A Viennese Afternoon

 

Stephansplatz in the heart of Wien is a happening place.  Nearby on Graben is the imposing column pictured here, The Vienna Pestsaule, memorializes the victims of the Plague of 1679 and celebrates the survivors, among them Emperor Leopold I who upon his return to the city after the disaster had passed ordered the construction of this thing.  Numerous plague columns across Europe were modeled after this one.

One observation I made as I traveled across Western Europe was that Europeans had a penchant for committing statuary.  The artist in this case did that with a vengeance, stacking stuff, well you see it.

Strolling the platz is fine entertainment for tourists who I am sure are an impediment to the daily chores of the busy Viennese who have to dodge the tourists in the pursuit of their endeavors.  Of course we contributed our share of roadblocking, stopping and staring at all the wonders.

Street performers were fairly common and one could be entertained for a long time were he to stop and appreciate each artist or actor.  And one afternoon stop we did for there under an awning pitched in the middle of the street stood a very nice looking young woman in an artistic pose.  There she stood, stock still, naked as Eve before the fig leaf apron.

She was being painted by an artist.  No, he was not painting a picture of her on a canvas: he was painting her.  Literally.  I closed my mouth, picked up my eyeballs and inserted them back into their sockets.

The stream of Wieners continued to flow quickly past, but trust me, there was a crowd of tourists gathered here.  We had with us two boys, ages fifteen and sixteen. Suffice it to say, they were transfixed, rendered immobile.  And speechless.  The adults were eventually able to prod the boys into moving along.

Word of the day:  impediment

An Evening in Vienna #T

 

We had all strolled down Dorotheegasse together.  The boys were urging one more adventure.  It was nine in the evening, though, and we had been on our feet all day.   Ellie and I held out for cashing in and heading for the pension.  And thus it was that we split up, they to their adventure, we back to our hotel, or so we supposed.  We had been in Wien three days and except for an excursion to Schloss Schönbrunn we had scarce been farther than a kilometer from the hotel.

We had "done" the Kunsthistoriche, had had Sacher torte at The Sacher Hotel.  We had explored the Stephansdom and its immediate environs. This evening we had witnessed a performance of The Wiener Sängerknaben     We knew our way around.  And we were young, Ellie and I, in our fifties.

So we walked.  And walked.  And as foot traffic and vehicular traffic became increasingly lighter there began to arise in our consciousness the awareness that somewhere we had made a wrong turn.  Then soon we were gripped by the cold reality that we had no idea where we were nor any notion as to how to get where we wanted to be.  And we walked.  Ellie, who seldom complained about anything, remarked that her feet were beginning to hurt.  "Killing me," I think she said.

And we walked, turning from one street into another, alleys really at this point.  Wound in and out of lanes, increasingly more narrow and now completely deserted.  Dark, dismal, and eerie.  Then we found ourselves staring at the Donaukanal.

That at least suggested that we needed to be going the other direction.

So we walked.

And eventually we turned into a street from which we could see the spire of St. Stephansdom.

And thus we found our way home, arriving there long after our cohorts had called it a day and had returned to the digs.

Good times.

See also Spanish Riding School

Word of the day: walk: it's what you do.