One of the fun things about this trip is that we did not feel the need to "see everything," moreso than our usual trips, partly because we had been to most of the places in the past but also because it was supposed to be a vacation. I learned long ago that you can't appreciate a place if you're always running around looking at an itinerary and maintaining a schedule. The entire point of going to Vienna was to see the opera; everything else was a bonus.
So we hung out. We walked around. We slept a bit later. We strolled through a park. We listened to a soprano practicing in a church. We talked to people. We ate a long lunch.
Then we walked towards the river, the majestic Danube, immortalized by song and art and imagination.
But something wasn't right.
When we reached the water, we saw a graffiti covered basin with a waterway too narrow to be a major transportation route. I was, to put it mildly, confused. I think Chris was, too, because neither of us made a comment.
My thought process was this: Well, the Danube starts in the German Black Forest, not THAT far from here; perhaps it is still narrow in Vienna and I just don't remember. The last time I saw the Danube was in Budapest a decade ago, and it was a hell of a lot wider, with barges and boat traffic and waves and all of that stuff that makes a river important. Maybe this was just a narrow part and it got wider a bit further down.
There was a river cruise station. The next boat would leave in ten minutes. Neither of us asked the other if we wanted to board; I didn't even ask how much the tickets cost when I bought them. We were going on a Danube river cruise.
I'm not sure how long it took us to realize we weren't on the Danube River, that we were, in fact, on the Danube Canal, but it did not take too long. What we didn't understand, however, was that when we would reach the actual river, we would never see it.
We took a "city tour" on a boat called the Blue Danube over mud colored water, past graffiti covered walls and cafe going Viennese, through ugly concrete sprawl and next to busy roads, descending from the joy of discovery to the disappointment of deception. But there was still the hope things would be better when we reached the river!
I switched to the long lens to try to capture interesting sites. I think these pictures tell an adequate story about the boat trip:
We drank beers with a German couple, who ended up being the best part of the tour, because when we got to the river, we turned around. No Danube for us. The highlight of this tour was literally a trash incinerator building. You can't make this stuff up.
It was designed by the Austrian-New Zealand artist and architect Friedensreich Hundretwasser.
The couple were in Vienna in part because they were fans of Hundretwasser. I had never heard of him, but when I later read about him, I found him rather interesting. He was born in 1928 in Vienna to a Jewish mother, making him also Jewish. You do the math.
His father was a Catholic but died shortly after he was born, leaving his Jewish mother to raise him under the pretense of Christianity. He was baptized in 1935 (two years after Hitler came to power), and his mother put him in the Hitler Youth after the Anschluss to further perpetuate their Christian ruse. It probably saved their lives.
Imagine your childhood being like that, a lie, a necessity, lest you be murdered for just being born, like the synagogue goers were in Pittsburgh today. Please, take a minute to think about that. We don't want to go back to that. We can't go back to that. Yet the parallels are frightening. (Don't forget, Hitler came to power through democratic means and nationalist propaganda.)
In a fitful act of irony or karma or fate, Hundretwasser was admitted to the Vienna Academy of Art, the same institution that had rejected Hitler 40 years earlier. He changed his name a bunch of times from Friedrich, finally settling on Friedensreich, which means "peaceful realm." There is nothing ironic about that.
He quit school. He hated modernism. He was influenced by Klimt. He watched the Soviets withdraw from Austria. He traveled extensively. He called straight lines "godless" and "the tool of the devil." He became a hippy and an environmentalist.
He suffered a heart attack aboard a ship traveling from New Zealand to Europe in 2000. He died in international waters, as stateless in death as he was in life.
Had I known any of this, I would have loved to chat more about him with the German couple. Instead, we talked about our trips, what we had seen so far, and how bad the boat tour was. LOL. It was fun to talk to them, regardless of how much concrete surrounded us.
We had to walk back to the hotel to get ready for the The Barber of Seville. Don't let Chris tell you the opera was bad. He was expecting the ghosts of Pavarotti and Maria Callais, I think, because we had traveled all the way to Vienna to see it. None of the singers blew you away, but they weren't bad. The more he tells you the story, the more he makes it seem like Donald Trump and Kanye West were performing the opera.
The opera house is an expected beauty. It's Vienna, city of music, after all. Anything less than beautiful would not be accepted in Viennese society. The opera house is so important that the government ordered it rebuilt before the war was over after it had been devastated by allied bombs.
Twenty percent of the city had been destroyed through 52 allied bombings during World War II. I was curious about how it looked and found this photo of the opera house and it nearly made me cry. Some idiot pilot was supposed to bomb another building but he hit the opera house instead.
(Some facts about the opera house.)
I remembered it from 20 years ago, but as a student I neither had nor could afford opera tickets. We sat way up this time, my first opera in a European opera house, much steeper than the Kennedy Center opera house. When Wien Stadtoper was opened in 1869, opera was in its prime, and they designed the houses upward so those who wanted to be seen could, in fact, be seen.
Even if the production were bland, it was still a wonderful experience, and another fabulous day. (Side note: we just saw La Traviatta in DC and it was fantastic, putting an exclamation point on the Bland! of the Barber cast. The contrast was pretty severe.)
So we hung out. We walked around. We slept a bit later. We strolled through a park. We listened to a soprano practicing in a church. We talked to people. We ate a long lunch.
