On our second day in Vienna -- this just after Christmas in 2008 (and not long after selling my novel. much of which is set in cities I had never visited, yikes!) -- Stephen and I met our friends Jonathan and Kurt who flew in to meet us from Berlin. After meeting them at their hotel, we walked to the Cafe Central to have lunch.
The inside of the cafe (and for that matter the outside) was just as I envisioned it, with acres of small, white marble-topped tables, tall arched ceilings and countless waiters bustling around with trays of food and pastries.
The main room was too crowded, so we were seated in an adjacent, enclosed courtyard, which as you can see was hardly an imposition. As so often happens when I step out of the United States for more than a few seconds, I was overcome with a sense of never wanting to return, if it meant that I could pass my days sitting around in beautiful, ornate cafes talking about nothing in particular. Some of this could no doubt be attributed to the simple pleasure of 'vacation,' but I've long suspected that there is a cost to life in the world's greatest 'superpower,' as if we all live under an invisible cloud of pressure that weighs us down and makes it difficult to enjoy some of the smaller pleasures in life, which are often only available if one lets go of more tedious forms of ambition.
In any event, we finished lunch -- I seem to remember enjoying a very hearty tomato soup, followed by some triple-layered chocolate pastry and (of course) coffee, all of which energized us as we contemplated an afternoon of strolling around the city to take in a few of the sights. Here is the entrance to one of the imperial palaces, adorned with a series of statues that I think it is safe to say would never pass muster in the sadly puritanical United States.
Here are the remains of a culture, I thought, that was not afraid of showing two barely clothed men in deliciously close proximity.
Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also a culture that was on more intimate terms with death, as evidenced by a series of 'plague towers' that can be found on the main thoroughfares. I wondered if the day would ever come when there would be death monuments in the middle of U.S. shopping malls, and if this would have a dampening effect on the economy.
We made our way over to the Karlskirche, which I first glimpsed through a somewhat tawdry little park.
We examined the columns, which contained the kind of 'detail' you don't find on very many of the luxury condos being built in New York City these days.
We decided not to tour the interior, however, after being repulsed by an admission fee and a shockingly (hilariously) garish jacket.
Outside the church the dilapidated square and modern architecture seemed to tell the story of a faded empire.
But I was less interested in the story of fallen empires than the Musikverein -- home of the Vienna Philharmonic -- which was constructed around the same time as the opera house. Although I have no reason to believe this was actually the case, I like to image that the architect of this structure (Theophil Hansen) was a rival of Eduard van der Null, given the former's taste for the neoclassical, which is almost entirely absent from the opera house. (Hansen, it is perhaps interesting to note, was a far more popular architect during his lifetime -- he was also responsible for designing many of the equally imperious and perhaps dully understated parliament buildings -- and in any case was not driven to kill himself).
Nearby we also admired the Karlsplatz Pavilions, these designed by Otto Wagner in the early 1900s when the Austrian Empire was about to finally splinter apart, just as everyone had predicted it would for the previous century or so. (Which perhaps explains the complete lack of any imperial sensibility here and instead the presence of a more delicate whimsy, as if the structures were small wildflowers sprouting up on the remains of a desolate battlefield.
Not for the first time, I resolved to learn the art of stenciling and somehow incorporate it into where I lived in the United States. (Alas, I have yet to follow through on this!)
By this point it was getting dark, so we each returned to our respective hotels to rest for a few hours before dinner. Stephen and I were staying at the Hotel Bristol, just across from the opera house.
Needless to say, the Bristol resonated with the kind of 'old-world' elegance that was 'critical' for me to experience firsthand, given the 'research' I was undertaking for the novel.
There were mountains of pillows!
And best of all, a view of the opera house, which glowed serenely and magnificently in the Vienna sky.
After our rest, we returned outside, where the streets were packed with tourists strolling along Karntner Strasse, which is effectively the 'Times Square' of Vienna; unlike the buildings surrounding us, the storefronts did not exactly convey what I would describe as a 'timeless elegance' but instead catered to the kind of lowest common denominator dictated by capitalism in the modern era.
Which is not to say they completely lacked in 'camp appeal.'
As I've since heard more than a few people knowingly remark, as if speaking in a kind of code that has always been used to distinguish those who have money and privilege from those who do not (or perhaps worse, are newly ascended to these ranks), Vienna effectively embodies the 'eastern' and 'western' sensibilities of Europe.
If you were not aware that Mozart was Austrian, it wouldn't take you very long to figure it out.
There was a strange dissonance between the old buildings and the modern advertisements that defaced them.
St. Stephen's Cathedral towered above all such petty concerns, however.
We ate dinner at a small restaurant our Berlin friends picked out. I don't remember much about it except that the food was heavy and delicious, the kind of meal that left me certain I could easily and quickly add ___ pounds if I ever lived in Vienna. Of course, my head was swimming the entire time with the added luxury of eating with three others who were fluent in German, which completely eliminated any anxiety about 'getting the wrong thing' or leaving an incorrect tip or any of the countless other details that can make travel to a foreign country both exciting and exasperating. After dinner, we wandered around a bit more until we arrived at another cafe that our friends remembered from a previous visit to the city.
This spot was more 'bohemian' and was filled with couches and old posters that appeared to have accumulated over the period of at least 200 years. Like countless others before us, we drank as the night passed away.
For a few hours, we were at home in the city of dreams.
(Previous Vienna coverage here.)
