She who must be obeyed

This is Celine.  There was a famous French writer named Celine - albeit with awful politics - who decided to make an auto journey through all of France with his wife and cat.  It took them 18 months.  I named this one in honour of any man crazy enough to travel that long in a car with 1)  a wife, and 2) a cat.
Celine was a rescued lady from a litter born in my old warehouse loading dock.  She is five years of age and the perfect cat and friend.  She is lively, affectionate and courteous.  She never does anything bad other than pull the flowers out of the vase she is sitting next to while pretending disinterest.

Conclusions Eastern Europe, September 2012

Any observations necessarily are all the result of visual experiences since I did not have a conversation with any local inhabitants at all.  It is usually the case that it is difficult to meet people in developed nations, and worse if you happen to be old.  I also think it is 'not cool' now to speak to others except via some tiny screen or on some cell phone.  Certainly, the immense volume of tourists today makes it unlikely that locals are anxious to speak to them, except unless they want something,

In all five cities...
The immediate and constant impression in every city and nation I visited was the complete lack of obese people.  It is just as much of a shock to return home and see so many XXXLs  cruising the streets .
For me, being from Toronto, it was also constantly surprising how white the populations were in every city I visited.  You may not have been in Toronto, or not recently, and you would probably be shocked to see that the so-called Caucasian population is either a minority now, or very close to it.  I don't care, and mention it only as a demographic and visual matter.  I thought U.N. members of developed nations had an equal obligation to take in considerable numbers of refugees.  I recall that Switzerland was way out of compliance and was induced into cooperating only after some years of kicking and screaming.  But I can say that I was walking and on public transit constantly day after day, and there were days I did not ever see even one non-white - except for obvious tour groups like Asians.

The overwhelming vandalism everywhere...
Berlin has had a reputation for skinheads and graffiti for a couple of decades.  But I was saddened by the utter, mindless defacing of every city I visited.  Not only handsome buildings, but a lot of marble and granite statues (from which the paint can never be removed).  Worse, the obsessive scratching of glass and metal surfaces is ubiquitous, disgusting and  a kind of collective insanity among the vandals.  My favourite restaurant in Berlin had one glass window looking out onto a park thick with large and beautiful old trees. That sheet of glass was 6' x 12' and some of the meanest, most reprehensible people alive, scratched some initials and symbols (well, at their own moronic level) into the v. centre of the pane.  The damage is probably about 16 x 16".  It would cost a huge amount replace and I am sure the arrogant idiots would do the same thing again.  In that lovely neighbourhood, everything is - I mean every single inch of every building-  covered in spray painted nonsense in several colours.  They say that some residents actually paint over it weekly, but it only presents a new palette for the slobs to work upon, and that they cannot keep up with the vandals. I must add here, almost nothing makes me angrier than the so-called art galleries and writers who make claims that some of this vandalism is art.
On a few trips to China. I saw the results of the hideous 'Cultural revolution.'  Most of the damage - and of course - dead bodies, have been long since removed.  And the Chinese I spoke with all were entirely in denial - they will all tell you that it was really nothing at all, really minor, nothing important was hurt.  Then you see a formerly noble stone lion with its head mostly broken off due to hammers attacking.  And you can find quite a lot of items still listed in travel guides which no longer even exist.
 What this all means is, China has no culture, unless you think shopping is a cultural matter (I constantly ask even educated Chinese to name their best national writers so I can read their works.  It is only 1 in 100 that have any idea at all of great Chinese writers - like in the West, where some can only name 'the bible' which is not actually recognized as great writing).  Mao was in fact, an uncultured jerk and an uneducated peasant and thug.  In a few decades, he and his fellow thugs eradicated anything and everything from architecture depts. in Universities, to libraries, to art to instilling such fear in the entire population, that China's culture was abolished; to the extent that you would find it hard to discover more than the tiniest fraction of Chinese in any way interested in any cultural matter.  Worse, I constantly find Chinese still praising Mao.  Let me be clear; the Chinese situation was state -sponsored and directed vandalism, which is clearly not the case in the West at all.  But the results are the same.  The constant dumbing down, stupidification, and political correctness of the population here also will have about the same effect as closing down faculties in universities.

