Vienna--Our Hearts Are Taken

Snow, later it obscured the Alps

Friday, March 11, Vienna.  It's been a very busy few days, very full, and very active.   We left Munich on the Railjet Austrian Rail (OBB) train late morning on Tuesday.   Cold and dreary in Munich, with a bit of snow on the roofs and chill in the air.   By the time the train reached the Alps, not very far, it looked like a blizzard outside.   We saw nothing of the mountains.  Salzburg was a quick stop in the snow. Once we got on to the plains of Austria, the climate changed and by the time we arrived at the Westbahnhof in Vienna, it was quite a nice day, although it has NOT been warm the entire time we have been here.   The food on the train was infinitely superior to the trash meal on the TGV from Paris to Munich.  Good beer, a good salad, and a very pleasant bowl of spicy Hungarian goulash.  The TGV does better on seat comfort, though.

The taxi drive to the apartment was quick, but circuitous around the huge imperial buildings of the city.   Our building dating from 1687 just after the Viennese rebuffed the last attack by the Ottomans, has been restored and turned into a group of apartments mainly rented to musicians.  There are not many buildings in the city that are this old.  Much of Wien was built during the 19th century outside the Ring.  

Our hosts, a flutist and an opera singer, are friends from performances in Washington and knew of the apartment's availability from the owner of the building.   It's a lovely one-bedroom, very modern, small kitchen and very nice bath.  It's also seven minutes walk and two minutes on a #49 tram from the Ring and about 15 minutes walk to the Staatsoper.

We of course took off immediately the examine the Neubau (Noy-bow) neighborhood, full of restaurants, exquisite shops and lots of beer halls.  It's clearly a younger person's hangout, but at the same time a residential neighborhood for all.   The cobbled gassen (gasse means alley in German but these gassen are mostly one-way streets as opposed to the strassen which are two-way boulevards) climb up and down the hills through the five story apartment buildings.  The trams weave through them at relatively high speed.   

We found good groceries at the local supermarket, not realizing that you have to weigh your produce before checkout.   A friendly clerk helped out.   We carried out milk, fruit, yoghurt and müsli back to the apartment, and then headed out to view the city.   We chose for dinner the Schnitzelwirst Restaurant recommended by our friends in Paris.  It's quite down home to say the least.  Like many restaurants here the front section is for smokers, and reeks of tobacco, but the deeper rooms are full of tables that are often communal.   The wiener schnitzel John had and the chicken schnitzel Ben had came in huge portions. Coupled with potatoes and cucumber salad the meals overfaced us, but we enjoyed them.

St Stephen's Cathedral

Demel's chestnut tort and strudel

Wednesday we started to "do" Vienna.  We did a self-guided walking tour (thanks to Rick Steve's book loaned us by neighbors Hannah and David) that took us from the Ring to the Opera and then into the zentrum, with St Stephen's cathedral, the Graben main shopping street for pedestrians only, and the rest.   We did not have sacher tort but instead went to Demels for pastry and strudel.  It's a very lovely exclusive old bakery and coffee house:  John enjoyed a chestnut tort and Ben an apple strudel.  The machiato for Ben and a mélange coffee for John were superb.  Service from a delightful waitress who led us to the tables of cakes and pastries for our choice was fun.   Clearly she has dealt with people for years.  This was our calorific and cholesterol-filled lunch.

St Peter's Vienna

Along the way we had stopped at St Peter's Church, off the Graben, and noted a 3PM Bach organ recital.   We went and listened a well-performed group of Bach pieces for 40 or so minutes.  Sitting facing a baroque altar with baroque architecture surround you is quite an experience.  Makes up for the cold weather.

We enjoyed the rest of our walk through the old city and then climbed back up the hill for a nap and then dinner.

We explored various listings and decided on a central European restaurant, Kristian's Monastiri, about two blocks from our apartment.  Dinner started with the decision that we would try four wines by the glass (two white and two red) and would choose what we like from the menu.  The whites came from both the Vienna region, a Setzer grüner veltliner, and from the southern province, Burgenland, an Esterhazy sauvignon blanc.  Both were lovely, though we preferred the gruner.  The reds were both from Burgunland, a pinot noir from Heinrich, and a haideboden, Austrian grape, from Umathum.  Very nice.   They went well with our meals:   Ben started with warm vichyssoise, while John had gin-soaked goat cheese.  Ben continued with a lobster and trout salmon dish and a salad while John enjoyed beef cheeks, an Austrian specialty.

Hundertwasser's Work

Even the bathrooms curve

Thursday we headed out to new places where English was not often heard. We visited the Kunst Haus Museum Hundertwasser, dedicated to the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an architect-artist who believed everything is in spirals and constantly in motion, including designing houses where the floors aren't flat and the walls wave. There were two art exhibits at the museum on photography. One by Anita Witek was truly enthralling as it drew you into her pictures. The other by Peter Piller, who uses images drawn from ads was OK, but not great. 

