Habsburgs, pastries, and white wine: Michael and Dan in Vienna, Austria
Daniel Emberley, April 2023
Michael and I have been talking about seeing Vienna for years, part of our project to visit all the former Habsburg domains. Back in 2020 we started planning in earnest, only for Covid to make travel impossible. We decided this spring it was worth risking, and had an amazing two weeks in the city. Only to come down with a bad cough toward the end, which, when we got back to D.C., tested as … Covid! Sometimes you just can’t avoid a problem. Fortunately, our cases were mild, and we are recovering well. We got to see tons of Habsburg palaces, baroque churches, art museums, and neighborhoods. Amazing food, friendly locals, and public transport that never let us down. By the end we were even able to dredge up enough high school German to have basic conversations. Fun trip, totally worth doing, go.
Some background is useful before I get into details. Vienna has historically been a city on the edge. Under Marcus Aurelius it was a frontier camp between Romans and barbarians. In the Middle Ages it was a Catholic rampart against eastern Orthodox churches. It was central Europe’s defense against Islam, and later the last Western cultural edge before a descent into “the Orient”. In the Cold War it served as a trading space between Russia and America (thank you, Harry Lime). It’s only been in the last decades’ expansion of the European Community that it has become more central, and less of a bastion.
All of that before mentioning the Habsburgs. For them it was the political and economic center of holdings around the world: Bohemia and Flanders, Spain and the Philippines, Burgundy, Mexico, South America. A third of Germany, and most of the Balkans. So many Habsburgs, most named Joseph, Frank, Ferdinand, or Max. We only have to remember two. Maria Theresa was their Enlightenment empress, who ruled when America was a British colony. Franz Joseph is Queen Victoria’s contemporary, he saw the creation of modern Vienna out of a medieval walled town.
The wall is important. Vienna sits near, but not on, the Danube. Vineyards on the west side of the city grow on the last of the uplands of the Alps. To the east are the plains of Hungary, great for agriculture and marauding horsemen. The Vienna River allowed a port to be established far enough up the slopes, but still on the plains, to not get flooded too often. The wall went up to keep out barbarians, Hungarians, and Moslems. Didn’t help against Napoleon, who tore it down; leaving a core historic city, what were going to be 1800’s suburbs, and a strip of developable land ripe for Franz Joseph’s planning. He had the money of an industrializing Bohemia and provincial agriculture to create a new city, the Ringstrasse. This is not a single street, but a series of promenades that connect palaces, gardens, museums, and mansions in a semicircle, connecting to a new canal that protects from Danube flooding. He hired Otto Wagner to culvert the Vienna River and put a subway line alongside. The new technologies, old government, and 1800s wealth led to a boom few cities have experienced.
Importantly, Franz Joseph “legalizes” his Jewish subjects: instead of being persecuted or specially taxed, they’re given most of the rights of citizenship in the empire. It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of Judaism and the cultural flowering of Vienna in the 1800’s. As new citizens, they are incredibly loyal. As people recently on the fringe, they are creative financially, scientifically, and artistically. As folks who had to keep one eye on flight, they have connections across Europe and the empire. They solidify what was already the most important German-speaking culture, providing ideas, salons, venues, and backing. It’s no accident that Adele Bloch Bauer’s portrait was painted by Klimt, stolen by the Austrian museums under Hitler, and only reluctantly given back to the family recently: The Bloch Bauers, like the Ephrussis (family in “The Hare with the Amber Eyes”), the Freuds, and Austria’s greatest writers, all come out of this newly permitted culture.
Fritz has his new city ring to develop. He’s going to use it for museums, schools, government buildings, and theaters. But what should it look like? In America we call this period Beaux Arts, in England Victorian. In Austria the term is “Historicism”. How do we dress buildings of steel, concrete, and glass with the architectural legacy of the West? They don’t need to worry about churches, because the city is full of still-useful Baroque and Rococo examples. Ditto palaces, most of those have already been established in Neoclassical grandeur. But what style best fits an opera house? Science museum? City Hall? The garden settings of the Ring house buildings that smoosh Renaissance, Gothic, and Classical tropes onto structures bigger than in Pericles’ dreams. People from the Empire are pouring in, getting housed in giant apartment buildings around courtyards, wrapped in the same historicist styles. Around 1880, a group of artists, writers, and architects gather around Gustav Klimt, who is sick of painting allegories of the arts in the Kunsthistorischesmuseum, and create a local form of art nouveau, the Vienna Secession. In craft this branches into the Wiener Werkstaette; the style is also called Jugenstil, but basically it’s a reversion toward purer geometric forms, clean nature-based lines, and gorgeous use of gilding and color. Tourists come to Vienna for all of the above: historic churches and palaces, Historicist institutions and apartment blocks, and Secession versions of all of the above.
We were blown away by the food. Vienna has a fusion of the cuisines of the Habsburg Empire: schnitzel (meat Milanese), goulasch (Hungary), seafood (Croatia and the Alpine rivers), and pastry from all over. The portions are huge, we eventually learned to only order one salad or soup, and an entrée, to share between us if we had any hope of getting a dessert. And you want the dessert. With schlagobers, whipped cream. In addition to local restaurants, beisls, there is a rich tradition of coffeehouses where you can stop for an afternoon coffee and pastry. Plus, there is all the international food you would want in a contemporary city: Chinese noodle houses, sushi, doner kebab, sausage stands, McDonalds. That was just the cluster around our subway station. Every meal comes with a roll, this is where Kaiser rolls come from. Also lots of vegetables: we rarely needed to order a side dish to have enough greens with our boiled beef. And every place with a waiter had vegetarian and vegan options. The flavor profiles are different, lots of mustard and horseradish, little ketchup. Desserts tend to chocolate, of course, but also apricot, raspberry, and poppy seed. It was obvious looking at any dessert counter where a major chunk of America’s Jewish population emigrated from; the pastry cases could fit as easily in Skokie or Brookline as in Austria. The beer may be good, but we never got our mouths out of local Gruener Veltliner and wine spritzes to find out. Finally, food was consistently less expensive than we are used to. We frequently got a sit-down meal for the two of us, with table service and wine, for less than $60.
The political city is massive, with large tracts of agriculture, but the tourist city only about 1.5 miles across. Eminently walkable; from our hotel we could hit the Kunsthistorisches in twenty minutes and St. Stephen’s in half an hour. And if you need to go beyond the Ring, there are U-bahns, S-Bahns, trolleys, and buses that will take you everywhere. The bus north from our hotel, going through old suburbs from the 1890’s, not terribly important, still ran every six minutes. On a schedule. For $2.10. Just amazing. Except for the subway most transit veers around the Ring, protecting the old city but frequently forcing a change of mode. We were fortunate, our subway line, the U-4, went way west along the old Vienna River to Schoenbrunn Palace, east to the Ring, then along the east side of the Ring to the Canal, where it doubled back northwest to take in most of the rest of the city. It was rare we needed to travel more than a stop or two along another line until we intersected the U-4. Best of all, Otto Wagner had designed the whole system for Franz Joseph, see above, so the stations are Secessionist masterpieces. Flat fares, no turnstiles, buy a bunch of tickets at a subway station and validate them as you need to. There are supposed to be inspectors checking that everyone has a valid ticket, but we never saw one.
