Ah, Vienna – 2019

April 21 2019 – Stupid O’Clock at LHR

The Bat Cab arrived at 05.30, driven by Palminder, who has been driving cabs for forty two years. He wasn’t wearing a cowl with pointy ears, Bat Cabs is our local taxi company. There was very little traffic,  it only took twenty minutes to get to T3 Heathrow. Strong coffee was necessary as soon as possible from  Pret. I was surprised to see the Champagne and Oysters stand was open at six AM, to cater for passing oligarchs with the munchies I suppose.

The British Airways flight to Vienna was about two hours and the plane was half empty, that’s a good result! The OBB train from the airport takes about twenty minutes into Hauptbaunhof, a very modern station set in a district of Vienna full of new buildings. It costs about half as much as the CAT train to Wien Mitte station, which is more in the city centre. The Hauptbaunhof is close to the Belvedere.

After depositing our bags in locker at the station, it was a short walk to the Belvedere, which is two palaces (the Upper and Lower) set in beautiful gardens.  They were built for Prince Eugene who had helpfully (for the Austrians) won some battles during the War of Spanish Succession. That was a big squabble between France, Spain, Austria and Britain that began when then last of the in-bred Spanish Hapsburgs (Charles II) died.

The Upper Belvedere was for showing off his wealth and the Lower was for actually living in. Personally I can cleverly combine both these functions in one semi-detached house.

The Upper is an art gallery, where Gustav Klimt’s “Kiss” is displayed. The museum shop has the Kiss on posters, mugs, purses, pencil cases and key rings, so I didn’t feel the need to see the actual painting. There were huge queues to get in, and since  were knackered from getting up at five, we decided to laze around in the lovely formal gardens and the nearby Botanic gardens. 

The Belvedere gardens are huge, and lovely and free, whereas you have to pay to get into all of the galleries and museums in Vienna.

At the other end of the park and down a hill is the Lower Belvedere. between them is a beautiful cascade of waterfalls.

On our return to the station we got some food supplies from Spar at the railway station, and collected our bags from the locker where we had deposited them. I decided to (foolishly) walk to our AirBnB in Lerchenfelder Strasse to see a bit more Vienna, rather than (sensibly) get the 13a bus as suggested by our host.

Unfortunately the GPS on my phone kept dropping out, so we took a bit of a diversion by mistake, quite a big loop. Julie was not happy after dragging her suitcase for an hour.

Eventually we found the flat at 70 -72 Lurchenfelder Strasse and were greeted by a Frau who didn’t speak English, but we managed to communicate. The small flat was quite comfortable and had everything we need. Being a clever dicky, I fixed up my Chromecast device to the huge Samsung TV so we could watch Netflix via my phone. We watched Afterlife with Ricky Gervais, and it was very emotional and funny.

April 22 2019 – Exploring the Old Town

After breakfast we walked down Lerchenfelder Strasse towards the city centre. It doesn’t take long to get to the Ringstrasse and it’s grand Imperial buildings. This ring road replaced the walls of the city, which were demolished by the Emperor Franz Joseph in the middle of the nineteenth century. He didn’t do any of the work personally, since he was busy posing for portraits, or eating twelve course meals. Franz Joseph was Emperor of Austria and is considerable empire for sixty eight years, even longer than our beloved QEII

Franz Joseph had a big building splurge, and wanted to reflect the glory of the Austro – Hungarian Empire in massive stone edifices.They are in Neo Classical or Gothic style, sometimes a blend of both. They replaced the medieval fortifications that once surrounded the city and protected Vienna from attempted Turkish invasions.

It was Easter Monday, so the museums and galleries were all closed, but we could sit on benches in the park to enjoy them from the outside.

Just inside the old city is the Hofburg, an enormous palace and home to the ruling Hapsburg kings and emperors from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. Every monarch added more to the palace right up to the end of the empire in 1918.

You can walk into some of the inner courtyards and through to a ticket shop to get a tour of the interior. The Hofburg tour consists of three parts, the Royal Silver collection, the Sisi Museum and the Royal Apartments.

The Silver collection is the Hapsburg cutlery and crockery spread over numerous rooms. If you want to have dinner for a hundred people, you are going to need lots of knives and forks. Every course had its own settings, and there were between nine and thirteen courses at a big dinner. They ate off silver, gilt (gold-plated silver) or porcelain; there was literally tons of the stuff. My favourite crockery was the English Minton porcelain, which was more colourfully decorated than the plain silver and gold plates and is English!

I’ve got no photos of this because you aren’t allowed to take photos. Apparently they can steal the souls of the knives and forks.

The Sisi museum was dedicated to the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph, who was Empress from 1854 when she married EFJ (aged sixteen) until her death in 1898. Sisi was the Princess Diana of her day, beautiful but tragic. She was assassinated by an Italian anarchist who stabbed her in the chest with a file in Geneva in 1898. She was athletic and obsessed by her own beauty, dieting to keep her twenty one inch waist. She didn’t enjoy court life much, and spent a lot of time at her place in Corfu. Her fame was only established after her death, and and was cemented by a series of fanciful films about her in the fifties starring Romy Schneider. The museum is full of portraits, dresses and even her personal toilet! It was much more interesting than the spoons and plates that preceded it.

