Vienna

22/8

Warm, quiet night, good sleep and up for a 45 min bike bash along the Danube, J+J.  The morning is clear, the river is karkee grey according to Jeff, slaty green according to Jen, a source of ongoing amusing debate, kids seem to agree with dad.  However, all agree it’s not brown in any way.  A procession of cruise ships pass by, the guests all lining up for their buffet breakfasts and we wonder which one Gren was on 2 yrs ago.

Kids punch out some maths while we do the washing machine fandango - we do long for the wash/dryer stack in our little laundry next to our kitchen!

A slick pack up after some ball games with Kel and we exit Tulln via the Spar to buy more essentials - milk, yoghurt, bread, shoe deodorizer - still can’t find any of that and the shoes are on the pong.

Short (45min) drive into Vienna to a campsite by the Danube only a few km from the centre.  It’s hot (33deg) and dry, the grass is browned, somewhat akin to an Adelaide summer day.  Filling sandwich lunch, then a long read in the shade as we wait for the day to cool off, then on the bikes, across the New Danube (canal parallels the old one), 

up along the skinny man made island, a cable ski facility, large packs of sunbakers along the said “40km of Vienna beaches”, cyclists, runners, skaters, we dodge and weave till we arrive at the ReichsBridge which we cross heading into the center of Vienna, whose 1^st impressions are of a very well endowed modern city of quite some size.  As we cross the bridge we see a church which is the 1^st of the old world stuff we were expecting.

Again, the cycle tracks are superb and the drivers so aware and considerate - Australia lags way behind in this and in these days of atmospheric carbon concerns and an aging, obesifying population maybe it’s time we tried to catch up, at least in the bigger cities.

Park the bikes after crossing the Donau Canal and set off on foot into the centre.  The Stephans Platz with it’s impressive dom is the 1^st stop for pics, the tile roof is different, the inside is a gothic overstatement.  

Stephen Dom

Outside we are accosted by some lads from Kosovo selling tickets to a musical feast with opera, ballet and orchestra, Mozart and Strauss, tomorrow night, 6:30, Kib for free, paid up, we have the tickets, but will we see a show???  Lets see.

Then the tourist neurones spark again and we find ourselves on one of those kitch horse and carriage rides, driver says with English commentary, only his speech impediment and English are so bad we settle for nodding and snapping rather than listening too much.  We spin and surge past so many captivating sights and know that we must come back on foot with a map and some more information.  And when the 20 min ride is up we hand him the 40 euro Jen thought he said and he says it’s 55!  Well it was a nice ride, especially for Jen and Kel who sat back fantasising about how they would have acted as the ladies of court in the time of Mozart.  Unfortunately for Wil a severe case of hayfever looms and he can’t wait to get as far from the horses as possible - bugger! 

On the way home in the cooling sunset we course along the Donau Canal and the into the Prater, a giant parkland crisscrossed by bike, walk and horse tracks, studded with playgrounds (picked out 1 to visit in the morning, wait till you see the slide!), also multiple social games of soccer and even a mixed tag gridiron event.

Back at Ed for a light dinner, shower (throngs of fellow campers in queues, mostly Italians in their dressing gowns, they do seem to love their hygeine), read, blog, plan tomorrow, bed. 

23/8 - AHHH, VIENNA (boom,boom......boomboom,boomboom......boom,boom........disczh)

A most wonderful day in a most wonderful city.  It’s like Paris, only Jeff reckons smaller & cleaner and I’d add, with outstanding ‘radwegs’ (bikeways) and MUSIC!  The French still have the most beautiful language & style though and their green spaces are hard to beat.  Maybe Vienna's green is better???

We skipped school with the excitement  & pull of Vienna just over and along the Danube a bit.

Our bike trip in traces the Donaukanal & crosses the Danube. It is augmented by great expanses of lush green lawns & city forests all studded with the fanciest playgrounds yet - The Prater.  What could take only 20 minutes takes about 1.5 hours as we stopped to experience these.  Jeff is exhausted & sweaty before we get to town having pushed the kids up and down enormous poggle embankments and on giant-sized swings.

one big poggle swing - lawyers wouldn't allow it in Oz

That slide

When in the zentrum, we welcome the cool air-conditioned tourist information office and quickly get the low down on the Vienna card (really adds benefit on public transport but our treadlies cancel out this advantage) & the best way to access the art & sights that interest us.