The words “oriental” and “Asian” are more like we use “Mediterranean”: they refer to Indian or Turkish food and culture, not Chinese or Japanese. The people are an interesting mix. Lots of folks from the Balkans, and Turks. Lots of South Asians and Northern Chinese. At least in the city; suspect folks in the country are whiter, more Catholic, and more conservative. In town, though, we sensed acceptance from everyone, not just towards us as a couple, but to immigrants and people of other religions. Lots of people still smoke, but we rarely had a problem with it. Almost no overweight people, probably because between the great transit and inability to find a parking space folks are walkers rather than drivers.
Our only real disappointment was retail. This is true around the world now, but it was hard to find distinctive shops or interesting wares. The main department store is all about clothes, and while there are lots of places to redo your kitchen and bath, there was not a lot to take home that had not been made in China for tourists.
Enough backstory. Let’s get off the S-7 from the airport, grab the U-4 to Pilgramgasse, and begin our trip.
Tuesday, April 18
Austrian Air got us into Vienna seamlessly, no customs, small amount of trouble realizing that the airport train platforms are so long that you have to stand at a particular point to get the right train, but otherwise an easy run into town. WienerLinien, the transport agency, is extending one subway line and building a whole new one, which meant our station, Pilgramgasse, was in the middle of major construction. Navigated the scaffolding, sighted the Hotel Indigo, and were there for an early check-in.
I’d booked the Indigo as a stopgap, right after our airfare, on the theory we’d need something but would probably change it. Glad we didn’t. Indigo is Holiday Inn’s boutique brand, an attempt to compete with W. They squeezed a hotel through alleys behind old courtyard apartments, facing an also new neighborhood park. We ended up with a trendy apartment facing our own garden, visually separated from but adjacent to the park. In the gayest neighborhood in Vienna. Cool. Unpacked, chilled out, and got lunch in a café around the corner. Our first schnitzel, avocado-mozzarella salad, a caramel coffee and a mélange. Ordering coffee in Vienna has its own language. Everyone serves mélange, espresso with whipped milk. I loved it, and I don’t like coffee. We can also recommend a Franziskanner, like a cappuccino with chocolate. Worth reviewing the coffee drinks on a menu, most places have their own specialty you’ll want to try. If you don’t want coffee the tap water is amazing, fresh from the Alps, and every place has a connection to a local vineyard with an excellent inexpensive Gruener Veltliner that does not get exported. Refreshed, we went for a hike to explore our new world.
The Vienna River is a concrete ditch with major streets on either side, lined with Historicist apartment blocks. Including two famous ones by Otto Wagner, cool to see on our walk north. The Naschmarkt is Vienna’s most famous market. Part farmers market, part restaurants, but mainly Syrians aggressively pushing dried dates on tourists. I’d hoped we’d be eating here regularly, but never did; the food was easier, closer, and better by Pilgramgasse. A lot of food stands have no seating, and no place to sit nearby, even if it wasn’t raining – easier to get takeaway to our hotel.
The river and market meet the Ring at Karlsplatz, a major road and subway nexus. The Secession Building is Joseph Maria Olbrich’s masterpiece of Jugendstil. It’s still used as an art gallery. Since they were between shows we did not see the main hall, but their landmark Klimt “Beethoven Frieze” was open downstairs. Impressive for the scale, but there are a lot better Klimts in town. Passed the Opera and up Kaertnerstrasse into the old city, where every other shop was selling either Mozart chocolates (marzipan balls wrapped with the maestro’s picture) or Sisi souvenirs. I’ll rant about Empress Sisi later, for now just know she’s a symbol of Vienna like the Capitol is a symbol of D.C., available on everything from postcards to umbrellas to chocolate boxes. Kaertnerstrasse is one of the main shopping strips, we stopped at Oesterreischische Werkstaetten, which sells home décor reproductions of the great artists of the Secession and Werkstaette. Lovely, but at too high a price point for us, and we worried about shipping crystal.
There are lots of ways to see the Stephansdom, St. Stephen’s Cathedral. You can hike a tower, or see the crypts, or pay for a tour. When we walked in a Christian rock group had blocked the nave and side aisles to make a video, so we just checked out what could be seen from the entrance for free. Old Vienna is like Rome: there are lots of amazing churches here, most ignored, and while Stephansdom is the biggest, its not the best, a pastiche of real and rebuilt Medieval. Best aspect probably the multicolored tiled roof, which can be seen from almost anywhere downtown. They have a cathedral museum across the plaza that we never got to which may be worth the price of admission.
Adolf Loos is one of the great Modern architects; he imported Modernism from America to Austria, and is famous for the phrase, in opposition to then-dominant Historicism, “Ornament Is Crime”. We walked past his Amerikanerbar, but it was too early for a drink, and can only imagine they’re sick of tourists popping in for a photo and leaving. And honestly, it’s too small to handle that kind of traffic. Instead we continued north to the Canal, at Schwedenplatz. Not sure we ever saw the Danube, except from the plane. It’s been so civil engineered that unless you’re going out to the conference center or U.N. City you’re unlikely to. Instead the main path of the water through the city is the Danube Canal, a straightened bypass of the main Danube, that forms the northern edge of the old city. At one point it may have been a route of the Vienna River, but that was many engineers and flood plans ago. There are cafes and a walkway here, and docks for ferries to Bratislava and towns up and down river, but it’s not especially attractive. We walked east to Otto Wagner’s Oesterreichische Postparkasse/Austrian Postal Savings Bank. In this northeast corner of the old city the Ring peters out into massive imperial office buildings. The Postparkasse is one of these; the postal savings bank was copied from England by Franz Joseph to open up banking to all citizens of the empire. In 1870 banks were only for the rich, in places where the rich lived. Every town, however, had a post office, and Postparkasse let ordinary people save money and earn interest. This building administered that bureaucracy. Wagner made it a memorial to the Emperor’s beneficence, fabulous Secessionist style over a bright grand banking hall. Like if D.C.’s Federal Triangle had been designed not in Beaux Arts classicism, but Radio City Art Deco. The side rooms, once used for mail and recordkeeping, are now open as a design school and galleries telling this history. Caught the U-4 back to Pilgramgasse, dinner at a Japanese fusion place, then explored Willi-Frank Park behind our hotel.
