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Vienna in a Day or Two

March 27, 2002

Dear Friends and Family,

I'm sure the travel guidebooks don't recommend trying to see Vienna in a day and a half, particularly if you are already worn down by months of travel. Nevertheless, that's what we did because that's all the time we had and we managed to get some story material along the way.

Monday morning, we packed up our bags, and prepared a big box of notebooks and pictures for mailing to Kyiv. We were facing almost a week of lugging suitcases on and off trains, taxis, buses, cars, and metros and sending a box ahead seemed like a good idea. As I write this, the box has not shown up, but we hope it does because it has months' worth of memories in it.

The train from Graz to Vienna passed through picture-perfect towns nestled in some of the lower passes of the Austrian Alps. It was fun to just stare out the window and think of places we still need to visit. This task will never be over.

Arriving in Vienna's south train station, we grabbed a luggage cart and wandered around, looking for a tourist bureau to guide us on hotel selection. In front of the bureau, we were accosted by none other than gasthaus owner Franz Schubert (not THE Franz Schubert). Franz talked a rough mixture of English and German, but he did it at great speed, as he extolled the virtues of his conveniently located small hotel. I liked the prospect. Marianne did not, but she was a good enough sport to go along with at least checking out his place.

That was not as easy as we might have assumed. The Franz Schubert Gasthaus was reached by taking a tram to a subway, connecting to another subway, and walking from that subway around the corner to a shabby door through a shabby lobby into an old elevator. Marianne was losing her good sportsmanship as we went along, but Frantz never stopped talking, so it was impossible to stop the process.

Fortunately, it was good news when we got to the gasthous itself. We had our choice of four clean and large rooms, each with its own bath. The cable television even had CNN! Marianne perked up and pretty soon she and Franz were "discussing" the Vienna map and the sights we needed to see. I breathed a sigh of relief as my experiment with a train-station solicitation seemed to work out. After Mr. Schubert left, we realized it had taken less than an hour for us to arrive at the train station and get settled all the way across town. I think that's a record.

We started the next morning with coffee and rolls at one of Vienna's elegant restaurants, the Cafe Diglas. Vienna is famous for cafes like this one and it was a nice start to the day. After that, we went to St. Stephen's cathedral. It was a cold and windy morning and even the horses in the row of carriages by the cathedral were wearing overcoats. We hurried inside, at least temporarily.

We were met with crowds of tourists. Maybe not large crowds, but we had become accustomed to "off season" and St. Stephen's cathedral in Holy Week was definitely not "off". The interior is large, dark and Gothic, not unlike other churches we've seen. It's very nice, but I'd recommend a visit on a sunny day.

Off on the side was a short line for the elevator ride up one of the bell towers. Neither Marianne nor I like heights, but since the line was so short we decided, once again, to go the path less traveled. Five people squeezed into a little, round elevator for the ride to the top. Up there, we stepped out onto a metal grating into a strong, cold wind. We looked over the edge, down to the cathedral roof and the jacketed horses far below. What on earth were we doing up here? Another sacrifice for a good church picture.

We looked around and left on the next available elevator. Back on firm ground, we decided that it was time to take a bus tour of the city, hopefully on a nice warm bus. We normally prefer to walk, but it was just too chilly. The tour bus was properly heated and the ride was the right solution for the day. We circled around the "ring" road that replaced the city walls when Vienna outgrew its medieval size a century or so ago. The ring road became the address of choice for the royal and wealthy of the day and their palaces and civic buildings cluster around the circle. Still today, a ring road address is sought after by prestige-conscious organizations like OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. I guess that's modern royalty.

Our one stop was at the Schonbrunn Palace. This sprawling complex of more than a thousand rooms started out as a royal hunting lodge of the Hapsburgs. At the time, it was out in the woods, but today it's in the city, not terribly far from the center. Today, tourists crowd through a few dozen of the largest rooms and, of course, our bus bunch joined the throngs.

I'd give a comprehensive summary of our visit, but I'm not sure I was listening very well. We've seen too many opulent palaces. The only thing I remember for sure was that the place was built out to its current size by Queen Marie Therese who ruled the Hapsburg Empire from her royal maternity bed. She had 20 pregnancies and 16 children, thus establishing a reputation for breeding that caught the attention of wealthy, heir-seeking men of that time. Daughters and grand daughters of Marie Therese found husbands throughout European royalty. Even Napoleon married a Hapsburg in later life to have a legitimate male heir and to solidify an alliance with the powerful Hapsburgs.

The other highlight from Schonbrunn was the apple strudel served in the cafe. That alone may be worth the trip if you don't need to see yet another palace.

Speaking of eating, dinner was another treat. We tried a small Italian place called Ristorante Moretti, just across the street from the Gasthaus Schubert. It was a modern, cheery place with a wonderful menu. Everything we tried was great but the best part came at the end. When we got up to leave, Marianne wanted to compliment the chef, Giorgio. We knew he spoke English because he had helped us earlier with the German menu.

Well, it was a slow evening and everyone in the restaurant had been served. Giorgio was just hanging around and he offered us wine to share as we stood at his bar and listened to his story. The wine was good and the stories even better. Giorgio was a 50-year-old drifter who had led a life of "listening to the wind" and had owned or run a number of restaurants in Italy, America, New Zealand and elsewhere. His friend had talked him into opening Moretti in Vienna, but it was clear that he would not retire at 65 from the same place.

Giorgio had even cooked for Dennis Conners' boat racing team during the America's Cup off New Zealand a few years back. I'd actually read that Conners had a reputation as a perfectionist in preparation and was very proud to have the finest cook among all the multi-million dollar teams. That finest cook was Giorgio. We chatted some more and he volunteered to give us a guided tour if we are ever in Venice, his hometown. Who knows, stranger things could happen!

On the second Vienna morning, we had just enough time to squeeze in a quick roll and coffee breakfast and a visit to an art museum. We chose the Kunsthaus Wien (Vienna Art-house), a museum that contains a permanent exhibition of works by the modern artist called Hundertwasser. We'd seen his colorful church a couple days earlier in Barnbach and glanced in at the museum from the bus ride. The exhibition itself was even more wonderful than hinted at by the buildings. Austrian Hundertwasser had been an authentic hippie genius artist up until his death at 72 a couple of years ago. He traveled throughout the world and was inspired by nature everywhere. His works were bold and colorful and seldom had straight lines. He even designed the Kunsthaus to have undulating floors because he felt that flat floors were artificial. We could have stayed for hours but we had a train to catch.

The ride to Budapest was just over two hours and the train was clean, comfortable, and not crowded. We shared our second-class cabin with one or two people but, with six seats per cabin, we still had more elbowroom than any airplane we'd been in. European trains are the way to go, at least east through to Budapest..

At the train station in Hungary, Marianne's cousin Klara met us and drove us to her home in Budafok, just outside of town. Klara was the organizer of our Next Big Adventure: The Trip To Erdeley. But that's another story.

Take care and think about home floors as uneven as those of forests.

John and Marianne

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