Vienna: the Crossroads of Central Europe

The following entries record my experiences through a month-long program in Vienna through UC Davis Study Abroad. The course focused on  Although the following entries are part of a class assignment worth a sizable portion of our grade, I am going to try to have a lot of fun with it along the way. Although I took many notes on ideas for entries throughout the trip, the majority of the entries have been composed after the program concluded so I could better reflect and organize my thoughts while being able to more fully enjoy my time in Vienna. The posts are not in chronological order. Instead, I want to focus on the abstract. I will often write about my personal experience, but only so far as is needed to explain why I think and feel the way I do. Some of the following entries will discuss important historical figures such as Dr. Karl Lueger, some will approach cultural institutions such as the Viennese coffee house, while some will examine artistic, social, or political movements such as Jugendstil or the Protestant Reformation. Others, will approach lighter, less academic topics such as traditional Viennese pastries or public transportation. This, however, like most anything in life, is subject to change as I write.

If this trip has taught me anything, it is that that more you know about yourself, and the world around you, the less you understand. To paraphrase Jack Kerouac, I have nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

Extra Credit

Over the course of the program, we were offered extra credit opportunities for going outside of our comfort zone. Some of these were food related, while others were related to certain pieces of art and other things.


Blood pudding!
I didn't get a picture of myself eating it, but we had it twice as a group, and I definitely have witnesses. I personally wasnt a fan. the texture was just.... bleh. It was definitely hearty though, and I imagine it was a great use of blood back in the day, when iron wasn't as present in other parts of the diet as it is today.

Glasses!
I... uhh... acquired a number of souvenir glasses from the various bars, beisln, and heurigen I visited during the trip. I picked up so many glasses that I couldn't even fit all of them into my bag home. I ultimately got four home:

One of my victims

1. a Puntigamer glass from our lodge in the Rax
2. an Edelweiss glass from a restaurant across the street from the Zentralfriedhof
3. a Murauer glass from a small restaurant in Melk with a beautiful view of Stiftmelk
4. a Reininghaus glass from the restaurant we stopped at in Waidhofen an der Ybbs.

*In hindsight, I don't really remember if this was extra credit or not, but it oughta be.

Selfies!
I took a selfie with the famous painting of Napoleon in the Upper Belvedere, against the museum's rules.

I wasn't feeling ballsy enough to try taking a better one. Partial credit?

German Course!
Before leaving for Vienna, I stepped my game up from just signing up for an online course: I took GER 1 in Spring quarter before leaving for the program. It was a wonderful experience and convinced me to look further into the feasibility of declaring a mnor in German.

Remembering Dr. Karl Lueger

Distinguished for marked improvements to Vienna's municipal infrastructure, molding Vienna in the shape of Modernity, thrice elected mayor Dr. Karl Lueger is viewed with ambivalence in Austrian history. As a member of the Christian Social Party (a precursor to the Austrian People's Party) Lueger ascended to political eminence through a behind the opportunistic shroud of antisemitism, at this time virulent amongst Vienna's middle class. As leader of the Vereinigte Christen Lueger rallied votes from both the left and right wings until the Christian Social Party assumed majority control of Vienna's city council. He was elected to be mayor five times in his political career, but Franz Josef, seeing Lueger's politics as a threat to the city's welfare, refused to sanction the election three times. In 1897, upon endorsement by Pope Leo XIII, Karl Lueger finally assumed the position of mayor. In his reign he

Should the Viennese celebrate Lueger for ushering in the “modern” Vienna or condemn this him for the propagation of antisemitic rhetoric which Adolf Hitler himself used as a model? The political archetype of the double-edged sword is ubiquitous in history, and although there is no definitive answer to that question, the 2012 renaming of Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring on the Ringstraße to Universitätsring is perhaps a telling indication of today's sentiment.

Dr. Karl Lueger in 1897

Punschknopfen

After class one day, I took the tram back toward Kandlgasse and wandered into the Tullnerfelder Bäckerei, an unimposing building with a small fabric awning decorated in vertical pink and white stripes, vaguely evoking the innocent joy of a child walking into a billowing circus tent. Inside, a smiling elderly woman greets me with the regional “Grüß Gott” and a “bitte” as she patiently waits for me to order (this patience seemingly a rarity in the Viennese service industry). For a moment I stare through glass display at the array of  beautiful pastries. A pink cube caught my eye. Gesturing towards the mysterious confection, I asked what it was. When she replied with "Punschknopfen," I pulled out a piece of paper and asked her, in German, to spell it for me, so I could go back to the dorm and look it up. The term translates to "punch button" in English, due to its shape and liberal use of rum. I decided to Google the word and found out that the more common name is Punschkrapferl, but I like Punschknopfen more. According to the Wikipedia page, the origin is unknown and like many other Viennese foodstuffs are steeped in myths, being either attributed to Ottoman armies during the Second Turkish Siege or to a confectioner at the imperial court. An article on Wien International's website suggests that Punschknopfen were created as a way of dealing with leftover or stale cakes, by soaking them in rum and covering icing to return the cake's lost vitality. According to an article on Deutsche Welle's website, the humble Punschknopfen is also purportedly a term for a politician with a socialist (pink) facade but supposedly Nazi (brown) machinations, an issue in Austrian politics in the postwar period.

When I took home that strange and unassuming pastry, I certainly wasn't expecting it to carry such cultural significance. I guess that's just one of the exciting things about immersing yourself in a new culture.

Wiener Wasser

Throughout areas of heavy pedestrian -- especially tourist -- traffic, one can find aluminum cylinders about three feet in diameter with the Viennese state seal and the words "Wiener Wasser" printed on the sides. These are public drinking fountains, which otherwise appear to be very uncommon in Austria. My professor tells me that these were recently installed because tourists were fainting in the street from heat exhaustion a little too regularly. The Viennese summer heat is generally considered to be quite oppressive, particularly when coupled with the region's high humidity, so I consider myself lucky that I was able to experience what my Viennese penpal called a summer of "most peculiar weather."

Something apart from the mildly humorous company name "Wiener Wasser" stands out about the water here: it is of outstanding quality. There was even a sign above the sink at a hotel I stayed at that read -- and I'm paraphrasing here -- "This water is from the mountains; it beats the tap water you're used to by a mile. If you drink the water, you might not want to ever leave Vienna because of how badass our water is." As it would turn out, Vienna has a long-standing history of high-quality spring water going all the way back to the city's Roman precursor, Vindobona. Around 1553, the city's first documented pipeline was constructed. This pipeline originally served the imperial palace, but eventually also served a communal well in Margaretenplatz. Today Vienna's water supply is based from two main source lines which can be read about here.

The people of Davis, although blessed with a wonderful public transportation system, are cursed with terrible tap water by state standards. The exception to this is if you live on the UC Davis campus, which draws it's water from a deeper aquifer than the city does. Drinking Vienna's water reminded me of Tap'dNY a bottled water company that got it's start by bottling water straight from the tap from the founder's New York City Apartment. I could certainly imagine something similar happening in Vienna.

The picture below is of the water fountain at Heldenplatz, directly in front of the Hofburg. The lighting in my original picture wasn't that great, so I decided to take a picture from the internet.

Edelwiess and the Rax

The Edelweiss, Latin name Leontopodium alpinum, is a rare alpine flower that has become a symbol of Apline life and a point of pride for the Austrian people. It almost exclusively grows at altitudes above 1800 meters and was once sought after as an ingredient for folk remedies.

Today (and since 1886), due to extant fears of overharvesting, the Edelweiss is a protected species in Austria, and many other countries.

Edelweiss, which translates to English as "noble white" is used as a symbol in literature and art, as well as national symbol in Austria, particular in the Tyrolian regions. In Roger and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music for example, "Edelwiess" is the title of Austrian patriotism, opposing the imminent Anschluss by Hitler's Third Reich.

The Edelweiss is a common symbol used by many groups for many purposes including on some Nazi SS officer uniforms. A list of some of these uses can be found on Wikipedia.

When hiking in the Rax, I kept a sharp eye out for the noble flower, which is today a rare sight. I was not as lucky as some members of our group (I'm looking at you Kathy, Alex, and Hans-Joerg), but I was still able to go home with some memories I will never forget!

Speaking of the Rax, that experience -- just three days and two nights -- opened my eyes to a small variety of cultural differences between Austrians and Americans.

One in particular that stuck out to me was that the Austrians seem to take a much less structured approach to their wilderness. Even on hiking paths, much of the time there seems to be almost no effort to "tame" the wilderness. In place of the conventional trails you often see in the US, most of the time in the Rax I felt like my group was just following painted rocks that were each about 40 yards for one another. The fog was thick enough at a few points, that we just had to guess the proper direction because we couldn't see the next trail marker -- a fun game to play in the cold, pouring rain, no doubt!

Visit to the United Nations Headquarters.

In preparation for our visit to the United Nations Headquarters, we were asked to formulate a number of questions to ask our lecturer for the IAEA. The questions are as follows:

• What is the IAEA's view on nuclear disarmament? Does the IAEA view all nations in the same in this regard, or are, for example, non-combative/neutral nations under less scrutiny? 
• How does the IAEA attempt to control and regulate nuclear materials and waste?
• To what extent, if at all, does the IAEA subsidize nation's for investments in safe nuclear power?
• How else does IAEA incentivize the transition to nuclear power? 
• Does the IAEA play an active role in recovy for nations and regions dealing with fallout from incidents such as Fukushima?
• How does the IAEA enforce anything, if it does at all? What powers do they really have?
• What nations have been historically least cooperative in the IAEA's efforts? What about more recently?
• What sort of educational background is most desired by this branch of the United Nations? What roles, if any, could a chemical engineer fill here?

We were also given a short lecture by two representatives from the UNODC, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. They talked to us about the world report on human trafficking and human smuggling.

• How is data collected for reports such as these? How do you approach a country with a terrible track record for trafficking, and say "hey, I want to tell the world how bad you are." That must be GREAT for tourism.
• What are the reasons for nation that did not submit data for the report?
• Are there any alarming trends emerging from the data? Anything hopeful? Anything that's just interesting?
• What people(s) are most susceptible to being victims of human trafficking?
• What role does the UNODC play in preventing human trafficking? What powers does the UNODC have in this regard?

The Leopold Museum and the Jewish History Museum

I decided to talkle both of these museums in one day. In hindsight, maybe it wasn't the best idea, because it was quite exhausting. 

The Leopold Museum was wonderful. It was quite possibly my favorite in Vienna. At the start of this program, I wasn't really a fan of Klimt or Schiele, but as time went on, they found a very special place in my heart. Schiele in particular vaguely reminds me of the work of Jhonen Vasquez in terms of it's emotional aesthetic.  The Leopold Museum is entirely from a private collection, and is heavy in Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka. The museum captures the striking change in style of these artists that occured over the years.

My favorite pieces from the museum were Klimt's Faculty Paintings, particularly Medicine and Philosophy. At the time of writing, the screensaver on my phone is a zoomed in shot of Medicine depicting Hygieia. Unfortunately the original paintings were destroyed in WWII. Full scale, mostly black and white, photographs of the originals.

Medicine, Gustav Klimt

Philosophy, Gustav Klimt

As terrible as it is to say, I found the Jewish history museum for the most part underwhelming. I only got the see the Dorotheergasse location, and not the Judenplatz location, which probably would've been more interesting in hind sight.

What is Baroque? -- Habsburg Representation in Art

Baroque is the style of  European art of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries often characterized by extravagant adornment and stifling ritual, rising from the success Catholic Counter-Reformation in the Habsburg Empire.

After the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic church regained dominance in both politics and culture. The pomp and circumstance of the imperial court, Sunday mass, burial processions, and other such events were entrenched in ceremony and worship are very much were characteristic of the Baroque as the Habsburgs claim to divine-right absolutism reached a climax.

The architecture of this period almost seems to create the image of the imperial palaces such as the Belvedere and Schönbrunn being a sort of bastion of heaven on earth, with their beautiful high domed ceilings, intricate stucco mouldings, and heavenly frescoes depicting scenes of  angels and divine ascension. These buildings were were constructed to resemble the major Baroque churches from the era as well, two of which in Vienna include the Karlskirche and the Peterskirche, furthering the comparison of the Habsburgs to the divine. A central tenet of divine-right absolutism is to draw parallels between earthly rulers and divine-rulers. An emperor presides over his his earthly kingdom much as the Lord presides over his eternal kingdom. The Habsburgs worked hard through most of their dynasty to strengthen this parallel.

These two entities, church and state, represent the political and cultural powerhouses of the time. The exorbitant displays of wealth by these institutions are as though to say to the common people, "we are powerful enough to recreate the empire of the Lord on Earth."

The Upper Belvedere is a beautiful example of "Gesamptkunstwerk" of the Viennese Baroque in an imperial palace. Peterskirche and Karlkirche are similarly baroque churches constructed in the early eighteenth century.

Information on the history of baroque period in music can be found here.

