Just got back yesterday after a lovely few days – even the weather did its best. An excellent hotel, good value and very convenient, and some great things to see… we didn’t do the half of it. So, Hastings Battleaxe recommends Vienna. But it is a diet disaster zone…
Our hotel, the Hotel Stefanie in Taborstrasse – no I didn’t altogether choose it becasue of the name – was just on the other side of the Danube, very convenient for the airport bus, the trams and the U-Bahn. (Just a word about public transport, the first day we very rashly rode on the tram without a ticket because we couldn’t see where to buy one. You get them from tobacconists and kiosks…) The hotel was excellent, very warm and comfortable, very clean, reasonably priced and with a nice little cafe bar where we ate in the evenings when we were too tired or too full of sickly cake…. We would certainly stay there again.
Vienna is an exceptionally civilised Euro city. Very open, spacious, clean and prosperous. The centre was full of high-end designer shops. I wonder how many English Brexiteers have ever actually visited a proper European city, German ones in particular? I was much struck when we went to Hanover…. immaculately dressed Euro business persons with designer brief-cases, high-end shops, Mercedes’ cruising the streets, all so clean…. and those loos – every place you go to has an immaculate loo… Most people in Vienna spoke flawless English. So embarrassing. Philosopher, however, does speak some German, so we did redeem ourselves. There is so much to see – we only covered a fraction of it all.
Anyway, we walked up into the old city, and visited the Stephansdom – the Cathedral. It didn’t do a lot for us. Dark, heavy and not that architecturally inspiring…. Most of the major churches to visit in Vienna are Baroque/Rococo. We didn’t get to see the most famous ones. Next, we visited the first of far too many Grand Viennese Cafes – the Cafe Demel. We ended up sitting downstairs, not realising that the main salons were upstairs. However, their hot chocolate was truly delicious, plus a couple of small strudels.. It has a fabulous, sumptuous shop full of chocolate…
We didn’t go inside the Hofburg Palace, the home of the Hapsburgs, apart from popping into the Spanish Riding School to get tickets (see later). Vienna has many massive palaces as well as the Hofburg there is the Belvedere, which we didn’t visit, and the one which apparently is the most OTT, the summer palace, Schonbrunn, which we did visit, (see later).
We walked through the Hofburg to the Museum Quarter, and specifically, to the Leopold Museum, which specialises in Austrian art. There looked to be an excellent modern art museum down there as well, but we had no time for that. The Leopold had a fantastic exhibition, ‘Vienna 1900, the Birth of Modernism’ which was truly excellent. What an extraordinary flowering of talent there was then – not just painters, but architects, designers, philosophers, writers, composers – think Klimt, Schiele, Freud, Mahler, Wittgenstein, Schonberg, Loos, Berg… it was all riveting, not just the paintings, which were fantastic, but furniture, room sets, pottery, glass….
The Leopold has a good cafe, where we had lunch, and a fabulous shop. After, we walked across to the Secession Building, saw Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze – or what was left of it after the Germans had finished burning the building in 1945.
Then it was time for tea and cake, in the Cafe Museum. Sachertorte with kirsch and cherries…
The next day was the Spanish Riding School. I had wanted to visit since I was a little girl. Granted, the desire wore off a bit with the advent of puberty, and being mocked at boarding school for still being into ponies when I should have been into boys, but still, it had to be done. Philosopher nobly yawned and scratched his way through Morning Exercise, where the white (and still dark young) Lippizaner horses are ridden round the famous Winter Riding School to practice their routines. Only horse-lovers would appreciate this, because they don’t actually do a lot, and even this nostalgia-infested Battleaxe could only manage about half an hour. In the winter, they do very few actual performances, and the prices… no way. In the afternoon we had booked a tour of the stables, which was interesting. While the guide was talking I spent a while eye to eye with one of the white stallions, who was resting his head on the sill of his box. You were not allowed to touch them, but he snuffled at my face as I tried to recapture the 10 year-old me who would have died for such an experience…
In the gap between Morning Exercise and the Stables Tour we went to the Cafe Central, probably Vienna’s most famous cafe. The problem with these places is that everyone else wants to go, and you have to queue to get in… it is just about tolerable in February, would be terrible later in the year. More hot chocolate and large strudel…
Then we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, or classical art gallery. Not totally great. Very traditional. Room after room of second-rate Italian and Flemish Renaissance religious canvases, interspersed with the odd Cranach, Velasquez, Van Dyck… rooms of vast fleshy Rubens, but one nice room full of Bruegels – oh, and a Vermeer.
We tried to eat lunch in the cafe – an amazing place under the building’s dome, but the service was so slow we had to leave. One more cafe for afternoon tea – I had planned to go to the Hotel Sacher, but got it wrong and we went to the Cafe Mozart next door. But it was another nice old place, Sacher Torte etc. Just as well we didn’t go to the Sacher, the queue was round the block.
On our last day, after an abortive trip to find an antique market, we had a quick bit of Imperial Torte and hot chocolate at the Cafe Aida…
and then took the U Bahn to the vast Schonbrunn Palace, once located out in the country, but of course the city has grown out to encircle it. It still has a massive park/garden, which we didn’t explore, and a zoo. Built in the late eighteenth century it is a Rococo riot of totally eye-blasting gilded salons. Our Imperial Tour ticket led us through 40 of them… Battleaxe was glad to have seen it but quite honestly I never want to see another gilded salon as long as I live. However, it was a lovely sunny day and we ate lunch outside at the very good cafe, followed by Mozart Torte at the tea-room…
But there was one more gilded salon to go. Before we left England I had booked, with great difficulty, tickets for a proper concert in the Golden Hall at the Musikverien, probably one of the most famous concert halls in the world. In Vienna there are many schmaltzy tourist concerts which apparently are pretty ropey, but this was the real thing. It was Rudolf Buchbinder accompanying Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider in a programme of Beethoven violin sonatas. Battleaxe has Buchbinder’s recordings of the Beethoven cello sonatas with Janos Starker on cello in her music library. Our fellow audience members were clearly the great and the good of Vienna – many of the women looked like retired psychoanalysts. It is a look Battleaxe always wanted to aspire to – thin, acquiline and intellectual-looking, with lots of grey hair done up in a chignon or french pleat… no chance.
Before the concert we ventured into the Cafe Schwarzenberg for our supper. I say ventured advisedly because it is reputed to have some of the most traditional, and rudest, waiters in Vienna. It was indeed traditional but was absolutely great – piano and violinist playing, and the waiters were old sweeties… However, again, we were lucky to get in – no chance later in the season.
Our last day was a bit overshadowed by anxieties about getting home. While we were enjoying sunny days the UK was being blasted by Storm Dennis. However, it was all fine. By the time we flew back the wind had died down a bit although it was still pouring with rain, the plane was only ten minutes late, and made a classically smooth landing. We had booked a car and driver back to Hastings. Just as well because fallen trees were blocking the railway line.
Argh had put on 3 pounds…