What the Chinese cultural revolution means to us
Why does this matter?  Because I have feared since my travels in China that this will eventually happen here.  I fear it even more since that truly precious Rothko canvas in the Tate modern was assaulted and ruined with a large section of graffiti this past week. The problem is 1).  The trash class has no respect for anything at all.  They allegedly do most - or much - of this damage to gain entry into drug sales.  Certainly today, drug sales are indisputably important to the apparently vast population of high income people who love to consume same, and thereby perpetuate the various crimes of the drug sellers.  2).  There has always been a contempt for culture of any sort that the under-classes regard as being representative of wealthier classes.  Well, for the most part, it is difficult not to be wealthier than them.  The new Four Seasons opera building in Toronto was only a week away from its opening, when a spray painter wrote a huge and long message across its metal and glass with some resentment toward people who could possibly attend operas.  Following that, there were plenty of messages on the internet congratulating the vandal who sympathized with his ignorance.
I saw quite new and advanced subway cars and many streetcars in Vienna, with windows scratched severely.  There seems to be no limit at all to the damage these goons will do.
The hip hop, thug, goon, criminal, gang- and ignorance-loving era we live in is not going to end soon.  Rothko was - in my view - the greatest artist of the XXth Century.  The nine panel Seagram set that was displayed in the Tate (one panel of which was ruined) are the most profound and compelling abstract paintings I ever saw.  I have read art critics and others who also say the experience of sitting that small, circular room surrounded only by those panels was an ineffable and singular experience.  How this deranged "artist" could have selected those particular works to assault makes me think there is a Satan.  I think the future of great museums will be all works of art behind glass walls.

Think about this
A few years ago, I had been travelling in Asia a couple of weeks and was finishing up on the Island of Pulau Wei off the north tip of Sumatra in a really primitive  situation - which I loved.  By that time, I was really missing hearing classical music and was often thinking how much I would enjoy hearing some Mahler or Sibelius.  Then I slowly came to realize something I never realized previously. 
If you isolate the European cultural period from the mid-1700s to around 1900, that is the bulk of our culture today.  In fact, the parts of Europe we all most enjoy, the Baroque, Rococo, buildings, the grand interiors of opera houses, castles, palaces, the great parks and gardens so perfectly laid out,  the precious pianos & instruments of the time, the vast collections of antiques, and libraries almost all come from those couple of hundred years.  Just erase, Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and other composers and Victor Hugo, Balzac, Tolstoy, Dickens, etc. etc., and (somewhat earlier) Rembrandt, Renoir, Durer, Vermeer, and all the great painters and sculptors, and what we would be left with for "Western culture" would be very thin indeed.
It struck me while travelling that Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, China, actually the whole of Asia has fragments of culture mostly scattered around in different tribes and ethnic groups but they did not happen to have that inexplicable period of colossal creative productivity that has endured in the West.
I read that the philosopher Bertrand Russell was in China in the '20s.  That was while the emperor still lived in the Forbidden city and he could not have gone inside of it.  But he did write that he thought the Temple of Heaven might be the most beautiful building in the world.  Upon reflection, even 90 years later, I think I might agree with him.  But as old and large as China is, it has only a handful of remarkable buildings, while Europe has armies of them, all full of many sorts of treasures, and most of them from the most slender slice of Western Civilization and Culture.
It is only a stroke of good fortune that some of this survived war after war.  When I was in the USAF in the 60's, the truly militant career officers and airmen all wanted to see nuclear weapons used on Russia and the sooner the better. The had no concern at all of what great and small treasures they would be destroying. I read that when JFK wanted the pentagon generals to be certain Laos did not fall under Russian influence, the generals demanded free use of nuclear weapons.  Laos then (and to a lesser extent now) is about like a national park anywhere else - it is almost impossible to imagine what target a nuclear weapon could be used upon.  It is a wonder that anything survives such colossal arrogance and ignorance is these cases.  I am grateful for what remains, and that was much of the point of this 2012 European trip.

Berlin, September , 2012

The last times I was in Berlin were 1966 and '67.  At that time, I thought it was a grim city.  I did not dislike it, but could not find any connection with it.  Now, since the great concordant and reunification, it is a much  improved and more comfortable city.  The photo above is two bridges - upper and lower - between new parliament buildings over the River Spree.  Much of the former "Wall" ran along the Spree.

 My hotel was in the former East Berlin and I spent most of my time in that sector as it has a lot of great restaurants, handsome old buildings, and a heavy presence  large old trees.  I stayed at an Ibis for the first time.  It is part of the huge French chain Accor.  I have a habit of staying at Novotels, and it is common for Ibis and Novotels to be neighbours, but not in this case.  The Berlin Novotel wanted $270 a night and I thought that was excessive, so I stayed at the Ibis for about $130.  Friends who have also used Ibis called them "Ikea" hotels, which is about right.  But when travelling, and cities are booked nearly solid (Berlin's busiest months are Sept. