Autumn Vienna - Episode 2

Well, I won’t lie to you, after posting the first episode on Facebook, I was thus fully invigorated, and headed out to the first museum visit of the trip. Whenever I’m making a trip like this, one thing that I always really enjoy is leaving the hotel in the morning, and heading off to the tram/bus stop, or the Metro station, with a basic plan for the day, but no real idea what it might have in store. I like that very much. Of course, seeing other people all off on their way to work just adds to the pleasure. We call that schadenfreude. Mind you, so do the Viennese.  

Which brings me to the question I failed to answer yesterday, namely, why was Vienna at the top of my bucket list? Well, partly, it was because I’d enjoyed Prague, 3rd city of the old Austro Hungarian Empire, and Budapest, 2nd city of the old Austro Hungarian Empire so much when I visited them in 2017 that I just had to visit the number 1 as well. But it’s more than that. Vienna is just a place which kind of associates itself with pleasures. You don’t believe me? Well, give yourself a couple of minutes to add words to ‘Viennese’ in order to make phrases. See what you come up with. What did I tell you? Viennese waltz, Viennese fancy/whirl, Viennese coffee, and of course, the daddy of them all, Walls’ Viennetta. All wonderfully light and sweet confections. Add to that the fact that Vienna was where two of my heroes, Mozart and Klimt lived and worked in important periods of their lives, and maybe you can start to see the appeal. Or failing that, have a look at the sketch I made of the outside of the Kunsthistorische Museum this morning. Any city which houses a world class art gallery in a building like that gets my vote.  

In front of the building is a very imposing ornamental fountain. In case you don’t recognise the lady in the statue on top, that’s the Empress Maria Theresa. You might not have heard of her, but you’ve probably heard of her daughter, Marie Antoinette, who came to fame through her starring role in the Great French Head Off, after her ‘Let them eat cake!’ material went down like a lead balloon with the sans culottes.  

So, it was 9:30 when I arrived, and thought I might as well get my ticket from the booth outside even though it would be half an hour before the museum opened for me to go in. Or so I thought. Actually if you paid a few extra Euros to see the Caravaggio and Bernini exhibition currently showing in a Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum near you, then you could go straight in any time after 9. Well, I have to be honest, while I appreciate the consummate skill of Bernini, I can’t say that I would have paid extra just for him – if I were tempted to let my inner philistine out he’d probably say that if you’ve seen one statue of a naked man with his meat and two veg hanging out, you’ve seen them all. However, Caravaggio, now that’s a different matter. It was a

terrific exhibition, and very informative too, and when I came to the end of it, two hours had passed. I was tempted to move on to pastures new at this point, but I’m so glad I didn’t. The actual gallery itself, on the first floor, is exceptionally good, and I was taken by the Brueghels (ouch). Sorry, last genitalia based quip for the night, I promise. No, but seriously, probably the best work of Peter Brueghel the Elder is on display there, including the peasant wedding, and my own favourite, The Tower of Babel. Looked at the watch and another two hours had gone, and so I left the gallery. 

The original plan for the day had been to visit the Kunsthistorische Museum first, and then the Natural History Museum which was immediately opposite, after. However having tomorrow and Thursday in Vienna as well, I didn’t want to risk being all museumed out before I’d had a good look inside it, and so that’s on the agenda for Thursday now. This left all the more time to sketch the two wallies wearing animal heads who were playing the accordion outside the museum. I think they were meant to be horse’s heads, though I’m not sure, and if you look at the sketch I made at the time they look more like dogs. Cue joke about them playing Bach. I’m here all week, ladies and gents. Well, anyway, I would have to say that they were by far the best annoying-instrument playing animal impersonators I saw all day (the ferret playing the kazoo was rubbish).  

So, following that, I walked to the nearest tram stop and took a ride to nowhere in particular. Why? Hmm, have you never read any of my posts before? A) because it was a tram, and b) because I bought a 72 hour travel pass yesterday and I like getting my money’s worth. I eventually ended up by the Schottentor U Bahn station. That’s Stubentor and Schottentor, but sadly there’s no station named after Skeletor. So, back to the Stephanplatz to tackle the big one. I knew that sketching any part of the Stephansdom - Cathedral of St. Stephen – was going to take time, and only having a couple of hours of decent daylight left, if I was going to do it today, then I was going to have to get on with it. Now, when you look at the sketch at the bottom of the page, you might be thinking – where’s the rest of it? – I deliberately picked on the small tower since I thought that there was the possibility I would be able to finish the sketch in a reasonable amount of time. If you consider that this is the smallest tower, then you might just get an idea of just how huge and intricate the whole cathedral is.  

So I picked my spot, sat down and started. Along came a spectator. I believe that she was Japanese, and I’ll explain why in a minute. A spectator who was just one of a large party, so it turned out. For the first 20 minutes or so it was okay, since there was nothing much on the page for anyone to see.

However, as the sketch began to take shape, Nice Old Dear San began calling over other members of the coach party to come and have a look. And when they did in their dribs and drabs, they invariably reached the conclusion that the best place to stand and look at me sketching was between me, and my view of the cathedral. And the worst thing about it was that they were so nice and polite about it, through the universal language of the thumbs up, that I didn’t even have the opportunity to curse them all under my breath in case one of them did speak (rude) English. I said that I deduced that they were Japanese, mainly through the rhythm of their speech. I don’t understand Japanese or any Chinese language or dialect, but in my experience the sound and the rhythm of the languages are very different. So when the party finally left, I showed my relief by acknowledging their waves with ‘Arigato’, and none of them looked particularly askance. 

It’s not impossible that they were driven off by the cold. If you look at the records it will doubtless tell you that the temperature in Vienna late this afternoon was maybe just below 10 degrees. (Yes, I have checked). Not really at all cold. Well, the wind chill factor must have been high, because by the time I’d done all I felt I could reasonably do with the light now fading, I realised that I was absolutely frozen. That’s the thing with sketching, you see. I can get totally absorbed while I’m making my sketch. While I’m making the sketch, I won’t notice anything, not cold, not hunger, not thirst, in fact nothing except very polite Japanese tourists standing in the way. That’s okay when you’re making quick sketches. But my sketches have got slower and slower over the last couple of years. So the upshot is that when I stopped sketching, I started shivering. Badly shivering. In fact, I probably looked like the two kids I drew who were dancing outside the museum to the strains of Eine Kleine Krap Musik. Which is why I headed back to the hotel, where I am now. I’m fine now, but very foot weary so I’ll probably not go out again tonight.  

So, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow? Oh, please, dearly beloved. Tomorrow is Mittwoch! Tram Museum! Yay! Well, I’ve enjoyed this episode – somebody had to, after all. Shall we do it again tomorrow? Same time? See you then.