You Tube on the Danube

I'm on the train to Prague, a chance to write a series of unrelated short looks at my time in Vienna and region. This time I will spare you the emotional longings for my lost fellow-traveller.
 
1) SNAPSHOT
There are many ways in which Austria is just another generic western country. But I still see things that give me a sense of place. The town of Baden is full of houses with red-tiled roofs, geraniums in window boxes and immaculately groomed lawns. Many have lawn gnomes or miniature deer, matching the shelf of Humel figures indoors, and answering my question about who shops in all those kitchy ceramic shops. Though the sidewalks of Vienna are spotless, they are also the domain of a far greater number of smokers than you would see in Vancouver. A trip to the local pool demonstrates that Austrian men and women, like Germans, are masters of the art of changing into and out of bathing suits while standing up wrapped in a towel. And both men and women, upon greeting a woman or saying goodbye to her, must exchange two barely audible air kisses, one beside each cheek. Folks don't dressed particularly formal, unless going to The Opera, but I actually spotted a family at a coffee shop dressed in lederhosen! I also learned new things - like the fact that on a hot stuffy train you can't open a window or all the people around you will complain of the breeze. That the Jewish community has built a huge eruv around Vienna. And that the local woods hold cuckoo birds which sound exactly like the clocks. Life imitates art.
 
2) ART
I'm just a prairie kid from a city in Manitoba. Standing face to face with great art always gives me a thrill - when it doesn't give me a sense of nausea or boredom. It all depends. I remember standing in front of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and realizing how much more alive it was than any poster or t-shirt of it I had ever seen. I was profoundly moved by coming face to face with the farmers in American Gothic or with the Mona Lisa ( for the three and a half minutes I had with her before being elbowed out by the next tour group). And in Spain, my time in the Prado, or the museums of Dalí and Picasso, led me to mix art and life in one of my favorite blogs - http://ardolgin.com/Sfarad2003/T8.htm
 
Years ago Ruth sent me (New York to Winnipeg) a postcard of Gustav Klimt. You know the one - the two lovers kissing in a sea/blanket of squares of gold. In Vienna it can be seen in large poster format at any tourist shop or art gallery since Klimt is a revered local treasure. At least three different galleries or public institutions boast their Klimt collections. One of the largest is in the Leopold Museum whose brochure flouts works by Klimt and by Egon Schiele. "By whom?" says I. Ah yes, one of those world class under-appreciated artists who is scarcely mentioned worldwide except for in the one city that worships them. Last year in Bogota we were proudly shown the largest collection in the world of the famous Botero. And in Winnipeg anybody will rave to you about the world famous sculptures of Leo Mol. And face it, Vancouver, who besides the Vancouver Art Gallery really cares about their bloated collection of Emily Carr?
 
But speaking of bloated collections, you should see the stuff several centuries of Hapsburg monarchs managed to acquire. Today, as Vienna's Art History Museum, it constitutes the fourth largest painting collection on Earth. I wandered for hours among Dürer, Bruegel, Rubens, Rembrandt, etc - and that was before venturing into the Italian and French wing! Or viewing the collections of gold dinnerware, jeweled clockworks or massive, intricate carved ivory. In our time Ruth and I have acquired a nice assortment of art for our walls and windowsills, but this just dazzles the eye and boggles the mind.
 
3) THE END OF FASCISM
Possibly May 8 slipped by you unobserved. It's what we North Americans call V-E Day, the day in 1945 when Nazi Germany formally surrendered. In these parts it's called The End Of Fascism Day, a much weightier title. I first encountered it years ago during our Klezmer Kruise in Ukraine when T.E.O.F.D. found us in a small town in Crimea. The local celebration featured military bands, big red flags and aging war veterans with medals on their chests. I encountered it this week as we made plans for a day in Bratislava (in Slovakia, but only an hour from Vienna) and learned that T.E.O.F.D. was on Wednesday and the city would be shut down. Vienna, by contrast, was fully normal that day but would be totally shut down on Thursday for Ascension Day. But, I learned, there would be a free T.E.O.F.D. concert by the Vienna Symphony Wednesday evening outdoors in the Heldenplatz.
 