We lunched at a small Chinese restaurant on simple vegetable and pork stir-fries;  the meal finished with Chinese plum wine instead of a fortune cookie.  John enjoyed it.  

From there we went to the Museum of Applied Art (MAK) on the Ring.   Ben had seen a  story in the NY Times on the work of Josef Frank, now here in a definitive show. He was an architect-designer who believed that houses should be comfortable, a middle-class view of homes and designed his homes and furniture with that in mind.  Quite a difference from the starkness and cold rigidityof Le Corbusier or the Bauhaus.  Instead, more in line with, but more comfortable than, Frank Lloyd Wright.  What's interesting is that many of the fabric patterns and furniture he designed in the mid-20th century work are still currently in production.

Our feet were tired by that time so we took trams back to Neubau (you have to change from a #2 to a #49--we're getting quite good at this!).

Sea bass at Kulinarium 7

Viennese bakery: bread in many forms

We had noted that there was a new fish restaurant across the street from the flat, the Kulinarium 7, so we looked it up.   The chef, Toni Bjelancic, started his career in NY at the Culinary Institute and then moved to Philadelphia,  He had been working throughout Scandinavia and has now settled in Vienna, not far from his native Dalmatia, part of Croatia.  He is the son of a fisherman.  The food is lovely:  fresh fish from the Adriatic combined with Croatian wines made for a lovely dinner.   We had four white wines to go with the meal:  graševina from Slavonia, two malvasias from Istria and a chardonnay also from Slavonia.   We did the tasting menu which started with a mixed seafood antipasto (octopus, mussels with tomato, slice of cooked tuna with anchovy, shrimp on creamed mashed potatoes, eggplant and zucchini, tempura small sardines, olives and caperberries), then a carpaccio of Adriatic tuna with lemon sauce, a slice of cucumber skin and a mache salad.  The third taste was  ravioli stuffed with paté de fois in cream sauce and we finished with a filet of sea bass on tomato couli and sliced potatoes. We were too full for dessert.

Haydn down the street!

Our friends gave us tickets for a concert tomorrow of chamber music at the Staatsoper at 11 AM by one of them, and then tomorrow night we go to the Opera itself.   Today we will explore shopping and the Hofburg and see what the Imperial Hapsburg home life was like. Clearly the Austro-Hungariajn Empire was quite a place...a multi-national, ramshackle place but growing very quickly by the beginning of the First World War that ended it.  

Good times, good friends

We are about to enjoy our last dinner in Munich with our friends Pat and Michael.  It's been a grand time with them and we look forward to our next visits together.  Munich is not quite like John expected:  it's not medieval, it's not old fashioned, it's not terribly quiet, and it has mostly bland architecture.

All that said, we have eaten well and fully explored some of its nooks and crannies.  For instance, last night we headed out to see a new production of "Hair" at the Reithaller Theater.  This theater is currently inhabiting a warehouse while its real theater is being rehabilitated.   No matter, the crowd went wild over the 1968 musical  (that John actually saw that year on Broadway), which was somewhat re-written from the original to make it more current and more acceptable to today's audiences.  It also included a song neither of us had heard "I Love My Hippie Life," which was added to a European tour sometime about twenty years ago and cannot be removed because audiences demand it!  This show still has the brash music and the magnificent dancing.  The songs were in English, the dialogue in German, but, no matter, the intent of the production requires little speech.  At the end of this wonderfully done production, with many curtain calls and two encores, members of the audience ended up dancing on the stage with the cast.

We had enjoyed an earlier dinner at a Japanese noodle shop in the Swabing neighborhood near the theater, so came home to nibbles and bed.  Of course, it is now asparagus season, and if you don't realize it, Munich seems to offer the biggest asparagus we have ever seen.  What a mouthful!

This morning we headed off to a "must-see"-- the concentration camp at Dachau.  Surprisingly it's a 25 or so minute train ride with a short suburban bus trip at the end.  As we watched the groups of German students being escorted on guided tours through the horrid place, we could only think it is so good that this horror of the twentieth century no longer exists.  All the students seemed to be engrossed and quietly listened to their teachers.  One can only hope the lessons sink in. The museum is deep, heavy and ghastly.  

Tomorrow off to Vienna.  