A ceiling fresco in the Upper Belvedere

The Karlskirche as seen opposite its reflection pool

What is Jugendstil?

Jugendstil (literally "young style" in English) is the German name of the Art Noveau movement, or, perhaps more accurately, the German and Austrian take on the Art Nouveau movement. Artists from this movement took inspiration from figures and motifs found in nature and applied it in almost every art form imaginable. Jugendstil rose to prominence in Austria in 1897 when a group of artists from the Association of Austrian Artists, fed up with the organization's fixation on historicism (think Ringstrasse), left the Association to found the Vienna Secession. The founding artists were Gustav Klimt, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffman, and Max Kurzweil. Later additions include Otto Wagner.

The Secessionists exhibited their art in the Wiener Secessionsgebäude (Secession Building) in Vienna's fourth district, itself designed by founding architect Olbrich. The Secessionists contributed in many different ways, hoping to achieve Gesamtkunstwerk, total synthesis of the arts. Klimt and Kurzweil became renowned for their paintings while Hoffman and Moser went on to found the Wiener Werkstätte and Olbrich and Wagner left their mark on Vienna's cityscape with their architecture.

The Wiener Werkstätte was a workshop with facilities for many types of applied arts including woodworking, metalworking, leatherworking, and the manufacturing of textiles, which manifested itself in furniture, housewares, jewelery, garments, and more. The artists of the Werkstätte believed that all people should have access to affordable art of superior craftsmanship. This ultimately didn't turn out to be the case because the pieces were often expensive and time-consuming to produce. With a motto like, "better to work 10 days on one product than to manufacture 10 products in one day," it is easy to see why their products weren't affordable to the general public. The Leopold Museum has a small gallery of Werkstätte pieces.

Apart from the Secession Building, many other examples of Jugendstil architecture can be found across Vienna, my favorite of which is the Karlsplatz Stadtbahn Station, designed by Wagner and Olbrich, a now defunct train station that was used from 1899 to 1981 in favor of the expanding U-Bahn system. Today, the two remaining buildings are home to an exhibition of the nearby Vienna Museum and, the other, a café.

Something left unmentioned in both Parson's text and in class was that Viennese Secession was not a novel idea at the time. In fact, similar movements took place in Munich five years earlier and in Berlin one year later. Not that it diminishes Viennese contributions to fin-de-siècle culture, but Austrian history likes to paint the Viennese Secessionists as revolutionaries that challenged the status quo in ways yet unheard of, failing to mention once, from what I have seen in a number of museums and books on Viennese culture, the fact that they mayvery well have just been following what was fashionable at the time.

Beethoven Frieze, Gustav Klimt in the Secession Building

What is Biedermeier?

Biedermeier, other than a fun way to test your knowledge of German diphthongs, is a an art style and social sensibility that arose in the Era of Metternich, the period between the Congress of Vienna of 1815 and the revolution that swept across the Austrian Empire in 1848.

Goethe once wrote, "Biedermeier led a double life," speaking the nearly paradoxical admiration of a home-centric urban middle class lifestyle as well as the nostalgic longing for return to a simple, pastoral lifestyle steeped in faith and tradition.

The term Biedermeier stems from a parodic pseudonym Herr Gottlieb Beidermeier used by at least two writers from the era to publish poems satirizing the increasingly apolitical middle class. In the words of Nicholas Parsons, Herr Biedermeier was portrayed as a "mildly philistine family man of modest ambitions and sober pleasures".Works penned under Biedermaier's name were published in the Munich-based periodical Fliegenden Blättern, but the term was eventually used to describe the era's cultural stagnation. The strict censorship of the period ensured that most writers avoided political topics, favoring instead subjects that often focused on country life or historical fiction.

The Biedermeier sensibility present in Austria between 1815 and 1848 can be reasonably compared to the Mayfield sensibility pesent in American culture in the 1950s and 1960s characteristic in television programming such as Leave it to Beaver.

The Vienna Museum on Karlsplatz as well as the Upper Belvedere have impressive collections of Biedermeier paintings and furniture. An online gallery exhibiting part of the Belvedere's Biedermeier collection can be found here.

