Walking In Vienna
   

click any photo for a detailed view

We spent three to four hours a day walking, stopping only when our feet threatened to quit working, and that only briefly. There were interesting architectural details around every corner. We went through a house where Mozart lived and saw a restaurant where Mozart, Handel and Beethoven once played a Pastorale together.

Regina had been to Vienna in 1980 and noticed changes, mostly for the better. The buildings seemed better-maintained, as if the Austians were well aware of their architectural gifts. That was the good news.

The bad news was the proliferation of English - and not just the number of people who spoke it (making our lives easier). The airport is conspicuously labeled “Vienna International Airport”. That’s too much English. We even saw a street musician accompanying herself on an electronic keyboard and singing American country music ..... with a German accent tinged with Tennessee- an unfortunate mix.

You'll have to imagine a view of the wonderful open-air market called the Naschmarkt which was only blocks from our hotel. It consists of several city blocks of stands and shops selling everything you can imagine in the way of great things to eat. We bought the ingredients for a picnic lunch there. (Not all photos come out when Ron is doing the taking.)

 At left here is a shop near our hotel in central Vienna. It was right next to a bar called "Boy Zone."

We especially liked these two statues, located on opposite sides of the door to the Natural History Museum. The inscriptions are hard to read, (check the larger images) but one has a couple of half-naked savages and the other has a sleek figure of a beautiful woman wearing a crown. One represents Europe. The other represents Australia and the Americas. Guess which is which.

In another imaginary photo, (Bad Ron, Bad!) you would have seen the Fine Arts Museum which is directly across the square from the Natural History Museum. We loved it. It was a good education for two people almost totally ignorant of art history. Tape-recorded commentary was provided as part of the admission- in English.

Regina dragged a hardcover history of the Hapsburgs with her on the trip and, between the Hofberg and this museum, we managed to see the originals of about half the paintings in the book.

The story of another missing picture:
One of the important historical events in Vienna's history was the Turkish siege that failed. As a result, the Muslim expansion into Europe was stopped and what was then the Holy Roman Empire began to reclaim much of the territory they had lost.

We made the trip to a building where, 20 years ago, Regina remembered that a Turkish cannonball was still imbedded over the doorway. Sadly we found that an insurance company had taken over the building, removed the cannonball, spray-painted it gold and hung it on the wall. Fortunately, the most businesses don't share that vision of “progress”. Neither did we.
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