It has been a long time

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Ginny and Rebecca at the Heuriger, after a long hike.


Interior of Steinhoff church.


At the Volksgarten- notice the stork on the fountain!


Some of the crowds at the concert at the Schonbrunn Palace.



Stables at the Prater, getting ready for the harness racing.



Otto Wagner church at Steinhoff sanitarium.



Rich and Rebecca at the beautiful rose garden at the Volksgarten, in the rain.


Yes, I am still here! Just a hiatus while we returned to New Jersey and Massachusetts for Rebecca’s graduation from Mt. Holyoke College. It was a lovely spring weekend in the Berkshires and great to be with family for such a happy occasion. All our women were there, as well as Richard and Nena. The graduation was in a gorgeous outdoor amphitheater on the beautiful campus. And of course we are very proud of Rebecca! All kinds of interesting things in store for her, I am sure! For those who don’t already know, she is doing an Americorps program next year in D.C.- working for an organization that aids Hispanic immigrants, through Avodah, and living in a group house in that city. So if you are close by, look her up after the end of August.

Meanwhile, back to our travels. Rich and I made it home in spite of renewed volcanic activity in Iceland and a British Air strike. We were home for about 2 weeks- quite weird since we were not there long enough to really feel like we were there, but we were! Mostly we hid out, pretending not to be there! So if you did not hear from us, that is why. We had to return earlier than expected because of the strike, but did get back to Vienna on June 1, with Rebecca to keep us company this time.

When we left Vienna in mid-May it was still pretty chilly, and apparently continued to be so while we were gone, even tho it was so hot in New Jersey that it was hard to conceive of it being anything else anywhere else! So we were pretty surprised to find it still cool and rainy for a few days when we got back here, but that did not last long. When summer arrives, it really arrives- hot and sticky! So much so that you start to yearn for cool and rainy again! Oh well, this city has much to recommend it, but not the weather!

We have had fun showing Rebecca all our favorite sites, and our favorite local café, Café Zartel, that has been there since 1885. We went together to several things, including the big art history museum (Kunst Historiches Museum, where I could go every day of the week) and the Naschmarkt, as well as some sites we had put off seeing such as the Hofburg (the royal apartments), and numerous churches around town. Then she started exploring on her own, to the Freud museum and Karl’s Kirche, where you can ascend to the top of the high dome and get up close and personal with the frescoes. We all spent a lovely day going out to Otto Wagner’s church at Steinhoff which is a psychiatric sanitarium on the western side of town. It was built early in the 20th century as a (then) exemplary place to treat mental illness- a large campus with numerous individual buildings spread out on a low hillside, just on the edge of the Vienna Woods. (And still in use, although I presume the methods of treatment have changed!) Wagner laid out the plan which ascends the hillside , and he and his students designed the buildings. But the real jewel of the place is the large church on the summit- topped by a large round dome covered in golden panels and shining in the sun! (Picture attached) It is cruciform in plan and decorated with lots of beautiful Secession style ornament. Quite beautiful and impressive. There was a wedding there when we arrived, and I can’t think of a more lovely setting for that.

Note: In Vienna, no place, and I mean no place, is lacking for a small restaurant or café! While we were waiting for the tour to start, it was coffee time, and Rebecca and I found a small outdoor café in one of the sanitarium buildings- I guess you need a place to have coffee while you are visiting someone there!
After the tour (only in German) we hiked in the Vienna Woods for a while, then ended up at a nearby heuriger, which is a local wine tavern. This one was set up beautifully, with an outdoor area overlooking a small vineyard. In addition to serving local wine, these places also provide an interesting buffet where you can choose. These consist of small plates of food such as salads and sliced meats, usually a much more interesting and varied selection that the usual stuff available at every Austrian restaurant in the city.

We also took Rebecca to see the Wien Museum, as an introduction to the city. We had gone there when we first arrived and found it useful as a place to start to understand the history and layout of the city. They had a new exhibition of clips from films that feature this city. There are really a lot of them! I think a Vienna film festival is in our future when we get back home- Netflics here we come!
Last Sunday Rich and I went to the horse races, which are located in the Prater, not far from our apartment. They have harness racing every Sunday afternoon, and while we did not bet, it was quite fun to see. There is a café on one side, right next to the track. So people order their food or drink and then walk over to the track to watch each race, and then return to their tables in between! The track is a lovely old one and you can actually go right up to the stables and see them setting up for the next race. People bring their horses in from the surrounding area for the day, and the stables seem to be operated by various trainers. In the same area are also the stables for the carriage horses that drive tourists around the city. All the stables look quite old (at least are built in an old, picturesque style) since they have always had horses in the Prater, and of course in the city. You can see the carriages coming out in the morning and going home in the evening when you are walking thru the park. Also, sometimes the harness drivers practice on the long straight paths in the Prater and you can watch these beautiful horses running by (obviously something I love to see).

Last Tuesday we had a long day at the Schonbrunn Palace. This was Maria Teresa’s favorite summer palace and was rather far outside the city when it was built. Now it is a stop on the underground train line! It is often compared to Versailles in size and grandeur. So we went on the grand tour through the rooms and were suitably impressed, and then walked through some of the extensive gardens, which are now an open public park. There was a free, public concert of the Vienna Philharmonic scheduled for that evening so we thought we would hang around and go to that. There were a large number of seats set up, some for VIPs with tickets, but also some for the general public. The concert was supposed to start at 9 PM and by 6:00 people were already starting to sit down. We decided we did not want to sit there for 3 hours just to get a good seat, so we started meandering through the grounds, and then through the nearby neighborhood where there are a large number of interesting Secession style houses. We thought we could get a picnic for the concert and take it back to sit on the large hill that rose behind where the orchestra was set up. But we started wandering and got involved in that, and it got late and we were tired and hungry, so we ended up at a cute restaurant on the town square of that lovely village (called Hietzing) assuming we would forego the concert! As we sat there, we kept seeing more and more people heading over to the concert, so when we finished with dinner, we decided to check it out. As we walked into the grounds, there were hundreds of people streaming in with us, even though the concert had already started. There were also many people streaming out, and we could not understand what was going on! But we kept walking and found that when we got up to the actual palace area, the entire grounds were filled with people standing (not sitting)- and eating ice cream, drinking beer and generally having a fine time, except hardly listening to the concert! There were large speakers and screens set up, but we were so far back that you could hardly see or hear it anyway! And by 9:45, there were still hundreds of people streaming in- from all directions! We have been to pops concerts in Central Park where there are a lot of people, but I have never seen so many people at a classical concert. You would have thought the Beetles were back! Since we could not hear the music anyway, we decided to leave, but the subway was filled with people still coming! People in this city do love their classical music! (Or else it is a major scene!)

Much more to report, but I will close for today so you don’t have too much to read at one time!