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| No rush, no schedules |
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| Johann Strauss |
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| The city park |
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| I wonder what he/she tasted like |
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| museum |
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| I love these types of chimneys |
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| Thanks to Andreas, I know what this is |
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| When you don't have a dome, paint one! |
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| Catholic propaganda from time of the Protestant schism. The cow was thought at the time to be a wise creature (who knows why) and represented Catholicism, while the wolf represented Protestantism. We listened in on a walking tour as we were passing by. |
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| Supposedly the best schnitzel in Vienna, but judging from the line of tourists waiting to get in, it's probably a Disneyfied restaurant at this point. |
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| Lovely building stuffed between boring straight lines. |
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| A window display |
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| scary |
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| In case you couldn't tell, I love doorways, rooftops, and windows |
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| Yellow |
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| I absolutely love this apartment building and took several photos of it. |
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| Hell yes, E.U. |
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| The reason I planted so many geraniums in my garden was the flower boxes of Europe |
Then we walked towards the river, the majestic Danube, immortalized by song and art and imagination.
But something wasn't right.
When we reached the water, we saw a graffiti covered basin with a waterway too narrow to be a major transportation route. I was, to put it mildly, confused. I think Chris was, too, because neither of us made a comment.
My thought process was this: Well, the Danube starts in the German Black Forest, not THAT far from here; perhaps it is still narrow in Vienna and I just don't remember. The last time I saw the Danube was in Budapest a decade ago, and it was a hell of a lot wider, with barges and boat traffic and waves and all of that stuff that makes a river important. Maybe this was just a narrow part and it got wider a bit further down.
There was a river cruise station. The next boat would leave in ten minutes. Neither of us asked the other if we wanted to board; I didn't even ask how much the tickets cost when I bought them. We were going on a Danube river cruise.
I'm not sure how long it took us to realize we weren't on the Danube River, that we were, in fact, on the Danube Canal, but it did not take too long. What we didn't understand, however, was that when we would reach the actual river, we would never see it.
We took a "city tour" on a boat called the Blue Danube over mud colored water, past graffiti covered walls and cafe going Viennese, through ugly concrete sprawl and next to busy roads, descending from the joy of discovery to the disappointment of deception. But there was still the hope things would be better when we reached the river!
I switched to the long lens to try to capture interesting sites. I think these pictures tell an adequate story about the boat trip:
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| a community garden |
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| At least the beverages were nice |
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| An actual palace that was something to see |
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| At this point I thought we must be close to the river. It was a nice three or four minute stretch of the canal. |
We drank beers with a German couple, who ended up being the best part of the tour, because when we got to the river, we turned around. No Danube for us. The highlight of this tour was literally a trash incinerator building. You can't make this stuff up.
It was designed by the Austrian-New Zealand artist and architect Friedensreich Hundretwasser.
The couple were in Vienna in part because they were fans of Hundretwasser. I had never heard of him, but when I later read about him, I found him rather interesting. He was born in 1928 in Vienna to a Jewish mother, making him also Jewish. You do the math.
His father was a Catholic but died shortly after he was born, leaving his Jewish mother to raise him under the pretense of Christianity. He was baptized in 1935 (two years after Hitler came to power), and his mother put him in the Hitler Youth after the Anschluss to further perpetuate their Christian ruse. It probably saved their lives.
Imagine your childhood being like that, a lie, a necessity, lest you be murdered for just being born, like the synagogue goers were in Pittsburgh today. Please, take a minute to think about that. We don't want to go back to that. We can't go back to that. Yet the parallels are frightening. (Don't forget, Hitler came to power through democratic means and nationalist propaganda.)
In a fitful act of irony or karma or fate, Hundretwasser was admitted to the Vienna Academy of Art, the same institution that had rejected Hitler 40 years earlier. He changed his name a bunch of times from Friedrich, finally settling on Friedensreich, which means "peaceful realm." There is nothing ironic about that.
He quit school. He hated modernism. He was influenced by Klimt. He watched the Soviets withdraw from Austria. He traveled extensively. He called straight lines "godless" and "the tool of the devil." He became a hippy and an environmentalist.
He suffered a heart attack aboard a ship traveling from New Zealand to Europe in 2000. He died in international waters, as stateless in death as he was in life.
Had I known any of this, I would have loved to chat more about him with the German couple. Instead, we talked about our trips, what we had seen so far, and how bad the boat tour was. LOL. It was fun to talk to them, regardless of how much concrete surrounded us.
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| A bridge I liked |
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| Another bridge I liked |
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| When life gives you boxes, make flowers! |
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| And here it is, the entrance to the Danube River, which we never went through. |
We had to walk back to the hotel to get ready for the The Barber of Seville. Don't let Chris tell you the opera was bad. He was expecting the ghosts of Pavarotti and Maria Callais, I think, because we had traveled all the way to Vienna to see it. None of the singers blew you away, but they weren't bad. The more he tells you the story, the more he makes it seem like Donald Trump and Kanye West were performing the opera.
Twenty percent of the city had been destroyed through 52 allied bombings during World War II. I was curious about how it looked and found this photo of the opera house and it nearly made me cry. Some idiot pilot was supposed to bomb another building but he hit the opera house instead.
(Some facts about the opera house.)
I remembered it from 20 years ago, but as a student I neither had nor could afford opera tickets. We sat way up this time, my first opera in a European opera house, much steeper than the Kennedy Center opera house. When Wien Stadtoper was opened in 1869, opera was in its prime, and they designed the houses upward so those who wanted to be seen could, in fact, be seen.
 |
| The screens are for translation |
Even if the production were bland, it was still a wonderful experience, and another fabulous day. (Side note: we just saw La Traviatta in DC and it was fantastic, putting an exclamation point on the Bland! of the Barber cast. The contrast was pretty severe.)
