Laggards of Vienna

We have been laggardly in our blog posting, with our last one being posted at the end of November as Vienna was getting ready for Christmas.  Well, Christmas has come and gone, as has New Year's Eve.   We are muddling through a mostly bland, gray, rainy winter with just the day-to-day stuff of life going on.

So, I'll recount the holidays, which may be interesting just because they are a little different, and thus exotic, on the banks of the Danube.

We purchased a slightly smaller tree this year from the guy down the street, decorated it Christmas Eve day, and spent some time wandering through the chilly streets to pick up some last-minute gifts at the Christmas markets.  Buying Christmas trees here feels more like renting them, because when the holidays are over, you take the tree back to the place you bought it and give it back.  They dispose of it.

Keir at Rathaus Market

Like everything else, we were laggardly in returning the tree and, as the needles started falling off in the second week of January, I figured it was time.  I was carrying the tree the five blocks back to the plaza where we bought it when a well-dressed Viennese woman, accompanied by her dapper husband and small Hund, yelled "Gehen! Gehen!"  She was pointing toward the plaza where a crew in orange coveralls was loading the last of the dead holiday trees into a big orange truck.  I did my version of running and, to the amusement of people in the plaza and the guys on the truck, I made it.  A laughing Austrian tree collector took Oh Tannenbaum and tossed it on the truck.

I'm glad we bought a slightly smaller tree this year.

Twas the night before Christmas . . . 

The excitement doesn't stop at the tree. I was recruited twice to don a red suit, once to play St. Nicholas and once to be the more familiar Santa.  As St. Nick I had to show up at a house for Misti's friends and read from a Golden Book for their two boys, ages 2 and 5.  The five-year-old, who is German and American (born in the US but his parents are German), then sang me a full version of Frosty the Snowman with a perfect British accent (he was raised in London).  He was more nervous than I was, so he had to sing with his back turned to me.  A few days later a desperate colleague at my workplace called and said the traditional Santa had bailed on him and he needed a Santa with an American accent for the institute's Christmas lunch the next day. They'd pay me with a bottle of booze. Please. Bitte.

 Keir and the Tree  

St. Nick

I agreed and then was told that the previous Santa, who didn't have an American accent, wowed the kids when he arrived on roller skates.  Did I have any such skills?  I offered to break some boards, but that wasn't considered to be in the Christmas spirit.

The actor in our family is Dylan, who once played a toy soldier for a Mannheim Steamroller concert.  I tried to channel his experience, but failed.  I read from the Golden Book as St. Nick and did the Ho Ho Ho thing and handed out gifts at the Christmas lunch (I was hoping for scotch, but instead was paid with a bottle of Sour Cherry Liqueur).

At a dinner a few nights later, a Russian couple who'd attended the lunch discovered that I had been Santa and offered this review: "Santa was very quiet."  My immediate thought was, "What do Russians know about Santa?," but I just told them that Santa didn't want to scare the kids.

Santa

A few days before Christmas, Misti and I were walking by the VolksOper in our neighborhood, and she noticed that they were selling tickets for that evening's Christmas concert.  The Oper is a big place that normally does light opera and musicals, and the theater is well respected.  So we went with high expectations for a good holiday concert.  It turned out to be more educational than entertaining.

Frost on the Woods

We learned that "The Little Drummer Boy" should never be sung in German as a dramatic piece.  We learned that "The 12 Days of Christmas" works better with the original words, not lines like, "Two gummy bears and a bottle of champagne from my Liebling"-- especially when sung by an over-the-top Mrs. Claus in a tight red sequin dress.  Also, Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" works better as an opening for the Olympics than it does for a Christmas Concert.  And, when badly played, it really doesn't work at all.  We left the VolksOper puzzled.

Votivkirche

A few weeks before that, however, we were given tickets to an eclectic performance at Vienna's famed Konzert Haus, and that was spectacular.

Keir and I were returning from his school on the edge of the Vienna Woods after the cold weather arrived and saw the woods and the vineyards covered in frost.  It was beautiful.

