Good morning, hello and welcome to the first episode
of the Autumn 2019 edition of An English Fool Abroad with his Sketchbook. This
time we’re in . . . Vienna! Yes, dearly beloved, it’s another bucket list
destination. Why was I so keen to come to Vienna particularly, though? Well,
we’ll come to that.
So, my daughter Jenn offered to drive me to the airport
yesterday morning. Then her partner, James, an all-round good egg, reminded her
that he goes to Swindon first thing on a Monday morning, and so I slept at
Jenn’s on Sunday night, and James drove me to the airport yesterday morning. By
half past 5. Yes, I know, normally getting up at 4 in the morning would knacker
me as far as the rest of the day was concerned, but actually I’d gone to bed
really early at Jenn’s and for about the only time I can remember, it worked,
and I had a really good night’s sleep.
In fact most of yesterday was like that. Let me give you an
example. Have a look at the pictures at the bottom of the page. Notice
anything? How dare you! No, what I meant was that I didn’t make a sketch in the
airport. The reason? I didn’t have time to get bored which meant I didn’t have
to sketch. Now, I know that there are many out there who won’t believe it but
this next bit is true. My Easy Jet flight did not leave at the advertised time.
No. It left a few minutes early. Then the non priority passengers such as
myself were ushered onto the plane at exactly the same time as the priority
passengers. Then I boarded the plane and found that without paying any extra, I
had been given a seat towards the front right beside the window. It was as if I
had entered some weird parallel dream world in which things worked out exactly
as they were supposed to. Well, if that was the case, then 5 minutes into the
flight the real world suddenly took over. There was this kicking on the back of
my seat. Kick kick kick. I sat up indignantly, and turned round, and there was
a very young mother with a very young toddler, smiling apologetically at me.
No, as it happened, I didn’t demand that the cabin crew provide them with
parachutes and eject them over the south coast. I sat down and put up with it.
So, we arrived in Vienna about 15 minutes ahead of schedule, and
I had no problem locating the driver for my transfer to the hotel. He smiled,
which is always a good sign, I think, even though he was expecting a chap
called Clark David, and when I asked if he minded if I went to the information
desk to buy a 72 hour travel pass he shrugged his shoulders, and replied,
“Sure. We have to wait half an hour for the others, anyway.” Not actually his
fault, but a combination of my early arrival, and a late Easy Jet arrival from
Dublin created the delay where there should have been none. Good old Easy Jet.
If they can’t get you one way, they’ll get you another.
Well, anyway, the very nice Irish couple we were waiting for and
I were all staying at the same hotel, and as we chatted I found out that one of
them was the very best kind of schoolteacher to be, that is, a retired one. My
first impression of the ladies in reception was that they were very
professional, an impression only slightly dented by the fact that even though I
had printed proof that my room had been booked under my name, they still asked
why I wasn’t Jenniffer. This time it took about a second or two to clear that
up. Check in wasn’t until 3, but at least they gave me a pass to the luggage
room, and so, having dumped my bag, armed only with sketchbook and kindle I set
off to make a preliminary exploration of the city.
I don’t know if she did it deliberately, but Jenn had booked me
into a hotel which was only a 15 minute walk away from the Vienna Tram Museum.
Sensible girl. It was with a sense of gratitude that I walked along to the
museum, only to find out that it only opens on Mittwoch, Samstag and Sonntag. I
believe that means Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. It certainly didn’t mean
Monday, anyway. So that’s the first activity for tomorrow pencilled in. Only
slightly daunted I decided that I was going to get a tram fix today anyway, and
a metro fix while I was at it, and as the Untergrundbahn Station was only a
short walk away I took the U Bahn to Schweden Platz station. Incidentally, I
did play the Meaning of Liff - what do the names of the stations mean game. Or
tried to. The only one I came up with was Stubentor – a very short Transformer.
Schweden Platz is so named because after the First World War,
Austria was in a bit of a state. In fact it was in a lot of a state. Without
going into too much detail, the division of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire in
the peace treaties left Austria with a capital, Vienna, far too big, and with
far too great a population to support. After the war, Sweden took thousands of
Viennese children to Sweden, fed them up, looked after them, and then sent them
back to Vienna. In gratitude, the people of Vienna named the Schweden Platz
thus in their honour. Nice.
