Austria in Motion
Vienna, Austria
March 27, 2014
It’s a short walk to the Museum Quartier from my hotel. It’s late, 2 p.m. and I am just getting started. This is because I stayed up until 4 a.m. again trying to sleep. After an exciting voice lesson via Facetime, I just couldn’t get my eyes closed. Plus, I can’t let go of supervising our visitor guide production while I am gone. I read emails and correspondence until the wee hours. Coupled with writing my blog, which I realize is my way of processing my experiences, I am keeping odd hours these days.
I have learned that I will never be able to see it all, no matter how hard I try. Each trip means I must prioritize, choose a theme or some highlights, and enjoy whatever happens. Unfortunately, my train leaves Vienna early tomorrow morning, so I will have only this afternoon to see what I can.
The Museum Quartier is a complex of museum and art spaces in central Vienna. Lined with cafes and outdoor seating, it offers lots of art in a compact area. Perfect!
I choose the Leopold, partly because it was recommended as a “must see” museum in my guidebook, but also because the logo looks intriguing (an abstract figure in semi erotic pose, black on red). I am hoping for something other than a bland collection of portraits if I am only getting one museum here.
As I pass through an archway into the inner courtyards of the complex (imagine a grounds that spans 2 or 3 DC memorials), I spy a cafe full of people. It looks friendly and I am starving. I take my chances and grab a wooden slatted chair, hoping my twenty something waitress is kind. And speaks English. It’s been more than 24 hours since I had a conversation out loud, at least.
She does, and quite well.
I am a total eavesdropper when I hear English spoken. It’s a human thing to want connection, I think. Next to me is a Spanish student conversing with an Austrian couple in English. It’s mostly about politics but I laugh out loud when she says her thesis presentation in German might be a “f*#$*ing mess”, since she speaks Spanish and her English Lit degree is in, well, English. Well, at least she used her expletive properly.
My breakfast/lunch is a spinach dumpling. I wish I could explain is well, because it was fantastic in a very vegetarian way. Imagine a buttery stuffing of cheese laced spinach, but airy and surrounded by poached cinnamon pears placed on a bed of red cabbage, topped with candied walnuts. I left only some of the cabbage, as it was a little bitter for me. I wash it down with local Ottakringer beer and a latte macchiato as I eavesdrop on a group of Americans who have just taken the table to my left.
LA should be more careful about who it sends abroad, because they definitely leave an impression on foreign countries.I am hardly perfect, but these chicks exemplify the disdainful American travel mindset. It’s funny how on one hand they love being in Europe, yet want to know nothing about it. All they are here to do is consume what they already understand. For instance, they order their food (sprechen se English she says in a joking voice when she knows well they do), salads with cheese, but endlessly complain that it is grilled (basically a huge, buttery slab of fried cheesy goodness the size of garlic bread atop a plate of greens). I get the feeling that each site is a coup, a trinket that can be counted, quantified, essentially bought. The Vienna Riding School is a “take it or leave it” activity. As a horse person, I have an opinion about this. I lean over and insert myself to try to comment, they look at me like an alien and resume their conversation like I haven’t spoken.
Hmmm. Interesting.
I finish my coffee surrounded by Americans and English, for there is a man behind me, pleading for all the world reasons he can’t marry the girl he is with, unless they date for eight years. Eight years?! Who has that kind of time?, I think. I overtip my waitress as an apology for my countrymen and move along to the Leopold across a square filled with people lounging on blue benches designed for reading. I like a country that encourages reading, coffee and art.
Inside the Leopold I have a revelation. I have discovered the Colorist Movement. While crowds flood the 4th floor to view the Klimt exhibition, I make two passes in each salon taking in the bold lines and raw application of paint by Berg, Kolig, Shatz, and Johansson, although I don’t care for Egon Schiele. I return over and over to Kolig’s Longing, a bold figure of a man thrust forward in movement by his emotion. The paintings are large, occupying feet instead of inches, often filled with a single image or idea. Man on a Diving Board is my other favorite, by Johannessen, yet The Hope by Schatz is intriguing for its stark sexuality and intriguing robed man amongst boudoir clad women. I never pick up the audio guide, inclined to form my own opinions about what I see, but this piece could use some translation.
The exhibit is named Between the Wars, and there is a long series of short films in a small theatre off the main hall. As you enter, a twelve foot wall details the years of 1918-1939, leaving the book end years, and its effects left unsaid. As I sit and watch black and white reels of strong Austrians skiing, making their first telephone calls and celebrating the electrification of the railroad, my thoughts turn to a message from a lifelong family friend earlier that day. I had forgotten that her father, a friend of my parents, fled Austria during the war. They have family here still.
I remember Big Max Von Zimmermann as a man with a great smile, a duffer cap and intense eyes behind dark glasses. His firm and resolute manner with a touch of mirth always made him the center of a room, at least in my eyes. This is a trait he has passed onto his children as well. As I watch the film and consider the Austrians as a whole, I can only think of how the country refuses to look backward. Unlike the German psyche scarred with doubt and guilt, the Austrians seem to have quietly endured and refused to let it ruin their reserved national countenance. Although I can’t say for certain, I am pretty sure Max’s tattoo of numbers was the first I had ever seen, but I don’t remember asking him about it.
Later in the evening, my thoughts still linger on Austria. It’s a hard country to pin down in words. Vienna is massive, modern and devoted to art. Legions of performers come each year, including my taxi driver’s favorite band Metallica. Citing them as “powerful”, he nods in time as I tell him I don’t mind his music, which he has turned down on his iPhone as we head towards a chamber concert at Schonbrunn Palace. It strikes me as funny because the first time I ever heard German was during my heavy metal period in high school (Husker Du, Warlock and Yngwie Malmsteen). Regardless of genre, it’s a city that respects music.
Seated in a red velvet wrapped chair, the lights flicker, then fade down as the first violin takes her seat. The six person ensemble tunes to her bowing, after a check with the piano. Blessed me, they begin with the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony in G Minor, K. 183, I: Allegro, one of my favorite pieces.
I guess I am having a hard day thinking about the people who have passed in my life, like Max and my Dad, because I cry a little thinking of how much my father would have loved this concert. I even pretend for a moment the empty seat in the front row before me is reserved for him. He is the reason I was exposed to music. Often, he would turn on a music program on public television, much too loud and make me watch. He loved the Canadian Brass, and every family member can recount a time when he blasted the 1812 Overture over the beach from the speakers on his deck, much to the annoyance of his neighbors.
He didn’t care. Music was love in motion to him.
It is to me as well. Full on Viennese boiled beef and superb red wine from the pre-concert meal, I settle into an hour and a half of music. It is mostly Haydn and Mozart, with every other piece a ballet or art song. The actors and dancers are charming, the soprano doing a very classy yet funny version of “Ah! Quel dîner” (La Périchole), a drinking song. During intermission, I purchase a small watercolor of a horse drawn carriage as the other patrons drink wine and coffee (I used my champagne scrip before the show).
As I walk along the deserted avenue in front of Schonbrunn to the taxi stand, I take in the solitude. It’s cold, and I am indeed vey alone in this world. The scent of a flowering tree wafts by, stark branches reaching into the night sky against the glow of the palace walls. A taxi speeds by, I signal quickly and he stops. I slide in, greeted by a happy Italian man with warm eyes who chats into his earpiece as I give my hotel address.
As I let the heat sink into my cold bones, I think about how we are never really alone for long, For that, I am so thankful.
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