VIenna and Salzburg

Like Budapest, Vienna is vibrant and there’s a lot to see. I told myself I wasn’t going to try to see all the art but I was lying. Imagine that: I actually believed that I wasn’t going to try to see paintings I’ve loved for years.

My art nerdery co-exists with a minor obsession with archeology especially from the Bronze Age. The older the better. The Venus of Willendorf was found in a vast archeological site near Vienna (something for the bucket list!)

She is one of a group of around 40 mostly female carved figures found in sites across Europe from France to Turkey, and dated upwards of 25-36,000 years old. I first learned about this tiny carved woman at university. She is as miraculous as any other artwork we revere: The Venus de Milo, The Mona Lisa, The Kiss. Unlike those artworks, these tiny sculptures are really only famous among art/history nerds. We were told at uni that she and her kind were fertility symbols but no one truly knows. She may be a portable representation of the Goddess, from a time when perhaps we performed personal rituals before eating, bathing, sleeping, travelling or gathering food. We like to think we are the pinnacle of civilisation, but we know so little.

I’m a bit sad I didn’t get around to seeing Bosch’s Last Judgment but hey you can’t do everything. It’s a good reason to go back to Vienna one day. We will go back in the cooler months. We wanted to do a WWII walking tour but it was a 2:30pm when it was about 40 Celsius and we just couldn’t do it. I had always thought the winter months would have been the cruelest during the war for prisoners and soldiers alike, but those summer months can be wicked.

As my husband pondered, our lodgings in Vienna would have seen thousands of people come and go over the nearly four hundred years since it was built. We couldn’t imagine the terror of those living under the Nazi regime in the city. In all seriousness, one wonders what might have been if the Academy of Fine Arts had accepted his application.

After weeks in hotel rooms, we had a tiny apartment in Vienna. We picked up some supplies from the supermarket for a home-made lunch both days. Who knew making your own lunch could be such a treat!

We also treated ourselves to Sacher torte at the original Sacher hotel and a concert at the Musikverien. On our last evening in the city, we wandered all over town marvelling at the incredible architecture.

Seriously, it boggles the mind to consider the amount of money that must have poured into Vienna from all the reaches of the Austrian Empire. We finished the night off with drinks at a little bar right near our hotel. Who knew whiskey and ginger ale was a cocktail but the young bartender was rightly proud of her creation, it tasted like summer in a glass. Luckily we were staggering distance from bed.

We were a little sad to be moving on from Vienna but Salzburg was calling. We did a Sound of Music tour and were surprised to hear that the American movie isn’t popular or even terribly well known in Austria. The tour was full of Aussies, Americans and Brits. My mum loved that movie so much, so the tour was done in her memory.

The old town of Salzburg is a marvel. Everything is so old and beautiful and well preserved, considering the carnage that went on during the first and second world wars.

In Amsterdam, Hungary and Austria, you can see small bronze plaques on the pavement in front of houses and shops. They are there as a constant reminder of the children, women and men who were dragged from their homes and deported to labour and death camps.

On the train to Venice, we met a man named Alfred who was thrilled to be able to reminisce about an Aussie girlfriend in the 70s. Alfred told us about the way Austrians opened their hearts and homes to thousands of Hungarians who wanted to flee the Russian ‘caretaker’ government and about the group of Hungarian separatists who smuggled the famed and revered Hungarian crown of Saint Stephen out of the country so the Russians couldn’t appropriate it. Somehow the crown found its way to a lakeside town of Mattsee where a reluctant priest allowed the men to bury the crown in the graveyard. When the American caretakers came to Mattsee, one of the conspirators told them about the crown which they exhumed and held for safekeeping. The beloved crown has now been returned to Hungary where it belongs. I think if I’d known this story while I was in Budapest, I might have made the effort to see the crown. That’s the power of storytelling.

It was lovely talking to Alfred and great seeing that people all across Europe still smile when they meet Australians.