Envious of the Viennese

Monday, July 31, 2006

Some cities you just connect with. Vienna was such a city for me. Maybe because I started my time here over cappuccino with new friends, but I think it has more to do with this city. Vienna is a beautiful, well-maintained “European” city. It has all the European beauty and elegance we expect from European cities like Paris and London - the ornate architecture, impressive churches and cathedrals, parks filled with statues and monuments yet it has something other great European cities lack – tranquility. There is an ease in the streets of Vienna more akin to a small country town than a large city. When you step off the metro in most large cities, you are swept into a rushing frenetic pace, bordering on insanity in cities like Rome. Stations are overflowing, people running to catch the metro, knocking others over, despite the fact there is another metro just three minutes behind. In Vienna they stroll to the metro – if there is one sitting there, they walk more slowly. It is just as well to catch the next one as race to catch the one there. The tranquility is everywhere – in the restaurants, the plazas, even the Museums Quartier filled on a Saturday night with young people has a quiet peaceful hum about it.

You could see the pervasiveness of easy energy in the families traveling together. Again and again I saw families walking through the streets or in the parks, laughing, joking, telling stories – completely engaged with one another. Teenage daughters held their mothers’ hands, young boys practically skipping backwards filled with the excitement of some story they were recounting to their parents, brothers and sisters teased and tickled each other, laughing in the warm summer sun. Typically when I see a family vacationing in Europe, especially American families, the son is wandering off on his own at least ten feet away from the family, the teenage daughter humphing and rolling her eyes about something, and the parents are arguing about whether the street to the hotel is across the piazza or to the right of the Cathedral. Another couchsurfer actually asked me if I had noticed how happy the families were here so I know this wasn’t my dreamed up idealism.

There is undoubtedly plenty to do and see – dozens of museums; plenty of classical music, opera, and theatre; shopping that rivals the major cities with all The Names – Loro Piana, Chanel, Hermes; wading parks; horse drawn carriages; architecture and monuments. It is all well organized with efficient transit systems, navigable streets, and plenty of pedestrian areas. The costs were inordinately reasonable, contrary to what I had heard before about Vienna (and especially in contrast to Switzerland). You could get a full breakfast – omelet, toast, coffee, and orange juice for 4.95 and a decent dinner for less than eight euro. Museums are average priced (though unfortunately for me student discounts are only for those 27 and younger) and almost all performances offer standing tickets for ten euro. Even a horse and carriage can be had for forty – cheap in comparison to many places. The streets are safe. Women can and do walk alone at night through all parts of the city. There are plenty of places to hang out – man made sand beaches along the side of the river, piazzas and parks, and a vibrant youth culture with a bent for dance music. Streets are clean, buildings freshly painted, shops keep liberal hours. Many restaurants offer free internet service, encouraging people to linger over their coffee or meal.

All these things work to make Vienna an enjoyable, peaceful, relaxing yet entertaining city, but I would argue what contributes the most is the gemütlich.. This is a word used especially to describe Austrian people and supposedly is not directly translatable My interpretation of it would be an easy-going, slow paced, down to earth sort of people but with more “city culture” than the simple uneducated country folk who in America are about the only slow-paced folk around. This gemütlich , it is claimed, is why Austrians have such wonderful coffeehouses – famed places where you can relax with a complimentary newspaper, chat with your friends, or enjoy a good book. Sound familiar? Now I know the inspiration for Starbucks came from Italian cafes, however I would say in practice they have come more to resemble Austrian cafes, filled with entrepreneurs on their own schedules, students with more time on their hands than they can begin to understand. I loved sitting at Starbucks from dawn to midday on a Saturday or Sunday just watching the easy tide of people as they rolled in and rolled out again. Vienna is like this everywhere.

I may just have to live here for awhile next spring. I have to come back anyway - I promised my Aunt Kay I would see the Lippanzer horses. Little did I know the pampered ponies summer in the country side. Apparently they are there with the opera singers and the boys choir for during July and August there is no Vienna Boys Choir, no Opera House performances, and no horsies. Worth noting if you ever plan to visit Vienna. For me Vienna was more a time to socialize in the easy gemütlich way.  Michi met me Saturday morning for breakfast and a stroll through the quite impressive weeklong farmers market and the Saturday flea market.  We met Eva later at Grinzing where Michi co-shares a small garden.  We sat at a table drinking coffee, eating little cakes from the market, and talking about boys!  The next day Eva and I took in an Operetta – a specialty of Vienna, basically a musical but with Opera – then had something to eat sitting in the lounging blocks of the Museums Quartier. Another day she fixed lunch for me at her place and we went together to the Kunst Haus Wein for the Giger exhibition. I figured as long as I had done the Giger Bar, I had to do his exhibition as well. There was also an exhibition for Friedensreich Hundertwasser whom I had never heard of but who, it turns out, was a bit like Gaudi with his taste for the fanciful and unusual in architecture and his willingness to stretch the boundaries of man’s common conceptions in art and architecture. His paintings were too 2^nd grade watercolor-like for me at first, but his style had grown on me by the end of the second floor. Giger was the opposite, I was mesmerized by his early work – he is truly a marvelously gifted artist – but put off by the degeneration into the mechanistic, macabre, and masochistic work of his later years.

Fortune took me across Serena’s path one last time before she headed east to Budapest with Gregoire. I had tried to call her a couple times, not knowing she had broken her phone, and was terribly bummed when I missed them at the couchsurfing picnic in Vienna. I was just leaving the Belvedere, having savored Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” and gained a new appreciation for “Judith” and some of his other works after having learned something of the inspiration behind them. I glanced up as I was headed to return my audio guide and there she was – hair pulled tight in a bun, bug eye sunglasses that only a woman as lovely as she could make look good, a one shoulder black top and bohemian black and gold skirt that was leaving a trail of gold sequins across Vienna. I was so happy to see her one last time and quickly abandoned my plan for Schonbrum Palace in favor of spending the afternoon walking with her and Sonya, another couchsurfer, through the streets of Vienna pausing at every fountain to dip our toes in and chat in the afternoon sunlight. The couchsurfers had arranged to meet at the Strand Bar – a brilliant Vienna mastermind. There alongside the Danube someone created a sandy beach – lounge chairs, tiki huts, sand as thick as any good beach, music, and an array of little bars where you could order anything from a gin and tonic to a mojito. I felt a bit ou of place, but it was still pleasant sitting in the afternoon sun, sipping a mojito and watching the young kids. I embarrassed myself in one of those for real did-I-say-that-out-loud moments when a young good-looking bartender type told me he was from Colorado. I responded “I lived in Colorado for awhile” then under my breath, I thought, “before you were born!” He heard me and called me on it then looked at me ever so 20-something and said “age is just a number, darlin’” Yeah, tell me that when your number is 40! I said - this time really to myself.

I loved everything about Vienna – the breeze blowing through Michi’s wonderful top floor apartment every morning when I woke up, the easy pace, the elegant architecture, the social acceptance of solitary sorts who sat at restaurants, in cafes, or on piazzas reading or typing or just watching the world, the history, and the art, but mostly the wonderful people I met in my short time here. I look forward to spending some real time getting to know this city and its people one of these days.

Comments

[Mikky Mouth]

hey sherry!

what a site!!

gosh i will have a lot to read the upcoming weeks - thank ya!

it was awesome to meet ya in london - though way to less time chat!

but hopefully our path´s will cross again somehow!

here is the promised link to our new cartoon music video:
http://www.harryflosser.com/wally/

i am looking also forward that you could eventually provide me with some booking contacts for the northern america area.

happiest days

Irie

mikky