Vienna. Austria. I visited here for 13 days or so. I was fortunate to have gracious hosts that sheltered me from the elements and each morning provided me the means by which to provide myself with a decent dose of coffee. Ritual is important, and each morning I had mine.
These photos are of my last day in Vienna. Each morning I sought to find my place in that city. Each morning started with a glance out this window. The view afforded little insight into the city I was exploring and yet with this 12th, or hundredth, vignette there seemed promises worth believing. The rat's maze wasn't as oppressive as it could have been. The lack of view was inspirational in its own way. I spent more time looking out this window than I care to admit. It was never daunting. It was never oppressive. It was the beginning of each day. I already miss the way it would capitalize my daily sentences.
It's a little thing, but walking up and down these stairs each day was a soulful experience. Even the hallways had a weight to them that warmed my soul. I began to love the sound the loose tile on the one landing would rattle under foot. I loved the soft light filtering through the mottled glass facing the courtyard.
Johann coaxed together a delightful bicycle for me, or whoever, but effective for me in that it truncated the distance between where I was and where I might be with exceptional efficiency. The broken shifters were a decoy for this bike with a single gear which might have preserved its ownership in light of a bike lock that was hardy better than tying a string around the bicycle and some random immovable object. I've not had much opportunity to explore foreign lands with the aid of bicycle. I might not want to do it ever again without such.
Rat's maze. I enjoyed chasing the cheese.
There are a lot of one way streets in Vienna but more often than not as the sign said, "you can't go down this street unless you're on a bicycle then, cool, come on down." Vienna did its best to make me feel special.
And cameras. How could one not take a photograph with a film camera of a delightful collection of film cameras? But more so what this photograph represents is the number of tiny outlets on side streets specializing in some commodity or other. In this case it was old cameras. In another it's old acrylic lamps. Yet another sells fur coats.
One might not notice the cobbles from within the confines of an automobile but from atop a bicycle these roads are quite memorable.
Civilized.
...and always contextual. Even without an understanding of the history of Vienna you always felt like you were a part of something with bigger and with meaning.
The scale of the city is hard to define. It seamlessly transitions from monumental to intimate. You can turn the corner of a narrow passage to find something massive, or an offshoot of huge you can find something quite modest and personal.
There is a weight of war that to a North American seems foreign. Our text books do their best to describe a context that is in every way foreign to us. This monument was erected by the Russians to celebrate the emancipation of Vienna from the Nazi Germans. Currently Vienna is neither a descendant of the Nazi ideals nor an icon of communist vindication. One might have expected such a monument to be redefined (destroyed) and yet it persists.
It's easy to forgive such excessive indulgences when they currently house extensive collections of Klimt paintings.
And when Klimt can collaborate with Joseph Olbrich to create a context for an alternative point of view on what art means at a particular time you have to be happy about the Seccession gallery. Klimt also collaborated with Joseph Hoffman. What an amazing time.
Monuments. It's pretty much impossible to understand the significance of each one. It crushed me to consider the time and energy required to make all the statues and fountains and features found around each corner and in each courtyard. Christ, just the ornament around most doorways blew me away and these are merely access points to the homes of peasants, err, citizens.
They all have a weightiness to them and they exist as monumental foregrounds to monumental backgrounds.
A weightiness that is somehow undermined by its own popularity, or undermined by the simple fact that all you have to do is turn your head to find another collectible vignette, this statue across the road from the last one.
It blew me away when it was described to me that Hitler gave a speech from the top of that arched structure after Germany took over Austria some billion years ago, or similar. The weight of the wars runs through Europe in a way that is unparalleled in North America. This isn't to belittle the sacrifices made by Canadians in those wars but the blood was spilled on their ground, not ours.
Austria does a good job of hiding its fascist past but these eagles betray that effort.
Dumb little thing, pizza with tuna and onions on it. Amazing. Never would have thought it would be that good.
It never ends.
Street lights for bicycles. Civilized. I think the word "civilized" was what I used to describe most things in Austria from the bike paths to the cost of wine and the support for the arts. Civilized.
Johann explains to me that when you see a plain facade next to an ornate one it's most likely that the building with the plain facade was destroyed during the war and rebuilt without its original ornament. It's hard to not think about the conflict that has quite literally been walled up.
Balance.
There wasn't anything really special about the canal surrounding the center of Vienna in the winter. I imagine it's more vibrant in the summer. Apparently they truck in sand and serve martinis by the "water" when it's warmer out. In the winter it's still populated by joggers and cyclists. I don't know that it's a more efficient way to get anywhere by bike but it's a good way to escape traffic and stoplights while getting some exercise. For me it served as an indicator that I had gone too far in some direction. Vienna is small. It surprised me more than once when I got my map out to check my progress towards some destination or other and I found I had blown right past it. The canal saved me more than once from ending up in the countryside. Well, not really, but it reduced the amount of backtracking necessary more than once.
We ended up in this converted ticket kiosk one night drinking beers and listening to music. Love it.
This was once the largest ferris wheel in the world.
Flak towers.
Built in pairs, one for anti aircraft canons, one for a retracting radar dish. They could house up to 10,000 people during an air raid and served as arms depots and stations for troops. The walls are 3 meters thick and made of concrete. They were too big to knock down so they stand as daily reminders of a time when Hitler strove to take over the world.
Dinner. We ate well. Very well. And even though we went out a few times and found some pretty stellar cuisine, it was the meals we cooked at home that stood out.
Food and wine in excess. Not a drop left undrunk. Not a morsel left uneaten. It was tempting to lick the plates.
It was an incredible period at the end of a perfect sentence of a day.
