I like Vienna a lot. Who doesn’t like Vienna? We try to visit at least once a year, sometimes just for a day trip, which is entirely practical since the train only takes 3 hours now. I particularly enjoy visiting this time of year. The weather is a bit gloomy but nothing that a mug of steaming glühwein or punch in one of the many Christmas markets won’t disperse. I’m pretty sure that the Viennese didn’t always open their advent markets this early, but in a couple weeks they will be inundated by day-tripping shoppers and tourists from elsewhere in Austria and the surrounding countries, so this is the time when Vienna seems more Viennese.
In September Móni bought tickets for Tannhäuser at the Wiener Staatsoper (reviewed separately) as a birthday present, so we decided to make a long weekend of it – probably our last trip abroad for the year, or for forever if somebody doesn’t do something about the forint exchange rate – giving us three and a half days to wander around town.
History has twinned Budapest and Vienna to each other. In many ways the two cities are similar, even complementary cities, but where they diverge, in most but not all respects, Vienna comes off looking the better of two: transportation, public order, cleanliness, even the alpine tap water tastes better. This is nothing to get too upset about, since it’s in part owing to the vagaries of recent history (Austria got very, very lucky in the post WWII shakeout) and also in part because the Viennese have been so successful in building a livable a city over the centuries that, if the city where you live were repositioned 3 hours away from Vienna, chances are pretty good it would seem a bit shabby by comparison too. So we should take it as inspiration.
These will be pretty well-worn tourist routes we take this weekend, but they never get old. Friday we start with a walk around the old downtown, where Christmas decorations are going up on the pedestrianized Kartnerstrasse.
And then to the coffee shops for einspänners. Someone once told me that these are named after some kind of carriage because the coachman, the taxi driver of his day, would order one to warm up his hands with the glass, but if a fare arrived suddenly, he could stir in the thick whipped cream, cooling it down enough so he could drink it down quickly and be on his way.
Ending at the main Christmas market in front of the City Hall. Here you can get every kind of overpriced sweets, fruitcakes, Christmas knickknack, sausage, potato pancake, mulled wine or hot punch.
The smaller Christmas markets further away from the tourist areas, like this one close to the Schottentor are less touristy and less crowded, a bit cheaper, and have more specialized quality products – like this fine frau who serves up various cheering concoctions laced with apple schnapps (from day 4, that’s why it’s light again). You put a 2 euro deposit on the mug, and either give it back or forego the deposit and provide the mug with a loving home.
Day 2 takes us on a walk through the Prater, which is roughly analogous to Budapest’s Városliget: bigger and more wooded, but also with amenities for the entertainment of the masses. There’s something poignant about an amusement park largely in winter lock-down. It’s the pay-per-ride type of amusement park that seems to have fallen out of fashion everywhere else where you pay through the nose just to get in through the front gate. I like the Prater model better, since it brings the park into the urban fabric, so casual visitors can enjoy it on a summer evening’s stroll.
Then we skirted the center along the Donaukanall. A very pleasant channel of the Danube, but sunken into a giant graffiti-covered (mostly the more thoughtful kind of creative and brightly colored graffiti) culvert, where you don’t really experience it as part of the urban landscape. The main channel of the Danube might as well be in Czechoslovakia. This is a common criticism from supercilious Budapesters, Parisians and inhabitants of other elegantly riparian settlements when searching for something nasty to say about Vienna: Here you have this magnificent city and this fantastic waterway suitable for framing flowing through the area along numerous riverbeds. Do they hate each other? or How do you know when you’re crossing a bridge?
And then on to the world’s most delightful garbage incinerator. This is an environmentally friendly garbage incinerator, powering a generator and district heating and emitting (I think) only steam. If it was the polluting kind of garbage incinerator, Hundertwasser in his earth-father wisdom wouldn’t have decorated it for them and they would build it right upwind from the Hungarian border, not in the middle of the capital.
Another plus point for Vienna is its modern architecture at every level and its integration into the existing urban fabric. I (sort of) studied architectural history as an undergraduate, and find the vast majority of all architecture from 1960 or so to be objectionable on the grounds of its egotism, dullness, or failure to take its surroundings into account. For me, Vienna is an exception to this rule on a city-wide scale. And it’s not just the Hundertwassers and Gasometers: simple modern glass office buildings and public housing looks like they were built with great attention to the integrity of the whole, at least so it seems to an outsider. I’m sure I would join the fray and grow more critical of individual aspects if I actually lived there. Hmm, and I neglected my old friends the Gasometers on this trip.
Day 3 it’s up to twee little Grinzing, bucolic stamping grounds of Beethoven and Schubert. Vienna prides itself on being the only big city in the whole world where wine is grown commercially inside the city limits, for which Grinzing, where the vineyards meet the Vienna Woods, is the best known spot to sample them. First we hiked up through the woods to the Kahlenberg Heights, which is where Jan Sobieski started his charge in 1683 to lift the Turkish siege of the city, one of the major turning points in modern history. The Austrians thanked him by dismembering Poland 90 years later.
Then out into the vineyards close to Nussburg, still inside the city limits of Vienna.
And back down to Grinzing for some well-earned liver dumpling soup and an enormous shared kaiserschmarrn, the emperor’s crumbs, which was Franz Josef’s favorite dessert but I don’t believe is well known outside the old Empire. This house-specialty version is bolstered with meringue filling along with the traditional raisins and plum jam, so it’s a good thing we didn’t order an entrée. As usual after a long hike, I ordered a beer.
But now we have to hurry back for Tannhäuser!
No comments:
Post a Comment