In our wanderings during the holidays, we came upon many typical Christmas in Vienna sights, including a craftsman making jewelry out of melted glass, and the Votivkirche backlit by the sun.

Melting Glass

I also met a researcher for dinner at the Schloss in Laxenburg where I work, and took a photo of the summer palace as it looks at Christmas.

The IIASA Schloss

The Viennese are creative when it comes to window displays in the shops (see top photo) and restaurants, and the historic Black Camel restaurant apparently hired a frustrated but talented art student to do its holiday windows.  These were the best we saw this season.

We often write about the Viennese being rude and reserved, especially the older ones, but there was evidence of change last month.  As we walked through a market we came upon a bunch of what I assume to be younger Viennese.  Literally a bunch.  We're not sure what they were doing, but how rude can you be when you're dressed as a banana?

Andy

Rene

Misti and I spent New Year's Eve at our apartment, being boring.  But at the appointed hour, we leaned out the window and watched fireworks in every direction.  People were shouting, honking horns,  all of the usual stuff.  It was actually very entertaining, and it beat being assaulted by a troll pick pocket as happened last year.  Keir was out being rowdy with his friends and made it back before sunrise.

Salvador

On the culture front, I learned that non-violence is part of the law in Austria.  I've switched from my karate class to krav maga, which is the Israeli self-defense system.  It is easier on the body than the other martial arts, so I recommend it for aging people who still enjoy hitting things.  During my first day of training, I was puzzled by a defensive move that had a "pause" built into it.  It went sort of like this:  A guy approaches from the front, grabs your shirt with both hands and starts shoving you backward.  In my previous training I learned to do all sorts of clever things to break free and, in the process, break the guy's nose.  It's all very fast and effective.

Austrian Banane

When I repeated that as part of this krav maga drill, the instructor stopped me and said I must back away after breaking free and that I couldn't hit my attacker.  "Why not?" was my response.  "Because it is illegal in Austria to strike somebody before you have asked them to stop and warn them that you will hit them if they don't,"  the instructor said.  "If you hit them, legally the violence will be your fault and you will have to pay the fine."

"You're kidding," I said.  He wasn't, he said.  I'm still sorting out what that means.  But the class is fun.

Keir Shooting 

Keir has applied to a bunch of colleges in the US and we are entering the "what are we going to be doing next year" phase.  If my contract is extended, Misti and I might stay, but that is up in the air.  We are both old enough that it will likely be difficult to find full-time work with benefits in the US, so we might not have the luxury of deciding to come home.  But a contract extension here is not a sure thing either, so we are living, as we have in recent times, in a sort of unattached way ... floating on the surface so we can quickly move in any direction with the currents.

Keir put together a photo portfolio for his college admissions process, so we spent some time out shooting pictures.  This one is of Keir at the Globe Museum Misti and I visited when we first arrived.  In this picture, Keir is in the ornate hallway leading into the museum.   I've also included one of my shots of globes of Venus.

Keir at the Globe Museum 

Venus x 5

We have decided that if we stay, we will travel more.  My sister runs an art school in Tuscany, so we must go there.  In several weeks we will head for Arles, France, to see Reeve, Melanie and Ocean.  I went to Venice when I lived in Europe as a kid, and I want to see it again (it is only a day's drive from here), and a friend from my years in Wiesbaden, Germany, now has an apartment there, so I will jump on a train and see that city again.

Sunbeam Alpine

Jaguar

Keir is off to Budapest this weekend as part of his school's "Knowledge Bowl" competition.  His specialty, beyond the family tradition of encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll, is European and American history.  Later in the Spring he'll go to Kiev, Ukraine, for the big Knowledge Bowl competition.

That all sounds exotic, but we've now become so accustomed to living here that running off to Budapest for the weekend sounds sort of normal.

Finally, for my friends who I misspent my youth with in Germany, I've included a few of the cars I've come upon that you don't see much in the States.

Real Mini

Vienna On The Verge

We are on the verge of December, which means the Viennese are already deep into the Christmas season.  The Christmas markets are open, the decorative lights over the streets and plazas are lit (including our Wahringerstrasse electric blue Christmas clouds), and the weather has turned appropriately cold.