The Helenplatz is a large open courtyard within the Hofburg, the palace of the Hapsburg monarchy. So while Elie and Claire went for standing admission to the opera, Ruth and I were in a seat in front of the symphony orchestra playing the overture to Die Fleidermaus (sp?). To hear familiar Strauss music while seeing classic Viennese architecture all around is certainly a moment when sight, sound and imagination merge.
 
But the evening was peppered with speeches, of which I picked up only the occasional word - "freiheit", "kampf", "nazi", etc. Polite applause greeted the speeches, though it seemed one old woman got a more enthusiastic crowd response. One speaker, if I understood the introductions correctly, was the chancellor of Austria. I thought it was nice that he put this concert on his agenda. And, if my meager German served me, the closing thank-yous gave a police estimate of the crowd at ten thousand. A nice crowd to celebrate the end of the Nazis, but not quite the crowd that celebrated the beginning of the Nazis. For this same Heldenplatz was the scene of over a hundred thousand who turned out to cheer Adolf Hitler on his arrival in 1938. And, as I later learned, this same Heldenplatz is the place where every May 8 the neo-Nazis hold a vigil of sorrow. In fact, this night's concert was the FIRST TIME that Austria had ever recognized T.E.O.F.D. as a day of celebration! Sixty-eight years after the end of the war and Austria was finally holding a victory party, sending the chancellor and vice-chancellor (it's a coalition government and each party wants stage time) to be with the chief rabbi and a concentration camp survivor (the old woman, rounded up for her union activism), along with an invisible periphery of police on guard against a neo-nazi counter demonstration.
 
4) BRATISLAVA
So the next day Elie and I went to Bratislava. Today it is the capital of Slovakia, but for a hundred years of so, while Budapest was controlled by the Turks, it had been the capital of the Hungarian Empire. Or something like that. (There is so much history I don't know! Where is Rhoda when I need her?) Bratislava is a smaller version of Prague or Vienna, with an opera house, a government mansion and a cobbled-street old city which would fit in honourably in either. But with fewer tourists. Not that we were the only ones! Bus loads of camera-toting curious followed the guides holding umbrellas. Every restaurant or coffee shop we visited (and Elie and I sought out a palačinti [crepes] dive and later an outdoor beer garden away from the Disneyland of the old city) had both a Slovak menu and an English version (yes, you cynics, the prices were the same). And shops that sold that quaintest of outdated media - postcards!
 
Highlights of the day included a bus ride out of town to the ruins of a Roman-to-Moravian fortress, a visit to the underground grave and memorial to the Chatam Sofer and other Jews of centuries ago (underground because some recent administration, I don't know whether Nazi or Communist, decided to build a roadway over top of the Jewish cemetery), a glass of local fruit wine at one place and several glasses of local unfiltered beer at another, and an ice cream cone scooped out by the guy who hold the Guinness Book Of World Records title for most scoops (150) on a single cone! And you wonder why I like to travel!
 
One lingering stop that afternoon: I had to lean on a railing along the riverside promenade and watch the Danube flow. It's just a muddy medium for hovercraft to Vienna and cargo boats heading upriver to industrial docks unknown, but its the Danube, whose very name suggests glamour and romance. I had never seen it before, and neither had Ruth, and I wanted to share it with her. So we just stood there together, sharing glamour and romance, and that, too, is why I travel.
 
5) FAMILY
Since the reason for this particular travel was to visit with Claire' s grandmother on her 90th birthday and to get to know my newly acquired family, I should just say that I found the experience very enjoyable. Not entirely enjoyable - both Claire and her sister beat me easily at cards. But Momoo ( so named by a barely verbal Claire learning to identify her grandmother) is a friendly, sprightly woman with a twinkle in her eye, Claire's parents and uncle made me feel at home, and I happily spent relaxing days trimming bushes and pulling weeds, going for walks in the surrounding woods or just sitting around the house, hearing stories and drinking surprisingly good coffee. Ruth would have loved it here, comparing recipes for kuchen and family stories of German-Jewish adaptation, and watching Elie's integration into a family that appreciates him. And she would have welcomed the chance to spend time alone with Elie, freed from the regular stressors of her life and his. I know, because I got to spend hours like that. And that, too, is why I travel.
 
Avi

 
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