Monday, May 7, 2012

Vienna - A Fading Grandeur (Part 2)

I really should settle into some sort of schedule for posting. I have started my new job and pretty soon, you will find the fancy posts about Europe ceasing, to be replaced by posts on Central/ Western India as I move through these areas for my sales stint. I for one am quite excited. While the obvious territory to hope for is Goa, I would love to go to Chambal or somewhere like that :). But for now, we'll go back to Europe.

Day 2 was spent in Salzberg but I don't think we did justice to the city at all. So I am going to skip over this day. I will hopefully go back an explore that city more thoroughly. Just a couple of mentions though - we saw some spots where 'The Sound of Music was shot and I listened to 'The Hills are Alive' while driving through those very hills. That was quite awesome! So this brings us to...

Day 3:
This day was meant to be spent relaxing in Vienna. We discovered that our hotel was within walking distance from the city center and in a rather uncharacteristic fashion, set out at the late hour of 9:00am for our exploration of the city. Breakfast was had at the Opera Cafe (the cafe attached to the Opera i.e.) - quite expensive; but of course, the croissants were delicious. All bakery, especially croissants are delicious in Europe, as must be obvious to most people. This reminds me, I had a wonderful Danish pastry on the way to Salzburg as well. So back to Vienna. As we got up to leave the Cafe, we were confronted by - men dressed up in 'Mozart' costumes trying to sell us concert tickets! Basically, in front of every building of repute, we encountered a couple of men and women trying to sell tickets for Mozart and Strauss concerts. And mind you, these were respectable venues. We found them outside the Opera, the city palace, the St. Stephen Cathedral and so on - buildings of note in the city. I am wondering if this is indicative of the level of interest in classical music in the city that was once its home. I am sure several tourists like us would be interested in watching such concerts - may be these are concerts aimed only at tourists (the Schonnbrunn one certainly was), but still! What a demeaning way to promote something so core to your culture! Can you imagine mamas and mamis (I am not sure what costumes they can wear) standing outside major katcheri venues in Chennai or Bangalore going 'Saar, katcheri tonight. Local temple artists - Thyagaraja + Dikshitar compositions. You want to buy?' It was similar to chaps at Times Square New York selling passes for cabarets and comedies on the road. You get my general feeling about the thing.

We ambled along the sunlit street toward a towering Gothic Cathedral which we found out later was the St. Stephen's Cathedral. I also found out much later (i.e. now) that it is the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna. It was a beautiful cathedral - but then most cathedrals in Europe are beautiful. It had some lovely chapels and elaborate stained glass work. Do forgive me if I am unable to appreciate its other artistic and architectural merits - I don't have quite the knowledge for that. After emerging back in the sunlight and shaking off a few more concert ticket sellers, I checked the map on how we might reach the Hofburg palace (is that correct grammar?). This palace was the summer residence of the Hapsburg (I know - you can confuse the two names quite easily) dynasty - Maria Theresa, Franz Josef and Sisi and all that.

We reached the palace after passing through the high street with all the major fashion brands. My Dad was obviously very taken in by this street and wanted to have lunch there later. We proceeded to a promising looking facade at the end of the street. This facade quite lived up to its promise; after a conversation with one of the ticket sellers ("Madam you want to watch a Mozart and Strauss concert tonight?" "No thanks, we leave tonight. What is this building?"), we established that it was indeed the famed palace. Now funnily enough, none of us had done any research on Vienna -  we merely went to the palace because it looked big and imposing on the map. And it was quite big and imposing. It was in fact made up of several big and imposing buildings, with a nice central lawn and something called a People's or Mass garden or something similarly demeaning. We went inside and bought tickets to see the Imperial silverware collection, Sisi's palace (my Mom had by now, become enamoured of Sisi's rebelliousness) and the Imperial Apartments.

We first went for a audio-guide tour (yaay!) of the silverware collection. Believe me, I had not expected such a large and elaborate collection of dishes! If you thought the Vessels Museum at Vishalla in Ahmedabad was elaborate (most of you are probably scratching your heads and going 'What?' right now), this was ridiculously opulent. It turned out, Franz Josef had brothers and  various other relatives. And they all required their own dinner pieces. Silverware was also gifted quite freely across various royal families in Europe. There were dinner sets having complicated connections with Napolean and Louis XV (not so complicated this one; if you remember, Marie Antoinette was Maria Theresa's daughter) as well as a dessert set presented by Queen Victoria to the Hapsburgs. This set was so dainty and delicate that it could never be used! It looked wonderful though. There were plates done up in different themes - flowers, animals, Bible scenes and Austrian landscapes. There were sets from China and Japan. There were exquisite candelabras - so delicately sculpted that it was difficult to believe that the piece in front of you had a solid form. There was a ridiculously long center piece with multiple trays for sweets meats and vases for flowers and so on - all plated in gold. The most interesting bit of trivia we got from this tour was this little nugget - during the war, a lot of solid silver and gold dinner sets were melted down to make coins. In order to overcome the indignity of not having these sets any more, the imperial household made sets of ceramic and had them plated with gold and silver. I am glad they saw sense because I find it hard to believe that the European public would allow solid gold dinner sets of that size to survive with the Euro Debt Crisis happening so near by. So in short, Imperial Silverware Collection - totally worth a visit.