The parks around the palaces are too big, and lack trees. Neighborhood parks, though, are plentiful, and easy to rest in. Willi-Frank was like that. There almost no street trees, or gardens fronting streets, so the parks are necessary and welcome. Also typical was the housing. Sixty percent of residential in Vienna is owned by the city. This is a carryover from actions of Franz Joseph, and then the Social Democrat government of Vienna in the 1920’s and 1960’s. Every other apartment complex has big letters above the entrance telling you the city built this home in this year for the good of the citizens of Vienna. People can keep their leases for years, and pass them down to family, so folks don’t move around a lot once they get a foothold. Frequently the blocks are gorgeous, they’re almost always well-maintained. The city has a 1% income tax to keep new construction and maintenance happening. It’s like the whole city is an experiment in Henry George’s single tax philosophy. We saw few homeless people on the streets.
Also convenient to us near the Indigo was what we think might be a credit union, with a hall of ATM and other financial machines. Made it easy to withdraw euros. Credit cards were accepted almost everywhere, but when you hit a small shopowner who would not take one you had to have cash. Also, American credit cards are archaic; everyone there uses a card with a PIN, or one that taps. My credit union card charges no foreign transaction fees, but had to be inserted. Clerks thought it was hilarious, especially when the system would come back demanding a signature. I eventually learned to say in German that my card was tired from being used all over Vienna, and folks smiled and let me insert. On tech issues, our phones worked fine, we have Verizon’s $10/day plan, tedious but useful. No problem with apps, Google directions, or Uber.
Wednesday, April 19
Anker is a chain of sandwich shops specializing in breakfast and lunch, sort of like our McDonalds, or the UK’s Gregg’s, but delicious. There was one next to our hotel, and it became our default for inexpensive easy breakfast. Lovely sandwiches, hot and cold, and good pressed juices. We hit there, and walked north to Mariahilferstrasse, the city’s main shopping drag. The Maria Hulf Church would be a big deal here, but there is just an old baroque neighborhood church. Lots of stores on the street, none enticing, but a straight shot up to the MuseumsQuartier, the Kunsthistorichesmuseum, and the main palace.
We then proceeded to get lost at the Hofburg. The Habsburgs built palaces all around Vienna, and most of them are now art museums open to the public. The core, the main palace, was the Hofburg. From medieval origins it got successive additions until now it is a morass of wings, museums, the Austrian president’s residence, chancellor’s office, churches, and the Spanish Riding School. It’s bigger than we could see in one day, and didn’t attempt to. It also has a variety of entrances, fees, and opportunities to get disoriented, as you often leave a place from a different door than you enter it. Some of the best work of baroque architects Lukas von Hildebrandt and the father-and-son Fischer von Ehrlachs is here.
We started at the Sisi Museum, a suite of rooms telling the story of Franz Joseph’s empress. Tourists love her, mainly due to a series of 1950’s films where she’s played by Romy Schneider. We’d watched the films, and were ready to love her also, but she is not a sympathetic character. She caught the eye of the young emperor, wooed him away from her sister, and in the only unscripted moment of his life Fritz married her. Only to spend the rest of his reign loving her from afar, as she shunned her role, her court, and responsibilities to her subjects. Much of her days were spent caring for her ankle-length hair and maintaining her 10” waist. She studied Hungarian mainly to provoke the rest of the court. She wrote poetry, bemoaning how hard it was to be her. Mainly, she traveled in Europe, pretending to be incognito, dressing in black and feeling sorry for herself. You’ve got an empire at your fingertips, girl, one going through the Industrial Revolution. At least she could have worked for the Red Cross or something. Instead she was assassinated, as a replacement victim, by an Italian in Switzerland, cementing her role as a tragic figure.
The Sisi Museum flows into the State Apartments, a wing preserving the emperor’s work and private rooms, then a room for Maximilian I, adventurer emperor of Mexico, and rooms used by the Russian czar during the Congress of Vienna. Interestingly, the rooms are good, but seemed plain compared to Versailles, Savoy, and San Souci. Maybe we’ve seen too many palaces - grin? There is supposed to be a Silver Treasury continuing this tour, but we saw no signs for it and could not physically find it. Toured the Imperial Treasury, and set off for the Prunksaal, the “State Room”, which is actually the core of the national library. And could not find it, either. After wandering in drizzle (it never rained heavily, but it rained most days we were there, a by-product of the Alps?), we found ourselves way west, next to the Schottentur, part of the old city defenses. We grabbed lunch there at a Lekl, another sandwich chain, like a much better Pret a Manger: sandwiches on great bread, a couscous cheese salad, chocolate raspberry tart. Wandering back we found ourselves in front of the Globe and Esperanto Museum, which is part of but physically separate from the Prunksaal. Sounds odd, and it is, but also fun: a couple rooms telling of the attempt to create the universal language of Esperanto, then galleries of old globes, all in the former Mollard-Clary Palace. No idea who those last were, but they left behind gorgeous rooms with good Rococo ceiling paintings to house the globes. Finally found the entrance to the Prunksaal, and it is amazing, probably the Fischer von Ehrlach’s greatest structure. Massive baroque columns lead your eye to Daniel Gran’s frescoes glorifying civilization. Shelves curve in and out as only a baroque structure can force, several stories high, requiring staircases up to balconies up to more ladders to access the books. In cases at floor level a show of garden literature competed with the grandeur above, so you were drawn from grandiosity to landscape and back repeatedly. It makes the Library of Congress look like a Suitland cube farm.
A sidebar on tickets. There are more ticket options to Vienna’s sights than anyone can understand. Even we could not figure out how to make the Vienna Card or Vienna Pass pay, and we see everything. In addition, many of the sites are located in different buildings but run by the same entity. So, we were able to buy a ticket at Globe and Esperanto that also covered the Prunksaal. And also the Papyrus Museum, which we never got to. I’d booked a Sisi Ticket for us the night before, which covered the Imperial Apartments, Schoenbrunn Palace, and the Hofmobiliendepot, which we were able to use over different days. Also, the Imperial Treasury ticket also covered the Kunsthistorischesmuseum, which we took a week between seeing. It is worth checking the night before to see if what you are visiting requires advanced booking, and if that could cover other places you might want to see.
That was a lot of imperial splendor. We took a break in Michaelerplatz to check out the circle of ruins in the middle of the traffic, with layers back through medieval and Roman Vienna. We probably looked at Looshaus, the stripped Modern office building Adolf Loos used to jumpstart modern Austrian architecture, but it is so encrusted with commercial signage that it never registered. The drizzle had turned to rain, so we took advantage of the interiors of the Albertina.