Am Fronleichnamsmorgen by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

Es ist Mein Wille: the Ringstraße

In his 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Czech author Milan Kundera creates an abstract dichotomy of beauty. Kundera posits that there are precisely two, mutually exclusive forms of beauty. I wish I had the book on me at the moment, as it is one of my favorites to thumb through, but I was at least able to scavenge this quote from the internet:

"Beauty in the European sense has always had a premeditated quality to it. We've always had an aesthetic intention and a long-range plan. That's what enabled western man to spend decades building a Gothic cathedral or a Renaissance piazza. The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms which in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, without design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkle with with a sudden wondrous poetry."

While much of Vienna's first district is a bastion of Kundera's "beauty by mistake,"Vienna's Ringstraße is a wonderful example of "beauty by design," each detail painstakingly executed by great historicist architects. Amongst these buildings include the Rathaus (city hall) standing in it's Neo-Gothic grandeur and the Universität Wien in the Neo-Renaissance style to hack back to the era's resurgence of learning, just to name two of many. Each of the Ringstraße buildings were built in a historicist style that best reflected the intended purpose of the buildings being constructed. The buildings, although in my opinion very aesthetically pleasing, were not without their flaws. Amongst other complaints, the Rathaus was too poorly lit, and the Parlament has abhorrent acoustics. At the inauguration of the Staatsoper, Emperor Franz Joseph offered harsh criticism that incited the suicide of one of the two architects. Ten weeks later, the other died of tuberculosis, and neither saw the building's completion.

The Ringstraße is the former location of the city wall, constructed in the thirteeth century during a time when it was actually useful to have a giant wall surrounding your city. Outside the city wall was a Glacis, an area free of buildings and vegetation extending approximately 500 meters in every direction. Inside the wall was the inner city, which is now the first district. In 1857 , Emperor Franz Joseph made a decree for the demolition of the city wall with his famous declaration, "Es ist mein Wille" ("It is my will,") marking, to many historians, the beginning of the Gründerzeit, or "founding period," an era of immense economic and industrial growth for Vienna.

The Rathaus

Military History Museum and the Imperial Treasury

Our on-site coordinator, Elliott, gave our group a special tour through the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum. While his tour was pretty great -- Elliott was animated and engaging -- the museum itself left something to be desired. Apart from a very well-done exhibition on World War I and the Thirty Years' War (in my amateur opinion), the rest of the museum was pretty one-sided and, dare I say, bland. The World War II exhibit for example was devoted almost entirely to displaying arms and uniforms used by the Reich's army, with virtually no attention paid to the Holocaust, the other belligerants in the War, or the fact that they suffered a crushing defeat. Instead it seemed like they wanted to glorify Nazism and their military's small successes, which seems in poor taste. The gift shop also sucked. Just sayin'.

The museum itself is almost more impressive than the exhibits in it. Like the Kunsthistorisches and the Naturhistorisches Museums, it was purpose-built as a museum to be located within Vienna's Arsenal when it was built in the 1850s. It is the oldest museum in Vienna.

Later on, I returned to the Imperial Treasury. My film group had intended on filming a scene for our movie inside the museum featuring the crown jewels, so we wanted to go back to plan the scene. The exhibits were still breathtaking the second time around, and the lighting was just as bad. The crown jewels are probably the centerpiece of the exhibit, which is impressive considering everything else on display.

The Austrian Crown Jewels are the coronation garb of the Holy Roman Empire and eventually the Austrian Empire. The three most recognizable pieces are the crown, orb, and sceptre which are pictured below.

These are the same vestment that gave birth to the Austrian Empire after the collapse of the Holy
Roman Empire. Pictured below is Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor who later became Francis I, Emperor of Austria, painted by Friedrich von Amerling in 1832. This painting can be found in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Arnold Schönberg

Arnold Schönberg is a Viennese composer who is considered part of the expressionist movement. He was born in 1874 and lived in Leopoldstadt, the former Jewish ghetto of Vienna. None other than Gustav Mahler accepted him as his protégé, by whom he was strongly influenced early in his career. He managed a successful career until fleeing Central Europe due to the mounting Nazi threat. He emigrated to the United States where he taught at a number of including UC Los Angeles.

Music historians often divide Schönberg's compositions into thee periods: late romaticism, free atonality, and twelve tonality.

I was given the task of listening to Schönberg and offering my unsophisticated opinion on his music. I've not done much (read: anything) in the way of analyzing classical music, but thought I'd give it a try. In order to build a basic understanding of Schönberg's development as a composer, I chose three pieces of his that are hopefully adequate representations of each period of his career.

1. Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899)
• Feels very "together." Musical ideas work with one another rather than against one another. The music seems "logical," in that when attempting to anticipate what happens next, I feel as though it makes sense to me -- not surprising. Feels almost like incidental music or even operatic in that there isn't a strong melody that emerges until later on in the piece, and even then it doesn't linger for long. It is as though the listener is supposed to superimpose his or her own melody on to it.
2. Fünf Orchesterstücke, Op. 16 (1909)
• There is definitely more tinkering with the chromatic scale throughout the movements of these pieces. By staying away from music based off of the major scale (what western listeners are most accustomed to), you add a sense of strain to the piece that can't be resolved due to the lack of a musical "center." The musical textures in this context are eerie and disconcerting.
3. Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 (1928)
• Same notes as last piece, but more exaggerated. It really just makes me uncomfortable. It's like modern art: some people are just going to say that you're are too closed-minded to understand it, when other people are just going to think it's bad. End of story.

It's not so much that I can't appreciate it so much as I think that it's musically very limited, which is the opposite of what Schönberg was attempting to do by breaking down the walls of contemporary music theory. I just can't imagine this music being used for anything other than incidental music in a classic horror movie. However, Schönberg himself had very different thoughts. In fact, in reference to his emerging style, he reportedly told a friend, "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years." Well, it's needless to say that didn't happen.

Sachertorte

I made a trip to Café Sacher at one point early in the trip to try the renowned Sachertorte, what Hotel Sacher claims is "the most famous cake in the world since 1832." The entrance to Café Sacher is directly opposite the Staatsoper on the busting Philharmonikerstraße in Viennas first district. Our group of eight arrives and is seated almost immediately (unfortunately at four tables of two, rather than together). A few minutes after being seated, a waiter approaches us with a "bitte," and after a second of hesitation on deciding which coffee beverages we wanted, the waiter briskly walks away without a word. This is one of my first experiences with the brusque service that typifies pretty much the entirety of the Viennese food service industy.

When the waiter returned a few minutes later, after serving practically everyone in the room except for us, we each ordered the Sachertorte and a coffee. (I ordered an Einspänner.) A few minutes later, our orders arrived, the Sachertorte served elegantly on a small plate with a fork, napkin, a dallop of whipped cream, and a Hotel Sacher chocolate medallion. Pressing my fork into the slice of cake, I was initially met with slight resistance by the chocolate ganache until finally breaking through the rest of the cake. The first bite was... underwhelming. Perhaps the whole experience was just overhyped, but I found the cake to be mostly dry and unimpressive. The chocolate medallion may have been the best part. Well, at least the coffee was good.  We finished and managed to flag the waiter for a bill. my half of the bill ended up at just over ten euros, which was anticipated, but still felt pricy after the disappointing fare.

On the way out, I stopped by the restroom, where I passed by a door to the kitchen. A glimpse through the open door yielded a telling sight: there were at least 80 plates of Sachertorte on a countertop, ready to be taken away by waiters as they were ordered. I felt as though I had been scammed, to an extent. These cakes were clearly mass produced and definitely not made with the same care that they were back in the earlier days of Café Sacher; it has become a tourist trap.

As much as I would love to habe been able to experience the glory of the Sachertorte at some point in the past, ff I ever visit Vienna again, I think I'll avoid Café Sacher and advise others to do the same.

Travelling Santa

There is an elderly man clothed as Santa Claus meandering around Vienna in a red power scooter. On the front of the scooter's basket is a handwritten cardboard sign that reads "Santa says please do not smoke indoors with children! Give them clean, healthy air."

I first saw this man right outside the Irish pub nearby our apartments on Kandlgasse. I thought little of him at first, thinking he was just some eccentric, probably homeless, old guy, so I avoided him.

A couple weeks later, I saw him as I was walking past Albertinaplatz. He was at the Bitzinger stand, likely ordering a sausage. By this point I was curious, but I didn't investigate any further.

A few days before our program ended, I happened upon the Vienna YouTube channel and I scanned through the videos. I was surprised to find a 25-video series: a Travelling Santa advent calendar. You can find the series here.

Whoa.. This isn't just some weird dude in a Santa costume -- he's a Viennese institution on his own rite, much like San Francisco's late Bushman. The Vienna tourism website even has an entire page dedicated to him. His name is Micheal Klein and has been travelling the world as a hitchhiker since 1953, when we was only 13 years old! Today, at the age of 74, he finally settled in Vienna, the (for now) terminus of his journey. Pretty cool.