So, having tied up bikes in another grand Parisian-like platz loaded with fine statues, fountains and ring roads lined with palaces & grandeur, we walk over to the two palaces of Belvedere.  

musical metal thing

Belvedere Gardens

The upper one houses the largest exhibit of Austrian born Gustav Klimt paintings in the world.  It’s meant to be one of the finest examples of Baroque architecture and has incredibly extensive gardens and a knock out view across Vienna.  It was built in the 1600s as the summer residence for the general Prince Eugene of Savoy (who’s that?).  Wil does an art commentary on Old Man Dying, a rare realist piece of Klimt’s and Kel is delighted by his gorgeous gold and ‘scrap-bookey’ style fancy lady portraits.  We walk around them sideways admiring the shimmering silvers & golds in beautiful swirls and sometimes angular shapes.  Our favourites are stylish, sexy Judith, elegant Fritza Riedler and distant Emilie Floge.  Neither bambino is moved by The Kiss!  An engaging Canadian couple ask Jeff to take their photo and end up inviting to come to Toronto where they’ll show us around - travelling seems to so rapidly connect people. 

With our tummies rumbling, we catch a cab across town to a Lonely Planet recommended authentic  wiensnitzel house and as the cabbie pulls away, our shoulders slump in the oppressive heat as we see the ‘closed for business’ sign. A beautiful local women just appears next to us and gives us directions to another favourite snitzel spot, "Schnitzelwirt."  Check out the photo - we spent an hour over lunch and ate almost every little tiny bit!  

Bloated, fulfilled, sleepy and immensely satisfied, we walked ‘1000 miles’ back across town taking in amazing baroque and art nouveau architecture, making our way to the splendid Imperial Hofburg Palace. 

The stables and performance arena for the Spanish Hofreitschule are housed in one enormous wing.  Outside, DVDs run on big screens showcasing these beautiful white Lippizaners…. Nags doing an athletic type of dressage.  I’m sure Jeff would’ve liked to have secured a ticket but at $120 each and Wil’s explosive allergic response yesterday, he says he’s happy to simply have seen the extraordinary location.

An Ozzie!!

In search of a coffee, we end up in the foreplatz of the Rathaus where a few weeks of film festival, indigenous food stalls and local theatre & dance performances bring the late afternoon alive.  We happen upon a group of about 30 very attractive Russian kids doing explosive dynamic traditional dances.  Just behind is an iced coffee stand - perfect!  A double expresso iced cafe latte puts Jeff back on his feet in readiness for our evening of music.

So, we march on to find the Palais Auersperg where we’re welcomed by an enormous cool white marbled hall with sweeping staircases, the turns of which are marked by grand fountains, and red velvet carpets, broad gold hand railing & glittering chandeliers.  We are led into a gorgeous, rather intimate oval shaped room with really high ceilings and walls of pink and green marble.  Wonderful fat low hanging chandeliers provide soft lighting and somehow, all the seats seem to be at the front.  So, the Kosovo lads had the goods! ( E39 x 2;E29 for Wil  free for Kel - who was 7 tonight.)

Settled in, a thoroughly engaging evening of chamber music, orchestral movements, opera and ballet completely disappeared the 2 odd hours.  Wil had a moment of wet eyes when realizing how much he loves this stuff and how does one fit it all into one lifetime.  I must say, I get this.  Once again, I teared up regularly next to Jeff with the glorious uplifting acoustic feast and noted again how my classical music experience is completely unquenched.  And here I sit, IN VIENNA, with my family who are all so enjoyably drinking it in.  Kel can’t stay in her front row seat for her excitement!  She bobs up & down telling us that she’ll play this ‘song‘ at her wedding; “I know this song”;”‘isn’t her voice a cracker - I thought it’d explode a chandelier”…….and the beautiful blonde ballet dancer (whose frocks brushed against Kel as she came & went from the stage) was the subject of a serious girlie crush.  Kel wasn’t quite ready for it to end - “ aw! Is that it!” - and so, played it on in her imagination, twirling & humming her way through the gardens & streets back to our bikes.

By this time, the gorgeous city had a completely different feel with mod music pumping off lit up roof tops & sidewalks full of pretty people.  Our ride home, whilst enchanting as we cruised past Viennese supping wine and chatting along the banks & in the "beach bars" was a wee bit scary because the long evenings are done and it’s dark by 2045.  Invisible without bike lights, the adults were relieved to reach the campsite by 2100 safely and after a cleansing & cooling shower, collapse into bed (our snitzels still distending our guts & occasionally, pleasantly repeating - will we be ready for breakfast in the morning?)