Merry Christmas

Misti and I have been off to the Christmas markets in search of gifts that are uniquely Viennese.  The markets are appealing, especially the smaller ones, because you can drink warm, mulled wine while you wander the booths, and unlike the stores, they are open all weekend.

As always in our outings, we come upon surprises.  One recent cold, wet Saturday we were wandering with no particular purpose and beginning to think better of it when we turned a corner and were met with a parade that encompassed much of the European military past.

 We still don't know exactly what it was about, but it was like watching a history book march by.  The pictures don't do it justice.  The horses were enormous.

Most of what we've been doing, however, has centered around Keir's activities.  We've always enjoyed watching our kids play sports, perform in plays, do music and the like.  Keir, as the last of the herd, has dutifully provided us with years of basketball and baseball games, as well as a few wrestling meets and karate events.

For the past few months he's been on his high school varsity volleyball team, and once we figured out the rules, volleyball has proved as exciting as the other sports.  As with everything over here, what is routine is, for us, exotic.

Keir's school hosted the high school volleyball championship tournament, so Keir played against students from Athens, Tel Aviv, Brussels, Munich, Dusseldorf and a few other schools.  We had boys from the Brussels team stay with us, one American and one Swedish, although neither one of them had spent much time in their home countries.

That is typical in the international community.  Keir has noticed that in discussions about America in his classes, he is just about the only American student who has spent much time actually living in the States.  There are a few others like him at the school, but most of the kids have lived all over the world as their diplomat/business parents move from assignment to assignment.  Some of the American kids were born outside of the U.S. and have only visited their "home country" a few times.  Keir finds it interesting, and sometimes amusing, when other students tell him what it's like in the U.S., having never lived there.

Misti ran into a more extreme situation recently when some Viennese women lectured her on American traditions.

Mid-serve

The details are secondary, but it had to do with a planned school celebration.  Misti would say something like, "I've lived in the US all my life and had three other children go through American high schools.  What you are suggesting isn't an American tradition." The Viennese women would continue talking over her about the need to do the celebration just so because it was an American tradition.  Reality seems not to matter in much of life.

Keir's team played well in the volleyball tournament and made it to the final four.  As he was playing his last set, Misti and I realized that after more than 30 years of being parents, this was likely the last high school sports event we'd attend, at least until the grandchildren become teens.

Shiver

But as the thrill of victory and agony of defeat thing came to an end, Keir announced that he was upholding a family tradition of playing in a rock band. I was in one back when the Vanilla Fudge were popular, and Dylan spent a couple of years playing in a great band in New York.  In addition, my half-brother Adam is the drummer for the Virginia Coalition, and Keir's big brother Reeve is currently in Miami recording his songs with a group of fellow musicians. So we were off to a talent show where he played lead guitar in a good version of Shiver by Coldplay.

As is evident from the photos, Keir is rather intense when he plays.  His guitar, by the way, is a Schecter.  The band was good.

While we're on the topic of musicians, they are everywhere downtown this time of year, mostly playing German/Austrian tunes.  Here are a couple of images from recent weeks.

I'll conclude with Thanksgiving, which, obviously, doesn't exist in Austria.  Apparently it is one American tradition the Viennese women aren't interested in upholding.   Because there are many Americans at the institute where I work, however, there is an annual Thanksgiving luncheon that is spectacular.

Beyond the setting in the palace cafeteria (see photo), the lunch includes turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, green beans, carrots, and pumpkin and apple pie.   Excellent red and white Austrian wine was served and we enjoyed lively, delightful conversation with people originally from Britain, Argentina, the Philippines, and Texas.

Traditional Thanksgiving

Turkey is hard to come by in Austria, but the cooks for the luncheon did an amazing job.  They had to cook 16 turkeys in an oven that only held four (it is an industrial kitchen, but not as industrial as it needed to be).  The cooks started at 3 a.m. to get everything done in time, and their reward was to walk through the several palace dining rooms to resounding applause from the well-fed throng.  The pilgrims would have been proud.