Catholic and Protestant Sensibilities in Art

The Reformation and Counter-Reformation dealt with more than just the issue of transubstantiation in Western Christianity -- the different sensibilities of the Protestants and the Catholics also manifested itself in art. While the Protestants were off committing iconoclasm of Catholic icons, many artists were hard at work painting and sculpting their way into history. Subjects of Protestant art typically did not emphasise depictions of the saints, the Virgin Mary, and the Passion nearly as much as in Catholic pieces. Subjects of non-secular pieces often focused on other Bible scenes or depictions of wholesome family life. Depictions of the Crucifixion became much less common, and, as compared to in Catholic churches, Protestant churches often chose instead images of the Last Supper as their alterpieces.

Below are two pieces, one by a Reformer, the other by a Counter-Reformer.

Pieter Bruegel's Children's Games, 1560 is currently on display at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. In this painting you can see children playing games in a town's square. Some of these games are rather harmless while some seem more disturbing, such as lighting fires and poking at feces with a stick. The idea Bruegel may have been trying to suggest in this painting is one that is characteristically Prostestant: we form our own relationship with god and grow closer to him through our actions. Rather than depictions of Saints being holy with their fancy halos and junk, Protestants preferred to convey their wholesome Christian values through scenes of morality (or lack of) in daily life.

Caravaggio was one of the most skilled artists from the Counter-Reformation. His work, commissioned by his Patron Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte. Here is his piece The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, c.1602. Many of his other pieces can be seen at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Getting Lost in Vienna: My First Day

It wasn't part of the planto get lost in Vienna my vey first night there. In fact, it was VERY MUCH not part of the plan. In my preparations for the trip I had decided (arrogantly) not to schedule a stay at a hostel or anything along those lines. I was just going to get there and figure it all out. After taking the CAT to Wien Mitte from the airport, I chose a direction and just walked. My rationale was as follows: the train station in named "Vienna Center". It is in the center. I can walk in any direction and find one of the sights I had read so much about.

So I walked... and walked... and then I walked some more until I came to a park with two huge cement structures. (It turns out that these were the Flakturm that we would visit in our bus tour about a week later.) I pulled out my map and found out that I had gone in completely the opposite direction of the city center.. That awkward. In the spirit of adventure I decided to walk back a different way I came just to take in the sights a bit. The area was mostly residential. It seemed nice, but I didnt have a good frame of reference for what "nice" housing is in Vienna at that time. Anyway, I enjoyed it. It was a slightly overcast day -- warm, but not stifling.

One of the Flakturm

I eventually got to the Ring and could see Stephansdom's south tower looming above me in the distance. I followed it until it was directly in front of me. I took a minute to marvel, but then decided to be on my way, because I still had to find a place to stay for the night, and it was getting dark by this time. I eventually pulled out my Lonely Planet guide to look up hostels in the city and I walked to one. It was full. I walked to another one. Reception was closed. I walked to yet another, they were full. The story repeats like this for a couple hours. In that time I had found one decent looking place with a free bed: a small luxury hotel called Das Tyrol for 125 Euro a night. Ouch. That was like four days worth of my budget. After looking around a bit more, it was past 11 PM. I was unsucessful, tired, and already homesick. Resigned, I returned to Das Tyrol and emptied my wallet for a half-decent night's sleep.

The Humble Heuriger

During my time in Vienna I visited two Heurigen, traditional Austrian wine gardens. The word is derived from the the Austrian term heurig which means "this year's." Heuriger is singular while Heurigen is plural. These wine gardens serve wine exclusively from the most recent vintage, and can only offer cold food. A typical fare at a Heuriger falls along the lines of bread rolls, various cuts of hearty meat and sausage, various cheeses, and other cold dishes such as cucumber salad. A Heuriger opens for about 3 weeks out of the year, which reduces competition among the regions vintners.

The humble Heuriger is a product of a 1784 decree by Emperor Joseph II which allowed all residents to sell self-made wines. With all of the vineyards that surround the city, you don't need to go too far to find some well-produced, relatively inexpensive varietals that are difficult to find back home.

You will mostly see white wines at Heurigen, though some reds can be found. From what I could tell, the most popular is Grüner Veltliner. You can find more information on taste profiles and food pairing with Grüner Veltliner here.

The Third Man

The Third Man is a classic noir film set in postwar Vienna. It was directed by Carol Reed and released in 1949. It is currently listed at #100 on IMDb's Top 250.