The Albertina has one of the world’s greatest collections of prints and drawings, plus some of the best modern art in Austria. It’s housed in Maria-Theresa’s favorite daughter’s palace, another Hofburg wing, perched on one of the old city bastions, and got a major update by Hans Hollein, complete with diving-board marquee, in this century. Amazing shows were up: Brueghel-era prints, Alex Katz, Picasso (good ceramics), a print show by medium. Best were the old State Rooms, with family history, fantastic floors and ceilings, and the greatest hits of their holdings. The Durers are phenomenal: the rabbit, Four Horsemen, patch of grass. We were overwhelmed, so walked back to the Indigo by way of Café Savoy for an Esterhazy torte (hazelnut and cream), mélange, and Kaiserspritz (white wine, soda, elderflower liqueur).
Dinner from our Pilgramgasse wurstel stand. Think an open-air bar that sells beer and sausages to make you want more beer. They don’t serve hot dogs like we do, more like a sausage sliced up on a plate with a slice of bread and big wad of mustard. And you have a choice of six-eight types of sausage. I got a kasekrainer (cheese) and a bauernkrainer (farmer’s style, like a kielbasa). They sell something called a “hot dog”, but that is one of those same sausages jammed into a large roll (so hard to get the mustard onto). No, we never saw Vienna sausages in a can, and yes, we looked.
Did a walk through Margareten. We were just north of that neighborhood, which has lots of local restaurants and shops, and importantly, a laundromat. The anchor seems to be the Margaretenhof, which we think was a home for retired widows. Definitely a more cool area than around the U-bahn station.
Thursday, April 20
Breakfast from Anker, then we caught the U-4 west to Schoenbrunn Palace. We were glad we had our Sisi Card from the day before; it let us cut the lines and get the more complete Grand Tour. Lots of school groups and Asian tours, all of us tied to our audioguides. This was Maria-Theresa’s summer palace, very grand, very well presented, and overwhelming. Both the buildings and gardens aim to over-awe with scale, which means they’re too big to appreciate as a pedestrian. The palace itself relatively restrained, lots of white and gold rococo. If we didn’t know the history of the Habsburgs we might have learned it here, but we did, so that was irrelevant. Toward the end of the tour, when even the Austrians must have gotten bored with rococo restraint (is that even a thing?), there were some interesting Orientalized rooms; one of Chinese porcelain, another of antique Persian manuscripts whose paintings had been cut out to make a decoupaged wallpaper. Got to the exit, handed in our guides, and shrugged.
We thought maybe the gardens might work better on horseback or carriage, but by foot they are also too big, a series of French parterre of different designs but redundant. Scale is so important: Potsdam mastered it, but here it was just too damn big. Or maybe we were just there at the wrong time of year, this was not the only garden we were going to see where landscapers were putting out plants that were going to bloom in a couple weeks. I suspect that Maria-Theresa had gardeners insert novelties, like a weekend’s party, into the tapestry of the gardens, but without that special programming it is just a blank slate. There is a lovely fake Roman ruin, and anchoring Neptune fountain. Much of Schoenbrunn, though, is cut up by attractions that need to paid for separately, forcing one out of a stroll and into a slog around them. The city zoo is there, which we ignored but had to detour. We paid for the Kew Gardens-inspired Palm House, which is wonderful. Landtmann’s, a tourist institution, has a location in the gardens; we got lunch here: a sheep cheese salad, cheese and ham plate, schinken noodle, and a Kaiserschmarm with stewed apricots. The latter is supposedly Franz Joseph’s favorite dessert: rich pancakes torn up and sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. It was Austrian food that had taken a detour via Costco, not the best, but lovely to dine al fresco.
Walked back across the gardens to the exit in Hietzing. This is a grand suburb, like Chevy Chase but with Kalorama’s density. Mansions, but abutting; if there are gardens or grounds they are in the rear, not visible from the street. Beautiful to walk around. A couple homes by Josef Hoffman, and the Lebkuchen House, a villa whose dark brown bas relief tiles look like gingerbread. Picked up a Chinese pork bun at Hietzing Station, which also has, a few meters east of it, Hoffman’s bespoke station for Emperor Fritz. It’s only open weekends; but it’s just a suburban train station, so we were able to walk all around it and peak in the windows. Caught the U-4 back downtown to Karlsplatz.
The Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste Gemaeldegalerie/Academy of Fine Arts Painting Gallery is a little like the old Corcoran, an active art school with an associated collection and galleries for the students’ education. This is the art school that rejected Adolph Hitler. Lots of students running around, but it looks like no one knows they also have an art collection. We finally figured out the signs and elevatored up; they had a couple cool contemporary shows. The reason one comes here, though, are for the secondary works by Lucas Cranach, Titian, Rembrandt, and Rubens, and Hieronymous Bosch’s “Last Judgement” triptych. A great young Van Dyck self-portrait. It was just the guards and us; amazing after the crowds we were seeing at other museums to have the collection to ourselves. Weren’t sure if the works themselves weren’t great (doubtful), or if they just are in a collection that is off the main track for art historians. Like everywhere in Vienna the staff were friendly and kind, and surprised to see Americans. They must have heard us trashing the contemporary shows and were impressed with our art world erudition, because they asked us to review the English translations on marketing materials they were preparing. Wicked.
Walked south through the Naschmarkt to the Indigo, and got dinner in Margareten, at a beisl called Silberwirt. This was the best restaurant we ate at, traditional Austrian cuisine in a refined setting off an obscure alley. Thank Google, or we would never have known it was there. Amazing tafelspitz (boiled beef with sides), backhandel (fried chicken), a salad, roast potatoes, and wine spritzers. Delicious, our only regret was we were so full we couldn’t even look at the dessert menu, and never had a chance to return.
Friday, April 21
The Hotel Indigo serves a massive breakfast buffet, and we treated ourselves to it this morning. Traditional breakfast foods from a variety of cultures, including a custom dish from the grill. Delicious, but too much for every day. Caught the U-4 up to the Stadtpark, where we were surprised to discover the steel sculpture outside the station was a non-traditional Donald Judd. Walked into the old city for the Dominikanischerkirche (amazing rococo interior, the Dominicans knew how to source the best materials) and Jesuitenkirche (you can rely on Jesuits for amazing tromp l’oeil). The Jesuits controlled schooling, so their church plaza also held the original university buildings that we were going to see in Canalettos later.
The Museum fur Angewandte Kunst/MAK/Museum of Applied Arts was created by Franz Joseph in emulation of London’s V&A, a collection to teach craftsmen and industry best practices. It’s in an amazing custom-built German Renaissance historicist palace. Their collections of furniture and decorative arts from the Secession and Wiener Werkstaette are unparalleled. We fell in love with a Deco-style coffee/tea set with African and Asian heads as handles. A vanity table, with mirror floating on a sheet of glass, looked 1970’s but was from 1921. The Asian art was poorly installed by a curator who thought he was clever, but the pieces impeccable. We thought we were going to blow off their basement galleries of “how do we do design?”, but they were brilliant, like all of the Cooper-Hewitt crammed into a couple long rooms. There’s an active art school connected with the museum, so it reminded us more of the Corcoran or Pittsburgh’s Carnegie than the V&A. We got lunch in their excellent café, way too much food: giant toasts with eggs benedict and salmon, a quinoa salad with strawberries, broccolini, a brownie topped with chocolate frosting and peanuts (in Austria, peanuts are an exotic addition).
How to explain the Princes of Liechtenstein? They’re a noble family of Austria who, centuries ago, decided they wanted to elevate themselves, so bought a country. They’ve always lived in Vienna, but purchased the town for the title, and the opportunity to serve as electors of the Holy Roman Emperor (conveniently a Habsburg for all of their reign). The nation is squeezed between Switzerland and Austria, and has made an economy by being even more accommodating to the rich than the Swiss. Twice a month they open their two Vienna palaces and art collections to the public.
If we could find them. It’s easy to see the Liechtenstein Gartenpalais on a map, it’s in the middle of a giant park in fashionable Alsergrund. When we got there, though, the park was gated, with two palaces. We started at the larger one, to the north, only to figure out, with another couple, that this was rented out as an office building. We escaped the gates and raced south to the other end of the park, to the apparently correct Gartenpalais. Access to the collections is only by guided tour, and only in German. They promise on their website an English audioguide, but when we asked at check-in were shown a QR code. We attempted to download the app, then the specific tour we were on, but could not get it to work. Probably wouldn’t have mattered, since the Liechtensteins had overbooked and we were split into two groups, one of which was never going to match the audio. Didn’t matter, the palace is lovely, with more personality than Schonbrunn or the Hofburg. Lots of Maria Theresa white, red, and gilt, frescoed ceilings, stuccoed putti. But honestly, this palace is all about the art: rooms of Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyke, and Raphael. Lots of pietra dura cabinets for storing one’s “precious little things”. The Hercules Room, with the hero’s efforts immortalized on the ceiling. We had booked both palaces, but apparently most people do one or the other. So instead of a group traveling into town together we took a lovely solo twenty-minute stroll to the Liechtenstein Stadtpalais, behind the Burgtheater. This is where the family keeps their extensive Biedermeier collection: think Victorian genre scenes, lots of happy peasants and industrious carpenters with pretty daughters. Not our thing, but cool to see, and the interior decoration of the palace is amazing. More gilt stucco ceilings, parquet floors like we’ve never seen, massive corner candelabra/shelf constructions, walls of exotic woods that have been shellacked and polished 300 times. A corner room was once a garden terrace, but as that garden was on the since-removed Ring walls, there is now a drop-dead view of the Rathaus. One room had a visual duel between Angelica Kaufmann and Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun canvases, with Hayez portraits filling in the gaps. Honestly, the tours were too long, and there’s only so long one can nod one’s head pretending to understand German. A great opportunity to see something that only exists in Vienna.
We were exhausted. Walked up to Schottentring, got Buddha bowls from some sweet guys who kept their store Fat Monk open for us, and caught the U-4 back to the hotel.
Saturday, April 22
The Naschmarkt was a disappointment, but Saturday mornings it is supplemented by the best flea market in Vienna. It’s good, lots of genuine antiques, 1970’s household junk, fun stuff. No stands of people selling Chinese knock offs and polyester underwear. Or worse, Chinese knockoffs of polyester underwear. Runs for several blocks along the river, but nothing spoke to us. Veered north for the third and final entry on our Sisi Ticket, the Hofmobiliendepot/Imperial Furniture Collection. The Habsburgs frequently moved court, often to other palaces, sometimes to entirely different countries, like Prague in Bohemia. So they did not keep the palaces furnished. Instead the furniture moved with them, and surplus, or surplus-for-now, got stored in this warehouse. When the empire collapsed the collection went to the state of Austria. Then when their Jewish citizens were expelled and murdered the Hofmobiliendepot was a storehouse for the loot. Now the warehouse has been converted to a museum, mostly open storage, some galleries looking at just one type of furniture, or restored rooms. Sisi mania has installed several galleries with monitors playing the Romy Schneider films highlighting furniture the museum loaned to the filmmakers for set decorating. Most folks pass on this, but with our decorative arts bent we loved it. Great flow to the galleries, with an entire Deco-Egyptian room, and a bar with wood carvings paying tribute to the imperial provinces.
Strolled up to Mariahilferstrasse for lunch at Nordsee, a local seafood chain. Decent, fast, tasty, and inexpensive; baked salmon and a shrimp-and-egg sandwich. The U-3 subway runs under Mariahilferstrasse, so we caught that up to Stephansplatz and changed to the U-1 to get to Augarten. This seems to be a major Jewish neighborhood, we saw lots of Orthodox families walking from temple, surrounding a lively park. Bottom tip of the park is a dormitory/performance complex for the Vienna Boys Choir; we walked around that to the park proper, anchored on the north by one of the Flakturms, concrete bunkers the Nazis built to protect the city. They’re so massive, and thick, that most of them have been left standing, as no one knows what to do with all the rubble if they take one down. There’s one we kept passing north of our hotel, in Esterhazy Park, that has been turned into an aquarium and giant terrarium.
The Vienna Porcelain Manufactory was one of the first places in Europe to make fine porcelain, founded in 1718. It moved here, to Palais Augarten, in 1923. In addition to making china they run a small museum, and have a large factory showroom. Cool look at how porcelain is made, and masterpieces from the last 100 years. To our delight, in the showroom we found the Chinese tea set that we’d liked the day before at MAK. Still in production, but at 200 euros for a sugar bowl we exercised restraint. We got lost leaving the park, and ended up half a mile away from where we intended to pick up the subway, at Praterstern. This was okay, the Prater is a massive park north of downtown on one of the islands channeling the Danube. If you’ve seen the Orson Welles movie “The Third Man”, this is where the Ferris wheel is. We picked up the U-1 to the U-4 at Karlsplatz, then got mélange, Sachertorte and Mozarttorte at our neighborhood Café 5. Picked up dinner from the donerkebab stand at Pilgramgasse, invested in chocolate covered fruit from Eibensteiner, and took a stroll around Margareten.
Sunday, April 23
Walked north through a funky part of the Wieden neighborhood behind the Technical University, then east to Schwartzenbergplatz, just south of the Ring. This is dominated by a horrible Soviet monument to the Russian liberation (?) of Vienna after World War II, whose rear wall is now painted in Ukrainian blue and yellow. A good re-appropriation of an inappropriate memorial. Then up to our main attraction of the day, the Belvedere palaces.