24/8

  

“VIENNA WAITS FOR YOU…….”

Walk/run/sit ups etc and then breakfast.  Yes, amazingly, there’s room!

The kids settle into epic writing.  Kel writes an editorial for a Parisian journal about her life in 1800 Vienna as Lady Lucy of Belvedere and WIl writes up his Klimt analysis followed by some research on European Rivers.

As yet unknown to us, this’ll be our last bike ride into Vienna despite having another day or two planned.

What a magical display of summer facilities as we whizz past monster sized cable water-skiing on the river, dedicated running tracks for miles up the guts to centre city and playground choice so plentiful that one spins in indecision.  The bike tracks are complete even zipping along on architecturally groovy cycling bridges suspended beneath all major traffic bridges crossing the Danube.  The system is so well lubricated that one only really appreciates the massive crowds when looking back over the days photos.  Interestingly, we’ve never seen so much elaborate whole body tattooing and piercing as in this very old city characterized by elegant and immensely grand palaces.  In fact, we wonder how many mountains have been moved & holes dug to put all this stone work above ground. 

Anyway, speaking of nature, our first excursion is thoroughly joyful from the very beginning - suggested to us by the lovely Aunty Lotte.  We tie up in the overgrown leafy cafe gardens of the playful Hundertwasser Kunsthaus and begin a delightful journey over uneven tiled floors, crazy curves to accommodate ‘tree tenants’ and enlivening, hippy, cacophonic art about love, nature & simplicity.  The orgy of colours and spirals that this crazy old chap uses take our eyeballs into an utter utopia of mesmerizing sensual design.  I could plaster our walls with it!  We can see why you loved it so much Lotte, and Glen and Steve too......he was a naturist!!  Delivered some famous speeches starkers!

the uneven floor

boy's room

Almost giddy, we take the bikes further into the zentrum and have planned a pull up at a wurst stand where we order one of each of the bloody massive sausages & pull out our chopping board, knife and seedy bread for an Austrian stand up lunch.

across the road from the crime scene

Stinking hot, we slink along in the shadows cast by grand shopping streets stopping to gawk at two, 3 story air-conditioned Swarovski superstores before reaching the Musikhaus.

Here we spend an absorbing 2-3 hours learning about some of the composers born in Vienna (Schubert, Strauss, Wagner, Mahler…) and those who made their names here (Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven……..)  In the 1700-1900s 3 % of the population were musicians, a figure I’m sure now has steadily grown when you experience the buskers.  The calibre & number of exemplary young performers singing, in brass quartets, jazz and junk as well as traditional string ensembles is striking.  One just needs to buy a coffee and wander the streets for an evening of outstanding live music for only a few bucks in tips.

compose a waltz.......

then waltz!

hit it harder!

fart sounds, eternally amusing!

The kids lost themselves in The House of Music as there were 4 levels that in  addition to the formal learning stuff also included interactive sound sensory displays, massive instruments to pound and experiment on (Wil and I thrusting our whole bodies against an enormous drum & jolted backwards, we could stand in the wonderful resultant vibration) and of course all those giggly things like farting noises.  They could compose a waltz by throwing a dice over an electronic template and best of all they stood for ages interactively conducting the Viennese Philharmonic Orchestra, members of which played along for a while to their woeful leadership but then stopped and gave them lip!  Wonderful dark, airy atriums with sumptuous surfaces allowed us to lie on our backs in surround sound hearing the thumping tunes of the Philharmonic Orchestra and in another, curl up to sounds of the womb.  So not surprisingly, we left just before dark and blissfully enjoyed a bubble tea listening to street theatre.

they played "Smooth Criminal" !!!

Back at the bikes, weary and ready to slog home we notice some F****** has cut the lock, put Wil’s bike back and stolen Jeff’s!!!  Arghhh!!

OK, so Jeff cabbed home to dig out the insurance papers and the kids and I warily made our way home discussing the concept of theft and what we’ve learned as a family.  Kel reckons we should buy another great bike and put cheap stickers on it; Wil reckons the thief chose to impact a great man and would feel ashamed if he could loom into Jeff’s eyes, Jeff wants to see the guy on his bike from the cab, pull over and bash his teeth out but then satisfies himself that the buggar stole a crap bike… Mum says, whom ever stole it is worse off spiritually than us (sappy hey?).

So no more Vienna tomorrow.  We’ll leave but via a bike store ‘cos it’s how we get around and how we enjoy to exercise as a couple.

25/8  ERIN’S BIRTHDAY