Cafe Central

Keir, as he did last year at this time, spent the week in Braga, Portugal, working on a house for Habitat for Humanity, and, again, the local restaurant prepared a traditional American Thanksgiving meal exclusively for his classmates and him.

We likely will have a quiet Christmas this year, but with blue clouds out our windows and the city decorated like no other, we'll spend hours walking and enjoying the streets.  It's sort of becoming a tradition.

The Hills Are Alive

  

It’s Sunday morning in Vienna, but you’d never know we were anywhere but Virginia. It’s 10:30, Keir just got out of bed, Jim and I have already read the Washington Post online and Jim is watching an American college football game on TV.  He recently discovered that we get ESPN America on our government-registered TV, and as long as he doesn’t mind watching games that have already been concluded, he’s in sports heaven. In addition, he’s expanding his knowledge of the sports world by watching channels that feature such sporting events as kung fu volleyball and tischtennis.  The only obvious clue to our whereabouts is what we just ate for breakfast: Sachertorte.

Sachertorte is diabolically, decadently rich. No, this is not our usual morning fare, but Keir’s friend Natalie bought him the famed Viennese delicacy for his birthday, and, remarkably, this dense chocolate treat encased in delectable chocolate icing has lasted for more than 24 hours. To determine who gets this last piece, we may have to play a game of Stein, Papier, Schere.

Yesterday, while Keir was at the school practicing with classmates in a band that’s going to perform at the school’s cabaret in a couple of weeks (Cold Play’s “Shiver” is among the tunes), Jim and I headed to the Naschmarkt, a huge food and flea market (flohmarkt) we visit occasionally, to check out the goods. Again, except for dodging trams, it felt not much different from driving in D.C., especially in one regard: finding a parking place took forever.

Once at the market, we wandered among the aisles searching for treasures (specifically any Leica lenses – no luck) and wishing we had a clue as to what is a remarkable find as opposed to something merely interesting. As always when I’m in the world of commerce, I found myself staggered by the infinite ways humans have of turning raw materials into utterly unnecessary objects (kitsch of every description) as well as into the objects without which life is hardly worth living (books, accordians). Among the objects seemingly in demand were American license plates. Why? No clue.

Flohmarkt

This market is similar to a market in D.C. in that immigrant languages abound, except that in the U.S. the primary second language is Spanish, a language we rarely hear in Vienna. Being no linguist, I have nothing but guesses to offer, but frequently in Vienna we hear what appear to be Slavic languages (especially Slovenian and Slovakian) with Hungarian and Romanian thrown into the mix. Many of these languages are much more melodic sounding than German.

At the marginal stalls featuring third-or-fourth-hand clothes, well-worn shoes and broken appliances, many of the proprietors appear to be elderly immigrants who wear the travails of an impoverished existence on their deeply lined faces; some are perhaps merchants who have come to Vienna simply for the day.

I was struck by the various ways in which people advertise their economic status. I saw a middle-aged woman customer, who appeared to be Eastern European (I can’t describe this look, I just know it when I see it), who smiled broadly and showed off three gold-capped teeth in a row. It reminded me of a time shortly after we moved to D.C., when I was invited to speak at a conference of international teachers sponsored by the State Department. These particular teachers were primarily from the various Stans (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, etc.), and I noticed a few of the attendees sporting gold-capped teeth. I asked the state department representative about it and was told it was a sign of wealth, not much different, I suppose, than rappers advertising their megabucks by wearing ridiculously ostentatious grills.

As a child who was condemned to wear a silver cap on one of my front teeth for five years (FIVE YEARS!) after a neighbor boy threw a rock at a boulder during a sandlot baseball game and said rock ricocheted into my apparently open 9-year-old mouth, I find capped teeth anything but attractive and desirable.  That silver cap plus my thick blue rhinestone-studded eyeglasses, star-shaped scar on my forehead (Squeaky Fromme, anyone?), machete-shaped scar on my lower leg, and concave chest spared me any premature dating.  I suppose I should be grateful . . 