The Royal Apartments are stuffed with portraits, baroque furniture, tapestries and all the usual furnishings of Royal palaces. I have visited numerous palaces in England, Scotland, France, and Italy, and they all into a mess of gold, tapestries and dull portraits in my head. I did like the huge ceramic stoves in the corners of the rooms that were fuelled from the back by servants in hidden corridors.

Nearby is St Stephens Cathedral, which is the main church in the city centre. It’s an old Gothic building, and is rather gloomy and dark inside. If it was painted white and fitted with new IKEA furniture it would be much more attractive. I compare all cathedrals to Lincoln, and sorry Vienna, yours doesn’t come close. This may lose me some of my fans in Vienna (if I have any).

Culture is generally a good thing, but I can only take so much of it before I start haze over. It was Beer O’ Clock, so we found a cafe and had a Budewieser (the proper stuff, not that American wee).

April 23

April 23 2019 – Hidden Vienna Tour

The weather on Tuesday was a bit, well, shitty. We went to the Natural History museum but it is closed on Tuesday. The Kunsthistoriche museum opposite had huge queue, so we didn’t go in there either. I have very little patience for queues, so I don’t do to Theme Parks either.

We wandered round shops the shops in central Vienna, and then over to the Naschmarkt, a lovely semi-covered market of all sort of good stuff to eat. It’s like Borough Market in London, and well worth a visit. I can recommend Dr Falafel as a place to eat, have the Falafel Wrap.

Outside the Ubahn station we met Hannes for the Hidden Vienna tour that Julie booked on AirBnB. Hannes was an excellent guide, a local man who had to study for two years to get his guide qualification.

He us took us on a three hour tour of parts of Vienna we would never have found otherwise. These are some highlights

The 4th best staircase in the world as voted by a panel of architects, probably on a wet Sunday afternoon. Some people live dull lives. It was actually a pretty staircase. For reference purposes, the Spanish Steps in Rome was top of the list.

The Museum Quarter with its cool plastic benches. There are a cluster of museums and galleries housed in the former Imperial Stables.

Two universities, one in old buildings and another in very modern buildings (the Wirtschaftsuniversität) The old Vienna University is very Victoric Gothic, the new one has a bonkers building designed by Zaha Hadid. It has no ninety degree angles makes the users feel sea sick.

The Rathaus (Town Hall), a neo-gothic building like London’s Royal Courts of Justice

The Prater park and funfair, with its famous Ferris wheel as seen in the 1949 film The Third Man with Orson Wells, Trevor Howard and Joseph Cotton. Everyone born in the fifties knows the famous theme tune played on a zither. It is the only tune anyone knows played on a zither. Don’t confuse it with the “Never on a Sunday” theme they used to played in every Greek restaurant, that was a bouzouki.

Did you know that London had its own Great Wheel which was built at Earls Court in 1895, but was demolished in 1906.

It was an excellent tour, even though the weather was cold and wet. I did see a few interesting street art and signs which made me smile.

April 23 2019 – Schonbrunn Palace

On Wednesday the sun came out again and we took the Ubahn (underground train) and tram to Shonbrunn . This was the summer palace for the ruling Hapsburg family until 1918 when they had lost the war and the Republic of Austria began. The transport system in Vienna is operated on trust, there are no barriers, but if you get caught without a validated ticket, the fines are high. We bought our tickets in the Ubahn station, the machines have an English language option.

We purchased the “Imperial Tour” of state apartments, which was sixteen Euros for twenty rooms. For another four Euros we could have had forty rooms, but I have a limited attention span. The tour takes you from room to room, and none of them are homely. No wonder Sisi avoided the place and hid away in Corfu.

The Great Gallery is spectacular, a huge ball room decorated in white and gold and lined with mirrors. I’m sure they had many a good knees up in there. Actually Mozart did play there when he was six, and when he was finished he jumped onto the Empress Maria Theresa’s lap and gave her a kiss.

Schonbrunn gardens has huge parterres, which are formal gardens in geometric patterns divided by hedges. There are plenty of wooded walks, ponds and bowers where courtiers could have dalliances in private.

The palace faces up a hill which is topped by a mock Greek temple called the Gloriette and the Neptune fountain. At the top of the hill there are good views of Vienna, although you can’t see the city centre.

The UBahn took us back to the city centre and we had a beer in the Nashsmarkt, this time in the sunshine. Close by is the Karlskirche (Charles Church) built in gratitude when Vienna had had a plague outbreak. It’s patron Saint Charles, was revered as a healer.

It is a very beautiful Baroque church, with twin pillars outside which look like Trajan’s Column in Rome. Inside the church was a huge silvered globe, like a giant Christmas bauble.

So finally..

This was a short visit to Vienna on a budget, so we didn’t buy one of the Vienna Pass cards, which cost 59 euros for one day and 89 euros for two days. If you want to spend all of your time shuffling around museums and galleries they might be worth while, but then you don’t get the pleasure of the gardens and sitting around in bars drinking beer. You can see where my loyalties lie, not so much of a Culture Vulture as a Culture Pigeon.

You may be wondering why I called this blog Ah Vienna. The British readers will know that it come from the Ultravox pop song from 1981. Ultravox were a popular synth band lead by Midge Ure. He is still slogging around the summer pop festival circuit milking his hit almost forty years later