The Burg Kino on the Ringstraße shows The Third Man every Friday night at 11:00 PM. Although the movie is great (one of my favorites -- I've seen it a few times), the theatre was small and, unlike ANY theatre I had ever been to, oppressively hot, especially considering it was late in the evening.

I had dressed warmer than normal, expecting the theatre to be overly air-conditioned as you're likely to find in the US. The heat had my brow beading with sweat throughout the entire film and I actually ended up falling asleep about halfway into the film, probably because my body didn't want to be conscious in heat like that. 

Great film. Terrible theatre.

Stephansdom and the Imperial Crypt.

In Vienna there is a saying that, approximately, goes "as long as there is scaffolding on St. Stephen's, the people of Vienna knows all is well"

Stephansdom is the heart of the city today, and that was probably even more true centuries ago in the Vienna of yesteryear. We were given an extensive tour of Stephansdom, that lasted 4+ hours. Over an hour of it was spent walking around the exterior alone We were offered splendid insight into many aspects of the cathedral's history including the local legends, a few of which are retold here. The interior of the cathedral is beautiful, and one can feel the history dripping on you from the ceiling.

One of the most notable interior features of the time is the Gothic stone pulpit, masterfully carved from three solid pieces of stone. In addition to being marverously adorned it was also, reportedly, a wonderful display of early acoustic engineering, being shaped in such a way that the voice resonated clearly through the nave. Unfortunately, according to Gretl, our guide, the upper enclosure of the pulpit is being improperly displayed as the lid to the baptismal font. Another striking feature of this pulpit is that it characterizes a new era in church masonry --  the master builder, Anton Pilgram had the gumption to leave his signature (AND HIS FACE) on this the damned thing, something that wasn't unheard of at the time. Before this time, the church usually employed entire guilds to build these sorts of things, and to prevent displays of vanity in the glory of god, would often leave their work unsigned.

Der Fenstergucker - Anton Pilgram's self-portrait

A while after the tour, I made a trip to the Imperial Crypt (Kapuzinergruft). The crypt is located beneath the Capuchin church in the first district. Many members of the Habsburg royal family have been buried there over the years. I was expecting something very different from what I received. The Crypt was well-lit and felt rather open, nothing at all like the catacombs of the Michaelerkirche I visited the day before. When I was expecting to see another dank, stuffy chamber with bones just stacked in the corner, instead the sarcophogi were all very ornate and many were decorated with creepy (copper?) skeletons wearing crowns. I suppose one should not expect any less from the Habsburgs. Most of them have lived their life in extravagant displays of wealth -- why would death be any different?

Public Transportation

My hometown of Santa Rosa, CA suffers from a rather ineffectual public transportation system. “CityBus” as they stylize it features a fleet of primarily outdated and – frankly – odd-smelling buses running nineteen expensive, inconvenient routes, which do not operate past 7:00 PM. The nearest stop to my house is five minutes away by foot, and my experiences have demonstrated the drivers' total inability to keep a schedule. The service is not subsidized for students of the local junior college and further contributes to traffic congestion in the city's center and harmful vehicle emissions.

Back in Davis, I am spoiled by the well-designed, free (to undergrads) public transportation provided by UNITRANS. Two routes run directly by my apartment complex every fifteen minutes between 6:30 AM and 11:30 PM, and in less than twenty minutes I can be dropped off at either of the University's main hubs: the Silo or the Memorial Union. The city is also remarkably bike friendly, and my motorcycle solves the issue of difficult to find parking downtown. Although Davis is heavy with spread-out suburbs, the city becomes easily maneuverable thanks to the development of efficient public transportation infrastructure.

However, the public transportation network in Vienna blows UNITRANS out of the water. Vienna's cross-platform network includes extensive S-Bahn, U-Bahn, tram, and bus systems, the latter three using shared tickets. A recent survey I found online shows that 53% of Viennese commute to work daily via public transportation. My experiences with Wiener Linie was overwhelmingly positive. From our apartment on Kandlgasse, I am less than two minutes from the nearest tram stop and less than four minutes to the nearest metro terminal. The city's first district, bounded by the Ringstrasse, provides the perfect hub for transportation to and from the outer city. As a tourist, the public transportation system makes me feel close and connected to the city's historic center without paying for the luxury of the beautiful Hotel Sacher.

The newest generation of the Wiener Linien trams