Baroque and Rococo

We started late, savoring our morning coffee over memories of the concert Friday night.   Then we headed off to the center of town to find a new battery for Ben's Swatch.  Easily done, no charge!  Marienplatz, though, is busy on Saturdays.  Everything in Germany shuts down on Sunday so Saturday is the "must" shop day. Ben and Pat checked out several clothiers while John collected truck and tram pictures for his grandson.  Then we decided to head off to the Residenz, the home of the last Bavarian kings, the Wittelsbachs, who were deposed in 1920, having ruled since 1180.  It's a huge palace, rebuilt mostly after WW2.  

Cuvilliéstheater

Our first stop was the Cuvilléstheater, a gem of a baroque theater, rebuilt entirely with pieces saved from the bombings during WW2.  From what we learned the king sat in the royal box.   The nobles had the orchestra seats, with the better off middle classes in the tiers above on the second floor, and the less wealthy in the third and fourth levels.  Mozart performed here when he was in Munich. 

Antiquarium--seen from the Royal dias

This rococo chamber even has infinity mirrors

Well-lighted

We decided from there to head into the Residenz' rooms themselves. They start relatively (and we do mean relatively) simple with the huge

Antiquarium, built as a place to keep the royal collection of Roman and renaissance busts and statues.  it's huge and was turned at one point into a state dining room.  From there it's a long walk through up to 90 rooms (John thinks we saw over 40 on the short tour).   Some, such as the rooms used by the Bavarian royals when they were electors of the Holy Roman Empire (medieval times through Napoléon who abolished it about 1806) to the grand rooms that exceed excess in their rococo style.  After walking through well over a dozen of these rooms John remarked: "We are over-palaced."  Pat and Ben agreed.


After the Residenz we walked back to Pat and Michael's home, stopping for a very good wurst sandwich at a street corner. John felt better.   We have yet to have a beer, perhaps today.  

Last night we enjoyed breast of duck at home with an aglianico del vulture from italy, purchased at Eataly, the local branch of the international Italian food chain.   Pat was taken with it as were we.  We had had our first bottle in Pittsburgh last year.

Today we are off to the German-language performance of "Hair" with the songs in English.  We will see what we will hear.  

Munich...

We arrived in Bavaria's capital city Thursday late in the evening after a six-hour trip on a Train à Grande Vitesse from Paris.   It's a long way between the two cities, and more than half of it was spent in the dark--so no chance to see the steeples of Augsburg or Ulm.  The domestic architecture difference between France and Germany is quite noticeable once you cross the Rhine.

Our hosts, Pat Oliver and Michael Heil, live in the center of town, a few hundred meters from the Isartor Gate on the eastern end of the old town.   The subway system seems to be excellent.  We didn't need to wait for an S-banh streetcar/suburban train/underground from the big Bahnhof to the Isartour Gate.  

Munich's Founding Monk Statue on
New Town Hall: Munich=Monk

Friday, we spent a lovely day yesterday walking around (16,000 steps on John's Fitbit--it  may be a record for the trip).  The city is very modern, with  dull concrete and glass architecture, except for its few older, mostly reconstructed buildings. But the people are fashionably dressed, and very tall. 

Bavarian Knight Wins! Beats
French at Medieval Marriage
Fete.

We enjoyed watching the glockenspiel on the New City Hall a few minutes after noon, then headed over to the Viktualienmarkt for a lunch of brown bread, lox, lettuce, and goat cheese sandwiches (they write "lachs" here, not lox.).  We watched the crowd before finishing with three lovely cappuccinos and pastries.

Lunch with Pat at the Viktualienmarkt
--lox and goat cheese

Baroque gone wild

Trying to find out who he is?

A short walk from there (nothing is far from anything else in the old city) we arrived at the Asam Church.  This place was built by two architects as their private chapel, but also as the show place for their inventions and decorative arts.  It's so rococo!  From there we saw two other churches, St. Michael's, a lovely baroque church and the cathedral, the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), the seat of Benedict XVI when he was cardinal here.  It left us cold. 

     

Last night we went to a symphony performance in the Hercules Hall at the Residenz, a hall of magnificent acoustics and the home of Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra.  The program had only the two pieces.  Both were superb in execution, though we must admit that the Elgar Symphony 2 left us feeling that it was a climax that never happened.   The Jörg Widmann viola concerto was its German premiere.  He was there for it as a native Munchner.  It's a fascinating use of instruments, giving a wide variety of many types and movement of sounds (some atonal, some lyrical).  The violist as well as a few other instrumentalists moved around the stage among the other orchestra members.  Not something we would want to hear regularly, but still very worth hearing.

Dinner before the concert was a lovely repast in a top-scale restaurant, Brenners.   Three of us chose salads.  John's was lamb and artichoke, Ben's a vegetable salad topped with grilled chicken.  Pat had a beef salad, and Michael enjoyed grilled chicken with kartoffeln.  A bottle of Languedoc made the meal.