Prince Eugene of Savoy is the general who defeated the Ottomans in 1683, kept Austria Catholic, and let the empire expand east and south into the Balkans. And most importantly, let the city start building indefensible palaces instead of bastioned castles. The Belvedere was the emperor’s gift to Eugene, two palace complexes designed by Lukas von Hildebrandt connected by a massive park stretching up the heights, with fabulous views over the city. When he died unmarried and childless the estate found its way back to the Habsburgs, who had no need of another palace complex. Over time it became a series of art museums, holding surplus from the imperial collections. Today it shows one of the world’s finest collections of art from the 18th to 20th Centuries, with fantastic holdings of Klimt and the Secession.
We started at the Lower Belvedere, which was Prince Eugene’s primary residence. Some impressive state rooms, but the big deal was a retrospective of Klimt and the art that influenced his work hung in the former Orangery. Amazing show, really put the Secession into perspective. Handled a low sugar moment with Klimt cake, hot chocolate, and a Kafe Savoy (almond flavored) at the Park Café, then explored the gardens. Strolled up carriage slopes to the Upper Belvedere, which Eugene had used as a party building, and now holds the permanent collection, picking up from about 1750, where the Kunsthistorischesmuseum stops.
Probably a mistake to visit on a Sunday; the place was jammed, with people lining up to ignore everything except the one gallery where Klimt’s “The Kiss” hangs. Pretty confident this is where we caught Covid; no one masked, tons of folks coughing, and on Wednesday when I came down with the same cough thought eh, I just contracted the cold everyone in Vienna has. Wasn’t until we were unpacking in D.C. and found our Covid test kits that we shrugged and figured why not? Have never seen a test change so fast, think it took thirty seconds for the T line to turn on. We were lucky, thank you Dr. Fauci and vaccines, and only got mild cases, but it sure does linger.
The café was total chaos, but we were able to scramble for a table: antipasto plate, mixed grill of pork and chicken, white wine spritzers. Buy your Belvedere tickets online; we saw long lines stretching across the courtyard of folks waiting to do so live. As a show palace the Upper is much grander than the Lower Belvedere, rooms that compete with the art. Started on the 3rd floor, Viennese and early 20th Century. A central gallery shows “The Kiss”, which is lovely, but like the Louvre experience seeing the “Mona Lisa”, the room is filled with equally worthy art totally ignored by people who must get a selfie in front of this one painting. The Belvedere is famous for its Impressionist collection, but it was not on display. Second floor is 19th Century, lots more Biedermeier rosy cheeks and stovepipe hats. Great view of Marble Hall, where the treaty was signed reunifying Austria after WWII, when the Soviets agreed to let the country join the West in exchange for their crushing eastern Europe under the Warsaw Pact.
A big advantage of the Belvedere complex is the gardens, giving you breathing room between intense art experiences. Continuing southeast across the Guertel we saw horrible Modern sculpture in the Swiss Gardens en route to Belvedere 21. This had been built for Expo ’58 in Brussels as the Austria Pavilion, and moved here after the fair. The building itself is worth the additional three euros when you buy your Belvedere tickets. Modern, cool, lots of concrete screens and glass halls. Think Mies van der Rohe with color; Wikipedia says this building influenced Mies’s Neue National Galerie in Berlin. Was renovated about ten years back, and is stunning display space. Sadly, showing absolute crap. The main show was on contemporary Austrian artists, and looked like a version of D.C.’s old uncurated Art-O-Matic exhibitions. On the balcony Alois Mosbacher showed work that was just as technically poor, but at least had an idea of using art as a game, which was fun. The basement had videos of an Italian woman artist who recreated the works of Italian women performance artists. Eh. See the building, maybe eat in the lovely café, and get out of there.
The Guertel is a second Ring around Vienna. A product of the auto age, it’s a fast way to drive around the city and not pay attention to stoplights. The section from Belvedere 21 west passes the new Hauptbahnhof, so lots of glass office buildings and access to parking under the train station. The architecture is cool, but the experience dreadful, don’t do it. Turned north through a gorgeous part of the Wieden neighborhood around Alois Drasche Park. This was full of happy families, framed by lovely residences. We snaked through Margareten, getting back to the main plaza where I got gelato, which is all over Vienna. Again, flavors more raspberry and poppy seed than melon and hazelnut. I chilled out at the Indigo while Michael ran laundry back in Margareten. The payment system for the machines was confusing, but people friendly and helpful, one guy even using his card to pay for our wash cycle when our cards would not work. Laundry is expensive here, cost us twenty-five euros for three loads, almost as much as if we’d just used the hotel’s service. Michael got a lamb doner kebab for dinner, and I tried the McDonalds. Usual menu, a little more limited, the “camembert donuts” they offered as an alternative to fries sold out. No ketchup, no napkins, they prepare your drink for you. A better adaptation than we’ve seen in other countries, but definitely not an American experience.
Monday, April 24
Walked north through Esterhazy Park and up Mariahilferstrasse to the MuseumsQuartier. There had been plans for centuries to expand the Hofburg complex west, past the art and natural history museums on the Ring. Blocking that were Fischer von Erlach’s 1723 imperial stables complex. In the 1990’s Vienna was nervous about its place in contemporary art: it obviously had the Imperial collections, but lacked good holdings from the 20th and 21st centuries. They renovated the stables, negotiated with the Leopold and Ludwig Foundations to show their collections, and popped a variety of kunsthalles, cafes, offices, and smaller museums into the mix. Again, confusing ticket options, but we were able to purchase mainly what we needed without too much excess.
Drizzly, so we ducked into the Leopold Museum to start. Lots of Egon Schiele, along with Klimt, Kokoschka, and a good overview of the Secession. Entire rooms by Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann. The Wuerth Collection of 20th Century art. Very well shown, on seven floors at least three of which are below ground, with plenty of social history thrown in so you know why what you’re looking at is important and how it fits into art history. Several cafes in the complex, but only the one connected with the Children’s Theater had covered outdoor seating. Good roast potato and chicken as a salad, bread with butter and chives, a vegetarian panini, and Kaiserspritzes.
The Architekturzentrum Wien/Architecture Center has two large exhibition halls. One has a permanent show of the usual architecture subjects with a Vienna focus. The other was showing a retrospective of Yasmeen Laris, a mid-20th-Century female Pakistani architect who started as a Brutalist, but morphed into social housing and figuring out how to involve future residents with the projects they would be living in. Expected a snooze-fest, but she is fascinating.