After some general disagreement on lunch (my Dad wanted to go to the cool street, I wanted to save time and eat at the Museum Cafe; my Dad won), we assembled at the entrance to the Sisi Museum at 2.00pm for our guided tour. Our guide was quite the historian - full of interesting facts and bits of trivia, he also possessed some solid knowledge about the imperial family. Unlike some of the guides you come across in America, he did not sound like he had mugged up a script. The Sisi museum itself was built to sensationalise Sisi. Her personal effects were preserved in glass cases while on the walls, anguished quotes about marriage being a trap and a torture were printed. Sisi was the original appearance obsessed woman. She was extremely conscious about her figure and frequently went on crash diets. She also exercised a lot and apparently, did some particularly manly exercises just to annoy her mother-in-law (my Mom loved this). She had ankle length hair which took hours to be brushed and while it was being brushed, she learnt languages. Quite a cool woman she was. Her death just made her all the more enigmatic (in fact quite like Princess Diana - loads of similarities between the two except for the length of hair). She was assassinated by an Italian anarchist in Geneva. They had the actual murder weapon on display as well as the coat Sisi was wearing on that day. As you can imagine, we came away feeling deeply for Sisi, after having never heard of her prior to coming to the Museum. Sisi has also apparently been immortalized in some Hollywood movies - though these are quite historically inaccurate.

We then proceeded to the Imperial apartments but I will not bore you too much about those. The Schonnbrunn apartments were more elaborate in my opinion. They were interesting though and we heard about Sisi's son who committed suicide and some more members of the Hapsburg Dynasty. We stepped out into the palace courtyard and spent some time chilling on the lawn in front of the palace. It was a lovely, sunny day and a lot of people were lying around on the lawn. A couple directly in front of us decided to make out in the missionary position (I am not kidding!) causing the 3 of us to avert our eyes. However, in the other direction, was a chap who decided he couldn't bear the heat and was busily taking off his shirt and pants. Europeans - not very private people it seems. It was quite nice on the grass, under the sun though and after having an unsatisfying lunch at a cafe in the garden (I was started to tire of strudel by then and was longing for butter chicken), we decided to take a tram outside the imposing Austrian parliament back to the city center.

Europeans are not private and are also very trusting. We boarded the tram and no one asked us for a ticket. There seemed to be no visible place we could buy tickets from except the tram driver who looked too busy, well driving the tram. There was no visible mechanism for even checking that we had a ticket. So we quite happily rode back to the beginning of the city center (near our hotel) and got of the tram - jubiliant and quite relieved to have got a tram ride for free. It was a huge risk but eh - with their multiple modes of public transport, the Austrians get enough money without fleecing us poor Third World country people anyway.

I bought a pizza slice off a roadside counter and muching it, we headed back to our hotel to collect our luggage. Our next destination was Nice and the famed French Riviera. I was excited and had great plans of cycling around a fair bit and visiting some of the cute Riviera villages. Did I manage to do that.........?

On that intiguining note, I will conclude this post.

P.S.: For the majority of you who feel this note is not in the least intriguing, I agree, it isn't really. But one has to try, no?

P.P.S: I now have an office laptop which doesn't have any photos of the trip :( :(. But I am sure with my vivid and evocative writing and your own vivid and evocative imagination aided by Google image search, you will get some idea of what the places I went to looked like.

2 comments:

  1. the comparison to the mama/mamis was very apt LOL. it's exactly true tho. In spain as well similar selling of the flamenco dances...so to find a non commercial venue is rather difficult. best to go thru Lonely Planet books or india mike/trip advisor forums for that.

    "My mom was by now enamoured of Sisi's rebelliousness.." etc...the office resounded with my guffaw of laughter :).

    Hey yaar, how can you visit vienna and not do research on it in advance. Shame, shame... did you know you stood under the same balconey at which Hitler's famed (and much filmed) "Durbar" happened?????? Well well? At least you should have emailed me. I would have inundated you with stuff to carry along :):):). Lovely lovely writing. much enjoying reading it :):):)

    Hey what about Schatzkammer??? the imperial treasury? ok Divya, next time you go, you're calling me first. :):):)

    Yes, the warning on tram rides is that you pay at some payunit BEFORE you board HAHAHAHAHA, and no one asks you. If you are asked and dont have it? big fine...trust us indians to exploit that :):):)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Chitti - actually I wasn't even sure I was going on the trip till very late! It all fell together at the last minute. And given our general propensity for rushing around covering place after place, we decided to take it slow this time. You will probably be appalled by what we saw/ didn't see in Nice. Mom and Dad spent all their time lying on the beach - at least I cycled around :D.

    I hope to go back to Austria someday - especially Salzburg and will definitely give you a call then!

    ReplyDelete