Of course, I was more interested in the Schweden Platz because
it was the place to catch the Ringstrasse tram tour. This is the rather lovely
old tram in the picture. The Ringstrasse is the inner ring road of the capital,
and reading my guidebook it tends to divide the cities sights between those
within it, and those without it. Quite a nice little tour as well, and it was
one of those which give you free headphones for the commentary. It only lasted
about 25 minutes, but one thing it did prove to me, which is Vienna does have a
thing about Mozart. Walking around later, it occurred to me that in the centre
of Vienna certainly, it can be quite difficult to get away from poor old
Wolfgang Amadeus. On the tram, whenever the lady doing the commentary stopped
talking, her voice was replaced by the strains of Eine Kleine Tram Musik.
Later, when wandering around the old town, it was pretty difficult to escape
from the gifted one’s painted phizzog on shop signs. All of which did strike me
as slightly ironic, considering that Mozart wasn’t treated quite so well in
Vienna when he was actually in the land of the living. Tellingly, the
commentary made the point that although Mozart was born in Salzburg, he lived
and worked in Vienna for the last 10 years or so of his life, and is buried in
Vienna. – Ah yes – I thought to myself smugly – but I bet you can’t tell me
where his grave is, knowing full well that he was given a pauper’s burial in a
communal grave, and so we just don’t know exactly where his remains lie.
Still, I enjoyed the tram tour. From the Schweden Platz it
wasn’t a long walk into the Old Town and the Stephansplatz. The Stephansplatz
is so named after the Cathedral of St. Stephan, the biggest church in Vienna,
and one of the tallest churches I have ever seen. This is ecclesiastical
architecture of the shock and awe variety, and I probably quite wisely decided
that it is not a building to tackle sketching on your first day in Vienna. My
neck is already stiff just from thinking about how to reduce it to fit it onto
paper. Watch this space. From there, though, it’s just another short walk to
the Museum Quarter, with the world famous Spanish Riding School, and more
museums than you can shake a stick at. I will admit that I did have a fit of
the giggles when I saw that one of them was called the Sissi Museum. This is
apparently dedicated to the life of the Empress Elisabeth, the consort of Franz
Joseph, Sissi being her nickname rather than his description.
So, back to the hotel to check in. I was standing by the
reception at 2 minutes to 3, mentally daring the receptionist to ask me to wait
for 2 minutes. She didn’t. She did, however, ask me to fill in the same form
I’d filled in earlier, and then again ask me where Jenniffer was, but again,
this was all cleared up fairly easily. So up to the very nice room for
unpacking, and a breather.
I had a nagging sense in the back of my mind that I’d forgotten something, and
that took shape, and the shape it took was that of a Ferris Wheel. I knew I’d
have plenty of time to see the famous Ferris Wheel in Prater Park on another
day, but what the hell, I wanted to see it then and there. So, back to the
U-Bahn, this time to Prater Stern station. Prater Stern, incidentally, is a
perfect phonetic rendition of the correct official response to the words “Piers
Morgan is in the boat behind yours”. If like me you’ve ever seen the film, “The
Third Man” it’s very difficult to not hum the Harry Lime theme the first time
you look at the famous wheel, and I couldn’t resist as I made the sketch you
can see here. I had to work quickly because the sun had already set and the
light was fading. I was a little surprised how relatively small it is compared
with the London eye for example.
So then, after a wander through the park, then back to the
hotel. The closest U Bahn station to the hotel is called Kardinal Nagl-platz,
who incidentally is one of the regular characters in the Vatican TV version of
Sesame Street. I wanted to pick up just a few bits and pieces from a nearby
supermarket if I could find one. Now, let me ask you this. For the dedicated
cheap skate such as myself, what would be the perfect discovery? That’s right,
a Lidl right next door to the hotel. So I bought my bits, took them up to my
room, took them back down again when the key didn’t work, went back to
reception, thought about telling them that Jenniffer’s key wasn’t working but
thought better of it, got a new key, and came back to the room. And having been
overcome by fatigue, that’s pretty much where I’ve been ever since. So that
pretty much concludes episode 1, gentle reader, and hopefully I’ll post episode
2 this evening. Guten Tag.
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