European Epic # 5: A Tour of Capitals

Advance apologies for the number of slightly cockeyed photos in this post.  

Taking pictures out the windows of a moving tour coach is tricky!

The first imposing sight we saw in Vienna is a rare one: a historic building overlooking the Danube River.  It's just down the riverbank from the docking position of our cruise ship.

The  Kaiser Franz Josef Jubilaeums-Kirche (Jubilee Church) was built in 1898 to celebrate the fiftieth year of the long-lived penultimate Emperor's reign.  It's a rarity because the Danube had only reached its present course during his reign.  It was diverted away from the old city centre as a way of preventing the all-too-common flooding -- and it worked.  Today, the river is separated from downtown by a wide swath of modern suburbs, and some hefty dikes as well.  And all the historic buildings, except this one showpiece, are in and around the old city.  The former course of the river, next to the city, is now the winding Donau Kanal (Danube Canal), and is a popular city-centre hangout with its numerous "beach bars."

From the monumental to the domestic.  Somehow, that contrast for me sums up the special feeling of Vienna.  On the way into the city, our next "big sight" was this very ordinary looking apartment building.  But the plaque on the first storey above the street gives the game away.  This apartment was the home of Johann Strauss Jr, and it was here that he composed many of his most famous pieces, including the majestic Kaiserwalzer (Emperor's Waltz) and the immortal An den schönen blauen Donau ("On the Beautiful Blue Danube").

Other historic sites we passed on the way into the city included the canal-side Urania observatory..,   

the gothic Rathaus (city hall)..,



the Musikverein (home of the world-renowned Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra) -- this view only shows the side of the building, but still..,



and finally the Staatsoper, the Vienna State Opera house, one of the world's premier presenters of live opera in all its vast and varied range of styles.

The Staatsoper faces the broad Ringstrasse.  The Ring was another of Franz Josef's great works in the city.  Multiple lanes wide, with broad shade trees, the Ring is Vienna's answer to the Champs-Elysees in Paris, and is Vienna's most distinguished address as well as an important traffic artery around the old city.

Behind the Staatsoper, at the Albertinaplatz, we stepped off our coach to begin a walking tour.  Like Prague and Budapest, Vienna solves the problem of traffic in the most crowded and narrow streets of the old town by banning it, turning the key streets into pedestrian shopping areas.  Vehicles still have to be allowed during the mornings for deliveries to the various stores and restaurants, but after that it's strictly a people place.

We walked first through a couple of narrow streets and into the vast maze of the Hofburg, the old Imperial Palace complex.  

Today, the Hofburg's most famous tenants are the white Lipizzaner stallions.  These horses perform in the most elaborate display-riding shows to be seen anywhere.  They were in a coy mood, with only the horse in the stall on the left peeking over his half-door for a moment -- and only when no cameras were pointing at him.  Clever fellow.

From the Hofburg, we headed on down to the Graben pedestrian street.  The name means "ditch," and the street marks the location of the moat around a Roman fortified camp.  In the Graben, the eye-catching sight is this monumental column, created to the order of Emperor Leopold I in thanksgiving for the end of a severe outbreak of the plague in 1679.  Notice the very unusual position of the emperor, who is depicted as kneeling in thanks.

The end of the Graben gradually unfolds into the soaring vista at the city's heart.

Unlike many of the great English cathedrals, slumbering in their quiet park-like "closes," St. Stephen's in Vienna is a city cathedral, completely surrounded by the hotels, the cafés, the shops, the teeming humanity of Stephansplatz.  The architecture of this late-gothic confection is well worth some time to study with a quick walk-around...

...followed by a visit to the interior.

Once again, though, time for a family portrait.

Everywhere I go in this part of the world, I find churches dedicated to one St. Stephen or another, public squares named Stephen, monuments to Kings named Stephen -- I've never felt so distinguished before in my life.  A guy could easily get a swelled head.

At this point, the tour broke for an hour to give everyone a chance to do some shopping or get a coffee or whatever.  I'd have loved to spring for a coffee -- Viennese coffeehouses are one of that city's greatest cultural inventions.  But alas, they are as famous for their incredibly sweet and delectable pastries as for their rich coffee.  I can't risk going into one now unless I want, to paraphrase the Bard, to deck my cup with tears full salt.  Sigh.

