[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent April 2003]
This morning Ben my brother took a bus. Off to London. (He just arrived where he’s staying there – tip o’ the hat to Jon Ball for that – and to the wonders of the internet for giving me instant news of his arrival.) A few nights ago I said goodbye to mater and pater in likewise fashion. My family reunion, incomplete as it was, is now over. It was good to see them.
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It’s been too long since the last one of these – particularly since so much has happened. But I’m gonna pick up where I left off, in Vienna.
Vienna! (It’s in Austria, doncha know.) Wide streets and efficiency. We’d been in the railway station a matter of minutes, getting our bearings in the bright, clean working-ness of it all, and an oldish gent stops as he passes to ask if we’re all right. ‘We only speak English,’ my mother says apologetically and he nods, ‘English, ah,’ and beats a polite retreat. Except it’s only a temporary departure. A minute later he’s returned, having summoned his English to mind – he asks us what we are looking for, how he can help. We’re just looking for the information desk and he happily points the way, and bids us a good day, his good deed done.
Every new place should start like that. Makes you feel at home.
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Our hotel in Vienna was a bit out of the main part of town, near to the amusement park with the big ol’ wheel featured so prominently and memorably in Graham Greene’s Vienna post-war drama, The Third Man. As luck would have it, I had watched the Third Man for the first time just a few weeks before – working at a video shop did have its advantages – and furthermore, Welles’ immortal self-penned line about peace, prosperity and cuckoo clocks was fresh in my mind from visiting Craig and Massey in Luzern – in my mind I can hear the Swiss bristling at the mere suggestion… Ben and I rode the wheel at night, which was sort of fun, but, well, Vienna ain’t a city to gaze at by night from on high. It’s a city you want to be right in the middle of.
Also notable was the fact that the number of girls-unclothed bars outnumbered normal bars by a factor of about five to one throughout the city, and particularly on the streets around our hotel. But even this just built on that positive first impression – as I’d walk back to the hotel late at night, a variety of young women would appear at the doors to these bars and invite me in. So welcoming, Vienna, so welcoming!
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Vienna is a town where you can be a tourist without guilt. In fact, if you’re not being a tourist, you’re not doing it right. The good thing about Vienna is not the atmosphere (although it’s lovely, it’s also unremarkable) but the features. The tourist attractions are genuine, comprehensive and worthwhile. There were many stops on our tourist route, but some standouts were:
* the Kunsthistorisches Museum, an astounding art collection, including a bunch of Rubens and Bruegels and Maerten van Heemskerck’s “Victory Parade of Bacchus” which I’d read about not long before and had no idea was there until I stumbled over it http://www.khm.at/homeE3.html
* the apartment where Mozart wrote ‘le nozze di figaro’, which is a piece of music I love
* the excavations of the old synagogue, site of an appalling anti-semitic atrocity and, similarly, a place to commemmorate the mind-numbing destruction of the Jewish population of Vienna under the Nazis. http://www.jmw.at/
* the kunsthaus of hundertwasser, genius artist, lover of the spiral, vienna-born and NewZealand-died, designer of exquisite public toilet in tiny Kawakawa, visionary, general font of inspiration. http://www.kunsthauswien.com/english/hundertwasser.htm
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I also had a good night out in a smoky jazz club listening to jazz legend Red Holloway, born 1927, go mad on the sax. There were no strippers. Not that night, anyway. http://www.redholloway.com/
It’s a hell of a place. My Eastern European tour was finished with a day trip to Salzburg, where I caught my thrifty 6 euro flight back to London – there I visited Mozart’s birthplace and watched local chesshacks fight it out on a giant board in the town square. Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg. All amazing cities, each with a very distinctive atmosphere. I would love to get into the countryside in each of these countries, but as a capital city tour that has got to be hard to beat.
If I have to pick a favourite? Budapest. It was vital, it was vibrant, it made no concessions to the tourist but dared them to keep up. And yet it was also international, powerful, friendly. I want to go back.
That’s one of the problems of travelling though, isn’t it – if you do it well, you keep wanting to go back to everywhere you go to. Ticking places off a list is a nice idea, but in practice is just can’t work. There’s more world than there is lifetime, and that’s just the way it is.
Which, in my book, is a wonderful thing.
—
Shouts to the family I saw, and the family I didn’t see. Love you all.
And to all the folk who turned up at the London lunch!
And to Pearce Duncan, who sent me a lovely, thoughtful email that made me laugh and think and generally get some more perspective.
And to Jamie Norrish, back from Thailand!
And to Andrew Salmond, who should be writing a script instead of reading this.
And to Karen Wilson, who got married to some bloke recently!
And, and, and…
Peace!
morgue