Rick Steves told us we could just show up at the Wiener Staatsoper/Vienna State Opera to get a tour. Don’t believe him, buy your tickets in advance. Even if we had been able to make the phone app work it was still difficult to figure out the scrum of tourist groups waiting to get in. We should have bought tickets for an inexpensive concert or ballet performance. Checked out the exterior and retreated to the Aida Café to lick our wounds over a slice of Biedermeier torte and melanges. Should probably have done the Café Sacher across the street, but didn’t have the bandwidth. Instead walked across the Ring and Resselpark to the Karlskirche. This is another Fischer von Ehrlach masterpiece, totally worth the price of admission. Guidebooks refer to a now-fictional industrial lift that took people up to the dome. Instead you see the fantastic interior, and take stairs up to the organ, treasury, and a roof terrace between the flanking columns, based on Trajan’s Column in Rome, that tell the story of Charles Borromeo. This is our St. Charles from Isola Bella outside Milan; the Karlskirche was built as a plague-survival thank you and memorial. There is a big chapel dedicated to the last emperor, Charles I of Austria, who local Catholics have gotten beatified as a saint. And if you need more reason to come, it’s where Hedy Lamarr was married in 1933, before she discovered Hollywood.
Wandered south to the hotel on a mini-shopping trip. Feinedinge is a porcelain studio and showroom making fantastic work in subtle pastels; we took home a rabbit-topped canister and a butterdish. Michael stocked up at our favorite little grocery, Billa, while I bought Eibensteiner chocolates to take home. Got dinner at Budapest Bistro, just south of us on Pilgramgasse, a neighborhood institution that serves breakfast all day. Delicious.
Tuesday, April 25
The Kunsthistorisches Museum is one of the world’s great art museums. It and the Natural History Museum across the plaza were both designed by Gottfried Semper as part of Franz Joseph’s creation of the Ring; together they frame the Hofburg to the north and the MuseumsQuartier to the south. Inside is an historicist riot of décor, with wall and ceiling paintings by the Klimt brothers (before Gustav Seceded), Hans Makart, and Mihaly Munkacsy. Even if the art was not a series of the West’s greatest hits it would still be worth seeing. The paintings collected by 700 years of Habsburg emperors fill the second floor, in a weird numbering of big rooms with Roman numerals and side rooms with Arabic numbers. Oddly, it flows well; you could just see the greatest hits in the big rooms, or dive into detail with the smaller. The collection is fantastic: entire walls of Rubens, Cranach, van Dyck, Caravaggio, Brueghel, Titian. A giant Vermeer, three Holbeins. Velasquez, Raphael, a suite of Canalettos documenting Vienna in the 1700’s. What was Canaletto even doing this far north? The lighting and curating so good, it was a pleasure to walk the galleries. Stendhal effect was staved off by a show of Georg Baselitz paintings inserted amongst the Masters: Baselitz’s indulgent expressionist work is shit, but it provided good visual breaks. Broke for lunch in the café under the cupola, beef goulasch, salad over barley, rose; a great chance to get up close and personal with the ceiling painting. First floor is Egyptian (astounding Art Nouveau-Egyptian ceilings), Greek, Roman, Cypriot, and Palmyran antiquities. Also the Kunstkammer, every elaborate box, widget, necklace, and tool you can make out of stone, bronze, gold, silver, gems, and pietra dura. Benvenuto Cellini’s salt cellar is the star, and the Gem of Augustus is huge, a cameo as big as a dinner plate.
Had wanted to walk parks to clear our heads, but rain kept us inside, so we ducked back to MuseumsQuartier for the Museum Moderne Kunst/MUMOK/Museum of Modern Art. This is the Ludwig Collection’s contribution, and frankly, a disappointment. Great gallery spaces, but the renowned Klees, Picassos, and Pop Art nowhere to be seen. Instead lots of poor contemporary art. Adam Pendleton is a black queer American artist who does graffiti and videos. “On Stage” attempted to show Austrian Actionism, performance-based art from the 1960’s and 70’s. Lots of artists acting as performers, but not a lot of performance art. Unfulfilling. Below the plaza is Kunsthalle Wien, which had a big neon gay flag out front, but the show was about the rebuilding of Skopje, Macedonia, after an earthquake in the 1960’s. Looks horrible; Kenzo Tange, the architect/planner of the new city, has a lot to answer for. Back to the café we’d been to Monday for coffee, Sachertorte, and a Kaiserspritz; the waitstaff recognized us, which was a nice surprise. Walked to hotel for a break, then dinner at Haas Beisl in Margareten: celery-potato soup, backhandel, white wine spritzers. Delicious, and we were learning to not over order.
Wednesday, April 26
One of the best parts of Vienna is the ease of transport. The 13A bus ran us directly north from Pilgramgasse to Laudongasse, and the Volkskundemuseum. This museum of Austrian folk art is in von Hildebrandt’s Schonborn Palace. More of a big villa than a palace, and the museum is a little dusty and dowdy. But they do a fantastic job at presenting some really big ideas. One, what is Austrian, and Austrian culture? For a country that spent so long as the core of an empire that’s disappeared, this is an important question, and the museum works hard to present one possible version. Second, what is the role of refugees in Austria? Without impinging on the permanent exhibits they use photos and wall text to compare contemporary Syrian refugee lives in Austria with previous groups of refugees who came to Vienna after the empire’s collapse, fleeing the Germans, then fleeing the Russians. Finally, a lot of the creators of the museum were the same Jewish families who the Nazis stole from, deported, or killed. Ironically, many of those families’ looted collections were then given in guardianship to – this very museum. The exhibit focused on the Mautner family, who had run major textile industries in Austria. What was it like to be packing a survival bag for the train to Dachau while friends were inventorying the art collection in your living room? What is the museum’s responsibility to the artifacts, and the families? All hard questions, none ones we anticipated a museum of woodcarving and dirndl skirts to ask, much less attempt to answer. When the collection was restituted to the Mautner grandkids they donated it back to the museum. Education on multiple levels, all well done.
Through Josefstadt, around the Rathaus in the Ring, to the Schottenkirche. In the Middle Ages Christianity was brought back to Vienna by Irish monks, who were generically referred to as Scots, “Schotten”. The church has a lovely baroque interior. Across the street the Freyung Passage is a stylish shopping arcade under the Palais Ferstel. Am Hof, the western part of the Old City, once housed government before it relocated to the Hofburg. It was in intervals (punctuated by pogroms) the center of Jewish Vienna. Their Jewish Museum is partially housed here; the current exhibit, “Guilt” seemed too heavy for the moment we were having. The Vienna Holocaust Memorial in the Judenplatz just outside is by contemporary British sculptor Rachel Whitread; she created a cenotaph-like structure out of a cast of a library turned inward, so all you can see is the pages of the books. Fascinating. A few blocks over is the Romermuseum in the Hoher Markt, which preserves the ruins of the former Roman garrison. We skipped this as well, but checked out the Nuptial Fountain by Fischer von Erlach, and the Anker Clock, on the Uhrbrucke between office buildings, which on the hour has a mechanical display of the top twelve people in Vienna’s history. We got to see Maria Theresa and her husband Franz. Lunch at Akikiko, a chain of Japanese-themed noodle shops. Got the U-4 from Schwedenplatz and took a nap as we realized I had contracted “the Vienna cold”. Michael picked me up donerkebab for dinner.
