Another day in Vienna

This describes the Saturday we spent with Judith, my Viennese friend. (Photos to be added later.)

We arranged to meet at our hotel and did so. We had seen the nearby Naschmarkt before, but Judith took us there again, to start with, knowing (as we did not) that a flea market opens there on Saturdays. Judith discovered a coral pink vintage bead necklace of some value, haggling for it. Chris was taken with the antique postcards and old books for sale, but didn't buy any. These stalls were a collector's dream, with antique cameras for sale, toys, machinery parts, porcelain ornaments, glass vases, shaving brushes, musical instruments, hats, collectable dinnerware sets, old books, model cars, LPs, you name it. It was noisy and crowded and doubtless we could have spent hours here. Judith drew our attention to the Jugendstil facades of the buildings around the market square along the Linke- und Rechte Wienzeile, such as Otto Wagner's fin de siècle Majolikahaus with its colourfully patterned tiles between the windows. We learned a good deal about Wagner's architectural legacy:

For the [Viennese] transport system he designed the Stadtbahn pavilions, the stations, several bridges and the railings, all of which are still preserved in their original state.  (www.austria.info)

Judith pointed out several examples of these features during our tour of the city that day. Her area of professional expertise is the Gemeindebau: long term affordable community housing in Vienna, which, (like the creation of British council house estates, "homes for heroes") began shortly after the 1st World War and still continues, earning the admiration of the world and appreciation of the Viennese people. The entrances to apartment blocks erected after the 2nd World War are often decorated with concrete or terracotta reliefs from those days. (Made aware, we noticed more of these on the Sunday morning, after Judith had left us.) Residences near the Donaukanal are desirable and the right to live there can be transferred from one generation of a family to the next.

We took an U-Bahn train from Kettenbrückengasse across the Danube, to see the Hundertwasserhaus (finished in 1985) on the Löwengasse, which happened to be near the district where Judith grew up and went to school. Friedensreich Hundertwasser, aka Friedrich Stowasser, was an eccentric and prolific artist of the same ilk as Gaudi, in Barcelona. In a leaflet advertising the Hundertwasser cafe, the English translation reads:

This is the house where for the first time in history human beings and nature live together with equal rights [...] a place where millions of people from around the world become aware of their longing for a life in harmony with oneself and nature. From here they take new hope back to their homes in their countries.

A rather over-the-top claim perhaps, but the colourful buildings entwined with plants and with a waterfall cascading from the roof of one do leave a favourable impression! As a tourist, you are not allowed to enter these buildings because they are people's homes.

I was even more interested when Judith took us to the Real-Gymnasium on Kundmanngasse where she was educated; the Wittgensteins' residence (the original family house, or palace, was near the Karlskirche though) was visible from the classroom windows at the back, she told us; she also showed us the school's pillars and balcony outside her final classroom there. We had a Viennese lunch out of doors at the pub Zum Goldenen Löwen. Judith chose Kartoffelpuffer and I tried the Eiernockerl, tasty and satisfying. Then we hopped on a bus to the Rotundenbrücke over the Donaukanal, stood on that bridge and saw a jetboat (express catamaran) whooshing by on its way to Bratislava.

Later we took a ride on another boat down this canal from the docks, tickets for which had been booked before we left Ottawa, boarding at Schwedenplatz where Chris and I had stood the day before. There's another boat nearby, Vienna's Badeschiff, with an on board public swimming pool and "football cage" on the deck above. On our canal cruise, we noticed more of Otto Wagner's Jugendstil railings, bridges and original city railway. The colourfully painted waste incineration tower, the Fernwärmewerk building, overlooking the canal in Spittelau, was designed by Hundertwasser and so resembled the house we'd seen earlier.

Off the boat, with Judith to guide us, we strolled back into the old town, passing an old Jewish synagogue (the Stadttempel, inscribed in Hebrew characters) on the Seitenstettengasse, on the way to one of Vienna's old catholic churches, a not too lavishly decorated, narrow building above a pretty square, steps up to it, Maria am Gestade. The name means Mary-On-The-Shore because, originally, this mostly 14th and 15th century, Gothic building was closer to the river (which got diverted in the 16th century when the canal was made), a place of worship for sailors. This church was associated with a good man, the patron saint of Vienna, no less, Clement Maria Hofbauer, a baker who at the end of the 18th century became a hermit and then a Redemptorist priest, whom the authorities persecuted but whom his congregations loved, as did the poverty stricken people whom he fed.

The solemn atmosphere in this church made seemed to complement my other friend's (Barbara's) Lutheran protestant church in Luneburg, still fresh in my mind.

Then on the underground again back to the Karlsplatz district near our hotel, where we walked to the Dritte Mann Museum on Preßgasse (Chris' choice of museum but it fascinated all three of us). Judith had not visited this before but had seen the movie when young. We were the last visitors of the day and lucky to get in because it is only open on Saturdays. This was a marvellous museum, divided into three sections, each of which has its own tour guide who needs to let you in with a key. The first set of rooms was dedicated to the people concerned with the making of The Third Man, the actors (Orson Wells and Joseph Cotten had previously starred together in Citizen Kane), the director (Carol Reed) and of course, the famous author of the screenplay, Graham Greene. The film was a tremendous example of purposeful artistic co-operation, as was the museum, for that matter, its well over 2000 exhibits having been collected and put together by a team of only two people, Gerhard Strassgschwandtner and Karin Höfler ...

Alles aus einem Guss, kein Outsourcing, viel Herzblut. Das spurt man.

In the second section, we saw the original zither that  Anton Karas, the composer of the Harry Lime theme, had played. You can see cigarette burns on it, as he was a heavy smoker. This area also displayed an original Zeiss projector, made in 1938, such as was used when the film first appeared. The curator actually used it, lowering a heavy screen from the ceiling, to show us a clip from the end of the film—the chase into the sewers—so gripping that we were oblivious to the primitive technology while watching it. The third part of the exhibition dealt with Viennese history just before, during and after the war, when the city had become an occupied territory, divided into American, British, French and Soviet zones, only connected of course by those sewers that play such an important part in the plot of The Third Man. We were so absorbed by the exhibits here that, at closing time, we had to be asked to leave.

We ate a tasty supper at the Thai Kitchen on Schönbrunner Strasse before Judith said goodbye.

I ought to add that before leaving Vienna altogether, we spent some of the Sunday morning exploring the part of the city near the Hauptbahnhof. Before we caught our train to Bratislava, we took a walk around the 18th century Belvedere Palace, just a short walk from the station, where we left our luggage in a locker.

My friend Sue commented on a photo of the Belvedere Gardens, that I posted on Facebook:

Hitler had a bunker built here, right under this pond. It was completed in 1944, and was to be used in case Berlin fell. It was to be one of he possible structures of command for a government in exile. The central air raid police command post of Vienna moved in. The Belvedere became a military target and was bombed by the allies. By this time the paintings had long since gone. They were hidden in convents, and salt mines. After the war, the bunker was sealed up. I did not find this information while we visited the Belvedere. Instead it appeared in the book The Lady in Gold about the returning of Klimt's famous painting to its rightful Jewish owners. In the book there are photos of the bunker being built in 1943. Quite the story!

On our last walk in Vienna we passed the colourful row of houses on the Wiedner Gürtel, the ringroad near the station, one of which now belongs to Huawei. The creator of these facades, Marcus Geiger, chose colours that mimic Euro banknotes of different denominations.