Centre Pompidou

Yesterday we spent a good part of the day at the Centre Pompidou, enjoying (I think that is the right word) the dark and difficult paintings and artworks of Anselm Kiefer.   He's about John's age and was born into the ruins of post World War II Germany.   His paintings are designed and painted to stop the German amnesia about that war.  At first John hated the show, but as we walked through and talked about the works, he began to enjoy it, though immensely is not a word he'd use.  Ben, on the other hand, found the paintings very complicated but understood the rationale that they derived from, and the artist's complex personality and history.  He looks at the Germanic myths that are part of the pre-World War II Nazi state and how they led to misery and darkness.

Paris as always, just lovely...

Arc de Triomphe

We've had four days of fun in Paris.  Arrived on time and into our friends' car for our ride into the 18th, the côte de Montmartre where they live.  An evening of good food, excellent wines and conversation.  John Lutz and Eric Tolbert are great hosts.   Our room overlooks a five street intersection, with such a Parisian air about it.

Montmatre

On Sunday morning, the streets were quite deserted until we arrived at the local market.  Fruits, vegetables, and cooked chickens went into the shopping bag.  (This morning, it's croissants from the boulangerie across the street.)  After breakfast we began one of our marathon walks, which have reached as long as six miles (10km), a day.  The view on Montmatre is always impressive, though the church, Sacré Coeur, atop the hill has always left us cold, hence no pictures of it.   From there we headed down, southwards, to the center of the city, through Pigalle and the local neighborhoods, to Gare Magenta, where we took the RER train out to see friends in Le Perreux, an older eastern suburb in the Marne valley.  It was long conversations there with much interest in the American election and whether Hillary Clinton would succeed.   We have found universal loathing in Europe for The Donald, and fear about Cruz and Rubio.  Not much support either for Bernie, whom most French and English, if they are aware of him, consider fringe.  Explaining the situation to those who don't quite understand American politics is often difficult, starting with the tripartite nature of the American government...adding that the discussion is often in French makes it a still more interesting endeavor.

Friends, the Leclercs 

Dinner with our friends the Leclercs, whom we have known for 20 or so years and visited in Brittany, was paté, which for this trip has been a staple, followed by lotte (monkfish) in a sauce américaine, wonderful cheeses, including a round delightful thom cheese from the south, and a lovely St. Émilion to go with it.   A marvelous orange cake completed Marcel's efforts in the kitchen, while Collette chatted with us, and their grandson, René, who has visited us in the States, whose enjoyed we enjoyed.  He's a film student here in Paris now.  Very grown up at 20, compared to the 15-year-old visiting years ago.

Monday was a day for puttering, John took the day to walk from Montmartre all the way to the Louvre, over five miles, and enjoyed every minute of it.  He spent a few minutes in the Galleries Lafayette and Printemps department stores, which he did not find much different from Nordstrom's now, and was amazed at the security officers checking all bags on entry.  He grabbed a baguette sandwich with tomatoes, salami and lettuce from a local deli and munched as he walked to find the bus to take him back to Montmatre.  Doubling the miles would have been more than he could face by that time.  Hosts John and Eric produced a lovely meal of beef filet and an Italian grilled salad from a local restaurant.   Much and many very good wines.

Eiffel Tower from Luis Vuiltton

Fondation Louis Vuitton

Yesterday we took off for the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Boulogne.  It's a Frank Gehry building and it is magnificent.   We had loved Gehry's Disney Hall in LA; this is better. The structure with its floating sides is meant to blend into the city scape and the Park, which it does like a cloud.   The views of the city and park from inside are prismatic.  We didn't care much for the modern Chinese art on view, though.

We spent the afternoon walking throughout the city with a late lunch at a café. In the evening we took the train to a friend's house on an island in the middle of the Seine in Poissy to the west.  From the dining room windows we watched the darkened silhouettes of barges moving up and down the river, with their lights marking their outlines.  We enjoyed stuffed, boneless, guinea hen with gewurtztraminer from Alsace, preceded by champagne and followed by lovely cheeses and chocolate cakes!  Can't say we aren't eating well, but with all the walking, John seems to be losing weight! 

Electric car plugs

Today we will head off to the Pompidou and then to a local restaurant for dinner. 

Some thoughts:   There are electric plugs all over the city for little electric cars like Smart Cars--a great idea.   The Metro runs every two to three minutes which makes taking an intra-city train ride easy.  No residence is more than 500 yards from a station.   The buses, too, run very regularly, and wind through the narrow streets.  If you don't have the equivalent of a WMATA Smart Trip card, though remember to validate your ticket.  If you are caught with an unvalidated ticket, its a 40 euro fine!   Trains, too, are really good.   We took an express to Poissy last night.  16 minutes from Gare St. Lazare non-stop.