Friday  30 November 2007

We take tram and U-bahn to Stephansplatz and walk down Graben and Kohlmarkt to Café Demel. They are still closed, much to our regret. We kill time by retracing our steps to Meinl am Graben. This is delicatessen department store, reminding of Harrod's food department in London. They have the most exquisite food stuffs from all over the world. The choice of high value chocolate, fish, meats, vegetables, fruit, cheeses, wine, bread and much more is overwhelming. A gourmet's paradise. At 10  we head back to Demel, where they have some trouble opening the door. We take a seat in the upstairs salon and indulge in delicious cake and Viennese coffee. The history of this prestigious coffee house and bakery (Imperial & Royal Court Confectioners) goes back to  1786. We can look inside the bakery itself through a glass wall. Downstairs is the shop with a wide variety of cakes, chocolates and other goodies are on display. After this lovely start of the day we walk through the Hofburg towards the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The collection is originates in the imperial house collection of the Habsburgs and is housed in a purpose built museum on the Ringstrasse across from the palace. It is separated by a small park from the almost identical building of the Naturhistorisches Museum.  The  museum building is a work of art in its own right. We walk through it with the help of an audio guide (€3). Right now there is an exhibition of the "late Titian”. Interesting, but the permanent collection is impressive enough. It comprises the largest collection of  Bruegels in the world. An entire room is filled with works like  “Peasant Wedding”, “Hunters in the snow” and the “Tower of Babel”. It is all very impressive. We make a selection of the rooms of the picture gallery we want to have a look at. They are located on the second floor around two inner courts. Other highlights are paintings by  Dürer, among which an altar piece “Adoration the Trinity”.  There are also rooms with works by Rubens, among which a  painting  - The fur - with his second wife,  Helene Fourment who he married when she was only 16 years old. The museum has three self portraits by Rembrandt from his later period when he was financially down on his luck. The painter looks us straight in the face, full of life. There is only one Vermeer: "The Artist's Studio".  Also the Italians and the Spaniards are well represented by  Carravaggio, Titian and Velazquez. The ground floor is taken up by ancient art from Egypt, the Near East, Greece and Rome. We leave that for now. After almost 3 hours we are "full". 

We walk to the Museumsquartier a bit further down. In the courtyard of the former imperial stables a number of museums and exhibition halls have been built, together forming the MQ since 2001. There are also restaurants and bars and we head for Die Halle, the restaurant above the Kunsthalle. It is a tediously long wait for our food (over 40 minutes) it tastes good. Getting the bill is also a bit of trial. 

After lunch we take the underground and tram to the Zentralfriedhof. This is the big central cemetery of Vienna, south of the city. It is a gigantic cemetery, as big as the inner city itself (2,4 ha/ 6 acres) and has around 2.5 million "inhabitants". There is even a bus service on the cemetery itself and many visitors use their car to get to the grave of their loved ones. The cemetery was founded in 1874 as the first all denomination cemetery and controversial for that very reason. Apart from Roman Catholic sections, there are sections for secular, protestant, orthodox, evangelical and Jewish burials.  The Ehrengräber (honour graves) of Viennese celebrities are fortunately not too far from entrance number 2. Tram lines 6 and 71 stop at entrances 1 through 3. Close to each other we find the two composers Beethoven and Brahms (moved here in  1899). During the reburial, guards had to restrain composer Anton Bruckner who wanted to touch the bodies. A bit further up we see the graves of the musical members of the Strauss family and that of Franz Schubert (1797–1828), who died of syphilis. He contracted the disease during his only sexual encounter with a woman. Otherwise the composer was partial to men. He lived for two years with his, openly gay, librettist, Johann Baptist Mayerhofer in digs, where they also shared the bed. Their orientation is noticeable in various texts, that Mayerhofer wrote for Schubert's compositions, including an unfinished opera called  „Adrast“.

We go on and find more graves of artists like the Viennese sculptor  Fritz Wotruba, who designed his own headstone, but also the one for composer Schönberg, who died in 1951 in Los Angeles. Bruno Kreisky, the long time social-democrat Federal Chancellor (1970-83) lies here too with his wife. In a newer section of the cemetery, past the  Karl Lueger church we find the grave of Hans Hölzel (1959-98), better known as  Falco. In 1986 he became world famous with hits like "Rock me Amadeus" and "Jeanny". The grave is surely in his style..

