Autumn 2019 - Vienna Episode 3

Now look, I know that you’re all itching to hear about the tram museum, aren’t you? Well, all good things come to those that wait. Let us first, though, begin with the Hundertwasserhaus. Gesundheit. 

I set out at 9 this morning, and, knowing that the aforementioned tram museum doesn’t open until 10, I walked for about 20 minutes to see a rather rum concoction called the Hundertwasser House. You can see it in the sketch, and I have to say that the sketch doesn’t really do justice to how odd it actually is. The House was the brainchild of artist Friedenreich Hundertwasser. After making a number of television programmes outlining his views on architecture, he was invited in 1977 by Leopold Gratz, then the Mayor of Vienna, to design an apartment block.
His working relationship with the architect Joseph Krawina was stormy to say the least. I’m not surprised, mind you. I can just imagine what some of their conversations might have been like:-
“So then Fred, let’s talk about some of these ideas you want to incorporate into the house.”
“Ja, ja, all ist gut.”
“Now, you want as many roof gardens as is humanly possible?”
“Nein.”
“Nine? Oh well, it seems a bit excessive, but I’m sure we can – “
“Nein. No. Not gardens. Forests.”
“I see. Roof forests. And while we’re on the subject of roofs . . . an onion dome. On a skyscraper. What’s that all about?”
“The onion as der symbol of life itself, the tawdry outer layers, yet with each new layer unwrapped we come closer to der shining pearl of understanding. . .”
“Hmm. Now, don’t take this the wrong way, Fred, but have you seen a doctor recently?”
In the end the house was finally opened in 1985, although it took a court case ending in the noughties to have Krawina recognised as its co-creator. 

The house really is a most remarkable looking thing. What you can’t see in the sketch is around the other side where the entrances on the ground are all rounded – not an angle in sight, and look like the kind of place you’d see Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry emerging from. Well, on a sunny day, anyway. On a murky day like today, Smaug seemed more of a possibility. In all fairness I should probably mention that the house is an extremely popular tourist attraction, and by the time I finished my sketch, it was absolutely thronged with camera happy tourists.  

Today was a cold day in Vienna, colder than yesterday, and the wind was cutting. So I dashed off that sketch in about 30 minutes, and then sought the nearby U Bahn station and rode the train the two stops it took to get me to the Remise tram museum.

What can I say? I loved it. Now, when it comes to museums, I’m not that fussy – as opposed to art galleries. I like them all, but especially I like them if they tell a story, and the Remise definitely told a story. Yes, it was the story of the Vienna tram system, but in essence this was also the story of Vienna in the 20th century, and it was a story that I probably learned more about here than anywhere else I’ve been in Vienna. The museum is illuminating about the struggles Vienna faced after the peace treaties after world war I, and is also quite candid and honest about the period between the Anschluss with Hitler’s Germany and the end of World War II, for example. 

I sat down, and made the sketch you can see with this post. To me this shouts from the rooftops that it’s a product of the 50s – at one point Vienna had some trams which had been scrapped from New York running in the post war period, and I’m sure you can see the influence in this. 

It was while I was sketching that a very nice Hungarian lady with a large brood of children in tow came and sat down. The kids were bouncing – literally in the case of one who was sitting on the other end of my bench, and the way they started to unpack a picnic gave me a hint that they weren’t going to be getting up any time soon. How do I know they were Hungarian? Well, she started talking to me about the sketch, and my lack of understanding of German or Hungarian led to a longer conversation. Her family lives in Budapest, and they had just come for the day because one of the boys loves trams. I predict he’ll go far. The round trip is between 3 and 4 hours apparently. We did actually get onto the subject of Brexit, which she summed up rather succinctly with,
“Well, we do have some stupid people in Hungary too.” I couldn’t top that and so I didn’t try. 

It was about a 20 minute walk back to the hotel, which kept me from freezing, and gave me the opportunity to put on another layer of clothing. The day had already been a great success, and I wanted to maintain it as much as possible. So the next step was to take a tram from Schottentor U Bahn station to the Belvedere Palace. Alright, I know that this has been a bit of a tram-heavy episode so far, but I’m just trying to tell it like it is. And I have to say, that with the sun out, standing in the back of the tram in the standing only area as it trundled along the Ringstrasse just left me with a massive grin on my silly old face. I can’t help it.  

As for the Belvedere, well, that was the second museum of the day. Put simply, the Belvedere is a palace built as the summer residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy. However, what we’re interested in about it today, is that the Upper Belvedere – the main palace – is the home of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. I think it’s probably fair to say that The Kiss is, along with Mozart, one of Vienna’s real star turns. Never mind all the other great paintings in the museum, the signs, which direct you to it, make it perfectly clear that most people are there for Klimt’s greatest hit. And it is a wonderful painting, no doubt. But what was just as interesting was looking at some of Klimt’s other work, and seeing just what a great traditional portrait painter he was as well. Of all of his paintings, though, even more than The Kiss I was drawn to his Judith. This is a painting I’ve seen reproductions of, but never knew it was supposed to represent Judith of Judith and Holofernes fame, nor that she is actually holding the severed head of Holofernes. Incredible.  

With tempus busily fugiting, I left the Belvedere, and headed back on the tram to try to squeeze in another sketch. This time I got off opposite the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which you may recall from yesterday’s episode, and walked along to the Hofburg, where I sketched the geegee carriage. I did wonder whether one horse was asking the other how the accordion recital had gone the day before. 

I treated myself to a melange – a Viennese coffee – on the way back to the U Bahn, which was well needed since the light had faded by this time, and the clearness of the sky suggested that it was probably going to get a lot colder any time soon. So there we have it, dearly beloved. A very good day indeed, and one more full day left. Tune in tomorrow to see where Fortune – and the U Bahn – takes us. Goodnight Vienna.