Belvedere....Klimt, Schiele and the middle ages

An odyssey within an odyssey....the subway of Vienna! A three day pass will now show us the bowels of Vienna and will ferry us from hither to yon even faster than before.

First, to Belvedere, a jewel of a castle. Now, Vienna is lousy with castles and ornamentation and excesses in architecture [a little as if Paris had been squeezed into a much smaller space] but Belvedere is exquisite.

And the castle is just the frame...here is the largest collection of Klimt paintings, including The Kiss, and a sizable collection of Schiele's large oils. But I was fascinated by the large collection of medieval paintings, 13th century...seeing the use of gold in these paintings,it is not hard to imagine where Klimt's love of gold stems from, surrounded as he was by these paintings.


Our new Austrian friends, Hugo an Doris Brugger, who had undertaken to introduce us to the magic of public transportation, now took us off to the Prater, the giant amusement park of Vienna...from the sublime to the ridiculous! The Riesenrad is not to be missed....unfortunately Q has refused to load any more photos, so you don't get to see the view from the top!

Still to come...the Hundertwasser house, the Lippizaner and the Vienna boy's Choir...and did I tell you we saw Hello Dolly?

Patterns and reflections of vienna

In wandering, seemingly endlessly, the streets of Vienna  ( actually bought a book on the "walks" of Vienna, but  haven't used it yet!), Bibi focussed on finding the patterns of Vienna... here some of her impressions of the glitz, the cafe culture, the shop windows....

Mozart and more

 Late last night, inside the 1000 year old walls of the Stephansdom, we listened to the melancholy sounds of the Lacrimosa of Mozart's Requiem, performed by soloists of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra...

......outside the walls, Vienna wept.

Earlier in the day we had the mandatory Sacher Torte....and amazingly enough, the Sacher Hotel has managed  to retain a bit of what I would consider the old Vienna, the "kuss die Hand" Vienna, which has been overlaid and buried by the thousands of tourists, the Macdonalds, Starbucks and the fabulous displays of designer stores...we live right downtown, around the corner from the Opera, so are right in the middle of things.
This morning we viewed the Picasso exhibit at the Albertina....not terrifically uplifting, since it is of his works post 1944. A Walton Ford exhibit was more colourful, not any more uplifting, but certainly thought provoking. And the whole morning was anchored with a great lunch at the museum cafe....where you see Bibi with her now favourite painter, Egon Schiele....

And did I mention we ate Wiener Schnitzel? Note the size of the schnitzel and the size of the salads...

  And we topped off the day with a performance of Verdi's La Traviata in the Volksoper

And the evening didn't end there...but more tomorrow...

h and b

...we're off to see...

 the wizard....the wonderful wizard of ....

 

Welll....the odyssey has begun in earnest! Bibi and I finally met up in the departure lounge in Frankfurt—and you, David, will be happy to hear that your mom explored the lounge.  The Frankfurt airport is scarily large with more signs for designer clothing than departure lounges, and just masses of people going where? Confusion reigns, and I began to appreciate the relative "order" of the Toronto airport....can't wait to hit a really busy airport like New Delhi at Commonwealth Games time! Flight was great, the cabin crew in red stockings (whatever were the Viennese thinking?) served a super meal in a flight that only lasted an hour, and arrival in Vienna uneventful...we took a city train in to town, then a taxi, and apart from the fact that Bibi wanted to adopt the taxi driver (they speak so cute), we arrived here at the Pension, rarin' to go. I had to put a stop to that. Piano, piano. Now we'll let our hair dry and toodle out to explore the town. In any event, it's off to the Naschmarkt tomorrow..which, I understand, is food and fleas...

more soon!

heidi and bibi

Mozart and music everywhere

 A first taste of the sights, sounds and smells of Vienna...so much to photograph!

 This a new building with a reflection of the Stephan's cathedral in the windows... the cathedral is a symphony of light and shade with every visible surface carved exquisitely. Will are going to listen to a Mozart concert there tonight...

 And speaking of  Mozart...the fellow is shown on every streetcorner and the Mozart Kugeln ( a chocolate truffle) are sold by the ton...

 Not only Mozart, but Verdi is heard on every corner...here the live transmission in front of the Opera house...we shall see La TraviatA there tomorrow night....

...and in front of our Pension....who else????
Tschuss!

h and b

the levels of Paris

 We explored Paris on several levels-

‑­ on the level of art, the Musee d’Orsay where I concentrated on  Gaughin and van Gogh, the Orangerie with Monet’s waterlilies and seemingly endless Renoirs, Brancusi’s studio, the Musee Marmotan with the exhibition Monet et l’Abstraction, and the jardin and museum Rodin. What struck me was that all these artists had an unerring sense of their own importance…the oval rooms at the Orangerie were built for Monet's waterlilies to his design ; Brancusi gave his studio to the state with the direction that it be recreated for the public; much the same story for Rodin.

Most interesting of these was the studio of Brancusi: he created his own world and recreated it until it found perfection in his eyes – each piece relates to its neighbour – the whole is not complete without each individual piece. Take one away and the whole is destroyed.

But at least as important as the art was the food:

From the humble breakfast at our hotel with its croissants and baguette, to the incomparable chocolat at Angelina, to the Relais Louis XIII, with the 8 course meal that took four hours to consume, two days to digest and will live forever in our memory- Paris was a culinary delight. No talk of locavores, diet, vegetarian....only good rich satisfying food......ahhhhh!

Now in Kassel, the lunch at the Orangerie was a delight as well....but then any meal with rarely seen cousins is a treat...

more later...

heidi

...poised to fly...

It's the day before:  I'm shot full of stuff to prevent unmentionable diseases from leprosy to malaria but not the common cold; the bag is packed for every eventuality from La Traviata in Vienna to riding an elephant in northern India; I've got 32 pounds of luggage and Q, my mini computer and Kobo my e-reader....I'm ready to go!

I'll keep you posted!

heidi