.   

Now I’m depressed, so let’s turn from this inelegant image (photo is of Misti pre-cap, pre-host of injuries) to something far more picturesque: Salzburg. Last weekend we decided to take a day trip to Salzburg.  Instead of taking the train, which we will do next time, we drove, assuming that we could stop in various charming villages we passed through on our way. Of course, we were driving on something akin to Interstate, so such stops didn’t exist, but the countryside was quite beautiful and Salzburg was the picture postcard city we had expected to see.  Here’s Jim.

Julie 

This section is best read while humming “The hills are alive with the sound of music” and imagining Julie Andrews swaying on top of a hill.  Here is an image of Maria and one of the Von Trapp girls, shown as marionettes in a wonderful little museum deep in the Hohensalzburg Castle, which is an immense fortress that looms over the city.

Misti in Convent

We only spent a few hours in Salzburg, but it was impressive.  Keir and Natalie headed in one direction, and Misti and I in another.  Keir was taking photos along the Salzach River while we climbed the high, steep hill first to the Nun's Church, then on to the fortress. 

We have seen so many incredible churches in the past year that we find ourselves looking for the little things.  This church, part of the Nonnberg Convent, was built (actually rebuilt) from 1464 to 1503, and thus feels very old and understated.

1503

But understated does not mean simple.  The back wall of the church was a series of windows that connected to the convent, and the ceiling (as always, look up) showed a date of 1503.  Just outside the door are rows of nun's graves. 

From a distance

Up Close

After visiting with the nuns, we headed further up the "hill" to the castle proper.  If ever there were a castle that seems impenetrable, this is it.  The fortress contains a small town within its walls.  There are cannons, a torture chamber, memorabilia from long-ago wars, a pyramid made of cannon balls, and a bier garten.  We toured the bier garten first, then wandered through passageways and courtyards until we came upon something entirely unexpected: a marionette museum.  

That is where we found the dancing girls at the top of this blog, plus a wonderful, and sometimes a little creepy, collection of wooden people.  The exhibits of wooden heads, hands, and feet were fascinating, as were the ghouls. 

Heads

Ghouls

Off to the side (the museum was in a couple of dark castle rooms) a video was running of the original artists who made these marionettes.  We were so enthralled with the puppets that we didn't get the dates or much background information, but we later learned that the marionettes are from a theater that started in 1913 with an opera about Mozart.  The theater is still putting on operas. The video was of the ballet Swan Lake, performed delicately with a wonderful wooden ballerina.

Swan Lake

Back out on the walls of the castle, looking south and west toward the Alps, was the stuff of movies.  

Castle with a View

We wondered if these were the mountains the Von Trapp's had to cross to get to Switzerland to escape the Nazis, but then we read the real story and learned that they actually walked to the Salzburg bahnhof and caught a train to Italy. 

Misti and I strolled the streets of old Salzburg much like we do in Vienna, and while streets are similar ... old and narrow with beautiful buildings everywhere ... we had a sense that something was missing.   Eventually, we looked up and realized the rooftops weren't lined with statues.  After a year in Vienna, we missed them.  


The Austrians have a habit of putting modern pieces of sculpture in the middle of ancient squares, and these pieces are often jarring as much for their anachronistic setting as for the art itself.  On the Graben in Vienna there are several very tall, black Michelin Men kind of Teenage Mutant Ninja statues standing next to the classic pieces.  The juxtaposition is an intentional statement of sorts, but we've never liked these particular pieces because they are, in our eyes, ugly.  Really ugly.  What we found in Salzburg provides another sense of how odd the artistic choices can be.

He's Art

Art from a distance

Keir's Sign

Keir discovered another piece of art that appeared old and classic, but wasn't.  Hanging signs are common in Vienna and Salzburg (see street photo above, left), and many are historic.  Look closely and you'll see that Keir's discovery is less than historic. 


But Salzburg truly is stunning, so I'll conclude this with a couple of images from Keir and me of the city and the mountains, taken from the castle.    

Alps at Dusk

From the Castle