With tram, underground and  tram we ride to Grinzing, on the other side of town in the hills in direction of the Wienerwald. The wine village has been incorporated into Vienna a long time ago. Here we find the so called Heurigen, wine bars, where the new wine is served (Heuer means "this year" in Austrian German). We go to Reinprecht. It bit touristy, but great fun nonetheless. You lay a foundation by ordering something from the deli buffet. The Heurige Wine comes in a mug of 0.3 litre and is easy to drink. After the wine and a bite we take the tram and underground back to the hotel. We change clothes and go out and take the underground to Herrengasse near the Hofburg. We walk to restaurant RieGi (1 star by Michelin) where we have a wonderful dinner. I take goose liver and dove breast. Erik enjoys his Kohl Rabi cake and Veal steak. Our sweet is a delicious crêpe with passion fruit. We wash it all down with a good Austrian red (Vöslauer). After dinner we walk through beautifully lit inner city to the Felixx bar for a drink. It is very busy.

Saturday 1 December 2007

We check out of our hotel and take our luggage with the tram to Railway Station Mitte, two stops up the road. Here is the City Airport Train terminal, where we can check in for tonight's flight with Austrian. We can check in our luggage. That is a relief. We have our boarding passes and relieved from our luggage until we arrive in Amsterdam. Tonight we take the City Airport Train from here to Schwechat, Vienna's airport.

Today we are meeting Wolfgang again. We wait in front of U-bahn station Josefstädterstraße, where he meets us at around 10am. With Wolfgang walk over the Brunnengasse street market in the Josefstadt district. It is a working class district, with lots of immigrants, but gentrification is on its way. The district is fairly mixed. Wolfgang does some shopping on the market. With Wolfgang we have coffee in an Italian deli on Yppenplatz, after which we take a taxi to the Baumgartner Höhe. Here is, next to  the psychiatric hospital Steinhof a beautiful Art Nouveau / Jugendstil church by architect Otto Wagner from 1907. Unfortunately the church is not open right now, in the morning sun light the church is magnificent sight. It is a cross basilica, with a gold plated dome. Typical Jugendstil are the stain glass windows by Kolo Moser. The church echoes a bit the forms of the Karlskirche. We stroll around the recreational area around the church, that once was part of the psychiatric facility.  After a while we get to the Schloß Wilhelminenberg a classical hotel with a grand view over the city. There is a small ice rink next to it at the moment. We continue a bit and arrive at Villa Aurora, a 19^th century villa, now a restaurant serving classic Austrian fare. We take the Wiener schnitzel. They are huge, but thin and of great quality. .

We take the bus back to down town and say goodbye to Wolfgang. We go on by tram to the Ringstraße where we get off. We walk along the parliament and the town hall and get to the Hofburg again. After a coffee at Starbucks we walk to the Neuer Markt. In middle of the - because of many parked cars - chaotic square is the Providentia-fountain by sculptor Georg Raphael Donner (1693-1741). It is also known as the  Donner fountain. The central figure is the Providence surrounded by personifications of tributaries to the Danube river in Lower Austria. Empress Maria Theresia thought the statues to sensual and had them removed in 1770 to have them melted into canons. The returned undamaged in 1801. In 1873 they were replaced by bronze replicas. The river Traun is represented by a well built young man, holding his trident over the water to catch a fish. His buttocks must have been to prominent for the taste of the day, hence the discreetly applied fig leave! We are here to visit the Kaisergruft. A simple church stands over an enormous cellar where 143 Habsburgs have their ornate tombs. Most of the sarcophaguses are made of pewter. Especially the the tomb of  Maria Theresia and her husband Franz Stephan is impressive. It is more than three metres highand wide and six metres long. The pair sits on top and looks at each other with love in their eyes. At their feet lies their son Josef II, who did not like this kind of pomp at all. Further down is the tomb of emperor  Maximilian  of Mexico. His elder brother, Franz Josef occupies, together with his son Rudolf (who committed suicide in 1889) and his much admired wife Elizabeth (Sisi) a separate room. Franz Josef's grave is adorned with fresh flowers, while Sisi's has ribbons in he Hungarian colours. 

We walk to the Stadtpark on the East side of inner Vienna. Here are some statues of composers, among which a gold coloured one of Johan Strauss jr. Viennese and tourists alike stroll through this relatively quiet piece of green land, in middle of town. We walk to Café Engländer a  typical Viennese café, where have a drink before we head for the airport by underground and City Airport Train. We are still quite full after the Schnitzel earlier today, so we only take a small snack at the airport. Our flight is slightly delayed and we arrive around 9.30pm at Amsterdam Airport. With a train and taxi we are back home around 11pm.