circumstances never cleared up. With him went a fan girl called Mary Vetsera with who he didn't have any earlier links (although he had plenty of affairs). The musical has turned Rudolf's sad story into a mushy fictional love story between the two of them and left me rather cold (as it does the Viennese obviously, because it's the worst-selling show there in a couple of years). Anyway, here are two pictures of the Viennese theaters:

Above are the views from the castle across the gardens towards the Gloriette, a pretty little building atop the hill... once you climbed there, you get a great view over the castle and Vienna (the actual city is to the right of the castle and picture). Schönbrunn used to be far outside the city and a small palace used for hunting parties, before Maria Theresia got it into her head to extend it into the "Austrian Versailles". And by now the city has crept up and around Schönbrunn (easily visible when you fly over it, as our plane did both on approaching Vienna and on departing).

Lastly we stopped at the Cafe Central, one of the nicest coffee houses in the center, where we had another Melange and piece of cake before it was time to go to the airport. And while I enjoyed the trip overall and doing all the typical Viennese things like visiting coffee houses and the Heurige, enjoyed the shows and meeting local friends, I'm afraid that Vienna will never hold a place in my heart the way vibrant modern cities like London or New York do. So honestly, I have no idea when I'll be back (which is something I could never say for London!).