Thursday, April 27
I bet you thought we were done with the Hofburg. State Rooms, President’s Office, Albertina. But wait! Franz Joseph built an entirely new wing, the Neue Burg, which opened after his death and the empire had devolved into the petty nations of the Risk game board. With an imperial residence but no emperor to house, young Austria used it to house the Kaiser’s collections. Today those collections have been loosely unified into a bunch of museums, whose relationship, hours, and admissions rules change depending on the guidebook or website you’re looking at. Generically this is referred to as the World Museum Vienna. We started in their special exhibition “Science Fictions”, which looked at how indigenous people around the world are finding a critique of colonialism in Star Wars and other science-fantasy realms. Pretty cool. Took the elevator up to the main collections of armor, weapons, and musical instruments. Oddly, galleries kept ending at velvet ropes at the top of stairs in an obvious rotunda, with Roman sculpture inaccessible across. Backtracked through the galleries and down to a stunning collection of ethnography, whose highlight is the feather crown of Montezuma. Mayan, Aztec, Native American, South Pacific Islands all well represented. The museum is famous for its Ephesus statues, but how did we get there? Broke for a melange and Franziskaner, then asked a guard who told us that was now a separate museum/admission. We exited, circled, and at the same entrance we’d used last week for the Prunksaal found the entrance to the Museum of Austrian History and the Ephesus Collection. Odd combination, I would guess the gallery space was available for the new history museum, but the Roman antiquities too difficult to move, so they just worked around them. The Empire had funded digs at Ephesus in Turkey, and the Roman finds there are fantastic, lots of work we had never seen. The story of Austrian history intriguing, several galleries on restitution of Nazi-looted holdings and on who will tell the story of the Holocaust now that the last survivors are passing. One large brilliant gallery tells the nation’s history since 1918. The remnant Austria was certainly Nazi before Hitler, under a dictator named Dollfuss, who was incongruously not anti-Semitic. Our friend Doris had recommended the café in the Burggartens’ Butterfly House. Got to eat at a table outside, salad, chicken over rice, apple struedel, all washed down with a fine Gruener Veltliner.
All these days in Vienna and we had yet to ride a tram on the Ring. That’s not as easy to do as it sounds. There is no tram that just runs around the Ring; instead trams use the Ring to avoid going through the Old City. We hopped on the #1 Tram on the Burgring and rode clockwise around to Schottenring, then along the Canal across the Vienna River to Kunst Haus Wien. Friedensreich Hundertwasser was a pretentious 20th Century Vienna artist and activist whose work was in its own school, a little Pop, a little Expressionist. He was the kind of artist who insisted that only his ideas had validity, even as he was clearly influenced by the artists of the Secession. Still, this museum, the tourist shopping mall Hundertwasser Village across the street, and public housing Hundertwasser Haus down the road are distinctive, bright, and make tourists to Vienna happy. Didn’t pay to see the interiors, which if the gift shop and bathrooms are any indication are tiled and deliberately break up floors with bumps and curves, so impossible to walk without tripping.
A few blocks south is Haus Wittgenstein. This had been commissioned by Ludgwig Wittgenstein’s sister. Yes, the great philosopher and writer Wittgenstein. He didn’t know anything about architecture, but his sister had asked him to help keep an eye on her architect and builder. Ludwig ended up taking over the project, extending construction for years, but constructing a Modern gem with what are supposed to be impeccable details and proportions. Not sure, because the Bulgarians now run this as a “cultural center”, but have surrounded it with a wall and don’t let anyone in to see the house. What we could see over the defenses looks like a perfect white box.
We picked up the U-3 at Rochusgasse to the U-4 to the hotel. Went to the local Dancing Noodle for dinner: shrimp gyoza, beef soup with pulled noodles, chicken and basil, a lovely local Chardonnay. Northern Chinese, good.
Friday, April 28
Took the U-4 further west, past Schoenbrunn to Unter St. Veit. Another pretty suburb, Hietzing, this one home to the Klimt Villa. Klimt had a studio here, and a patron built his villa over and around it. So you’re really touring a house like in Chevy Chase that has a couple walls and a reproduction of the space Klimt sometimes painted in. But a good intro by the ticket guy, and decent interpretation of the artist, the community that supported him, and the works destroyed by or expropriated by the Nazis. Pretty gardens, then walked just north of the subway station to a Penny’s. In Berlin this was a favorite grocery store, here it acted more like an Aldi.
Caught the subway back to Karlsplatz, walking past the Hotel Sacher to J&L Lobmeyr on the Kaertnerstrasse. This is a fancy glass and china store that sells some reproduction Wiener Werkstatte work, but nothing we would risk to Austrian Air. Michael wanted to check out their big department store, Peek & Cloppenburg. Sadly this is just a branch of a chain, no Paris grand magasin, all clothing. The Laderach nearby sells the same chocolate as ours in Union Station. Walked up the Graben, a major shopping street downtown, checking out another plague monument, the Pestsaeule, this one a porcelain and gold swirling baroque column. There are public toilets here designed by Adolf Loos, but they did not seem to be open. St. Peter’s Church was dark and baroque. What saved this walk was Julius Meinl. I thought this was just a coffee supplier, but their store on the Graben is like Harrod’s Food Halls with sunlight. Amazing selection, we rounded out our gift purchases. Stopped at a Nordsee for a soup and salad break.
The Franziskanerkirche is another baroque gem, with an amazing tromp l’oeil altar and several more tromp l’oeil vistas in different chapels. We crossed the Ring at the Stadtpark, running into a Thai bus tour at the Johann Strauss Memorial, then subwayed back to the hotel. Dinner from Anker and the wurstelstand; the Debrezeiner looks like it was the origin of D.C.’s half smoke. Tasty.
Saturday, April 29
Caught the subway back to MAK to shop, but Michael could not find what he was remembering. Walked as far as Karlsplatz, but he was definitely feeling the effects of the still unsuspected Covid, so I got him back to the hotel to sleep. Walked back to the Kunsthistorischesmuseum, checked out the Vermayer cartoons (like, for tapestries, not Snoopy) on three and replayed the paintings, Egyptian and treasure house. Finally got a chance to try hanging in the hip bar in our hotel, which served decent pub food. We got two spritzers, a steak sandwich, and falafel plate. Took a final walk around the neighborhood, paid early for checkout, and packed our bags.
Sunday, April 30
An easy Uber to the airport, and Austrian Air got us home to D.C. by mid-afternoon. A totally worthwhile trip. Sorry we had not gotten to check out the wineries in the Vienna Woods, or the monasteries at Melk or Klosterneuberg, but very happy with what we were able to see.
