Our wonderful Vienna Day

Erica flowers


The Hussarentemple



On the trail

Paul Bruner, Ginny, Rich, Sandra Bruner at the top

On Saturday we had the most quintessentially Vienna day possible!

Rich’s colleague at the TU wanted to show us the WienerWald (Vienna Woods) so he arranged a lovely outing. We took an early train from our local station (the Praterstern) to an area about ½ hour southeast of the city. He (Paul) and his wife (Sandra) met us at the station of Mödling and showed us around the town a bit. It is a very old town, an early suburb of Vienna that was used by the Turks during one of their sieges of the city in the 16th century. Then it became a sort of county seat so it has some very nice buildings and areas. Today it is a comfortable suburb of Vienna. Then we drove to the WienerWald which is right nearby. (They live in a neighboring town and are both very active, biking and hiking in the woods.)

On Saturday we took a lovely hike in the mountains (small mountains) for about 2 hours. One of our objects of the hike was the Hussarentemple. This is a dramatic Greek temple structure perched way up on one of the mountains. It was built as a thank you to some Hussar troops who came from Hungary a few centuries ago to help some Hapsburg king but mostly it provides a dramatic focal point for viewing the mountains as well as a good end point for hiking. It was a good uphill climb for a while, but not too bad and it was actually quite nice to be out of the city and in some very pretty wooded area. The leaves are not out so the viewing from the mountain was still very good also. There is not a lot of variety in the trees as the mountains are covered with birch and black pine, supposedly something very special about this area. But the new spring flowers were just coming out- small white and yellow wild primroses and something a little like snowdrops and a very pretty purple-ish flower called Erica. On the way down we found large patches of a small green leaf that Sandra picked for me to taste, called Berlage. It is very garlicky and delicious, so we picked a big bunch and added it to our salad the next day. They said there is a very good soup made from this leaf also, but you should only eat it in April because by May there is another leaf that comes in and is easily mistaken for this one, but it is highly toxic and can make you very ill!

In addition to the temple we saw some rocks that were supposedly put together in some formation by the early Celts who had come to this area. There had been some archeology around there to prove their origins. There is a legend that if you climb through the rocks from one particular direction, you become very strong!

Anyway after about a two hour uphill, we got to a lovely little restaurant. It is not accessible by car or truck ( except for food delivery) and the patrons who go there in winter and summer either hike, bike or ski their way in. As Rich said, it would be hard to imagine any restaurant like that surviving anywhere in the States. But it was a very good lunch and one can imagine it as a very cozy spot after a long winter’s hike or ski outing.

So then we had to come down, which was actually more direct than the trip up so took less timeI

In addition to the hike itself, it was quite nice to get to know Paul Bruner and his wife. He is the professor who Rich knew here in Vienna and was his initial contact for the TU. He is an engineer, working in waste water management and has an engineer’s sense for details and precision. They are both originally from Switzerland and have lived in the US at different times, in California and in Pittsburgh, a while back. They are about our age and have two grown children. He is a full professor here at the TU, which is a real accomplishment, more so than in the US as there are fewer teachers who actually achieve that. Once you do, you have a “group” of other associate professors and graduate students who choose to come and work with you, so it is a pretty big deal. Given all that, and his general sense of correctness, we were stunned when they related the story that they had lived in the US as unmarried graduate students in the 1960s. At some point, Sandra’s mother was over visiting them and they took a road trip around the western US. While they were visiting Las Vegas, on a whim, they went into a wedding chapel and that’s where they got married! They might be the only people we actually know who got married there (though not by an Elvis minister)!

We got back to the Prater in time to have coffee in the amusement park, on a lovely balcony overlooking some rides and family activities. More and more of the park is opening every day. Still not completely there, but soon. And since it was a beautiful spring Saturday, many families were out for a good time.

That evening, we got dressed up and went to the Vienna State Opera. This is the beautiful opera house in the middle of the city, one of the main sights of the town. Tickets for the well- known operas are almost impossible to get, so we got tickets for a Richard Straus work called Arabella. It was a fairly modern work and not the best, but great voices and fun just to be there and watch the people. (another excuse for Rich to take out his suit!)

So from morning to night, we knew we were in this wonderful city!

Additional comments from Rich:
Paul is a well-know civil/environmental engineer and very precise. His instruction for the morning trip described our various trains and transfers to the minute. The last train arrived exactly on time and he and Sandra were on the platform waiting for us. He had seen my poor wayfinding ability in the University building and was taking no risks. They picked us up in a pristine, new-ish Prius and indicated that Toyota’s current problems were largely from competitive propaganda issues by GM.
The hiking wasn’t so vigorous but it was uphill for the most of the morning and I hadn’t done any aerobic activity in the weeks since home (and my workouts were hardly the sort to tire an Olympian even then), so I wasn’t sure how I would handle it. But Paul and Sandra, even though a little older, were much more active and in great shape and whatever sense of macho I have kicked in. I was going to keep climbing even if I might be carried off the hill. A little huffing and puffing, but in the end not so bad. Paul not only hikes the mountain, he bikes it twice a week, riding up and then speeding down (“the faster you go the more stable you are when you hit the ricks on the trail”).

The restaurant was fascinating – like a rustic Swiss Chalet on the mountain top. The food was classic local fare and very good. I had a venison stew and local beer. We were served by a pleasant young man in leather lederhosen and a hand- held computer by which he placed our orders- who is the proprietor – the place recently changed hands. We chatted a bit and he asked where I was from. When I said Brooklyn his eyes lit up. Up until a few months ago he worked at Thomas Beisl on Lafayette in Brooklyn – maybe 10 minutes walk from my office. A Beisl is like an Austrian bistro. We exchanged cards and he gave me an intro to the owner – I checked later and found this is a well regarded local place that many of my Brooklyn friends frequent.