I took a break in the afternoon, to catch up on writing and sleep.  In the evening we were all offered a free excursion to a Viennese concert.  Normally this is a paid add-on excursion, but in this case Avalon gave it to all of us for free as part-compensation for the mess-up in our voyage.  Nice added touch, considering that the river level certainly isn't the company's fault.

The concert was held in the wood-panelled banquet hall of the House of the Engineers in the Eschenbach Palace.  The performers were styled The Vienna Supreme Orchestra, and consisted of a pair of violins, viola, cello, and bass, with flute, clarinet, piano, and percussion -- as well as two singers and two ballet dancers.  The programme was plainly geared to a non-musical audience, and turned into a light-hearted evening of musical schtick -- the sort of thing good musicians do when they are in the mood to let their hair down a bit.  There was some interaction with audience members, and a fun "solo" with the percussionist playing a cuckoo whistle in the Krapfenwald polka, until he was upstaged by the flautist with a bird-twitter whistle.

The quality of the music was good, certainly, as was the dancing (on a very tiny free space in the front of the stage), and the programme was a selection of Mozart, Haydn, Offenbach (the Parisian operetta composer), and of course Johann Strauss -- Senior and Junior.  Needless to say, the concert had to end with Junior's immortal Blue Danube followed by a Viennese clap-along performance of Senior's Radetzky March.  And a great fun time was had by all.

The next morning brought me to the second capital of this post, and the second bonus of this unexpected change in plans.  Where we originally expected to simply sail past the Slovakian capital of Bratislava en route from Budapest to Vienna, the company took advantage of the extended Vienna stay to plan an additional add-on excursion there, and I'm glad I took it.

Bratislava is a modest-sized city of 460,000 people, and its historic core is easily visited on foot in a relatively short time.  That's partly because the old city area is small, and partly because it is not even 1/10 as crowded with tourists as the major capitals like Prague, Budapest, or Vienna.  But it has a definite charm all its own, a unique mix of ancient and modern, serious and playful, authentic and genuinely fake, all rolled into one.  And it's all found less than an hour's drive from Vienna.  I'd love to have stayed in Bratislava for a day or two longer.

We rolled across the Danube into the old centre of Bratislava on the "New Bridge," a showpiece of communist-era architecture.

At once we climbed the hill on the left of the bridge to Bratislava Castle.  This imposing structure is a modern bit of fakery, the decidedly inauthentic reconstruction having been completed in 2011.

From the ramparts, you get not only a view of the Danube and the modern parts of the city but also the much more authentic lower ramparts of the castle itself.

The ceremonial gateways at either end of the esplanade are decorated with stone sculptures, not of guards as you might first think, but of suits of armour and flags, such as might have been seized as the spoils of war.

After a brief visit here, we drove back down into the lower town for a walking tour.  We entered through the medieval Michalská Brana (St. Michael's Gate) -- a narrow passageway which takes a sharp 90-degree turn between the outer and inner gateways (the inner one being under the clock tower).  It's a very effective defensive tactic.

Inside, we toured through streets of old buildings lined with cafes and shops, and enhanced by some decidedly quirky modern sculpture.  This friendly gent, for instance, was a long-time resident of the old city, famous for greeting all and sundry in the streets.  The statue was erected after his passing.

This one isn't a portrait of anyone in particular, as far as anyone knows.  It just "appeared" one day, some years back, and quickly became a major tourist site -- and one that was copied in several other cities.  The matching road warning sign was added after a couple of drivers drove over the sculpture -- polishing its head and doing somewhat more than just polishing to the undersides of their vehicles.

Another major sight is the cathedral of St. Martin.  At one time, Bratislava was actually the capital of Hungary when Buda was deemed too open to attack, and several Hungarian kings were crowned in this church -- including the famous Austro-Hungarian empress Maria Theresa, who was crowned here as King of Hungary.  No word of a lie.

The tour ended at the large plaza fronting the National Theatre.  Seems like no European city can do without a public "people place" like this.

And from there, we walked back to our bus, rode back to Vienna, and boarded our ship in time for a late 1:00pm lunch and -- at last -- our first sailing of the cruise.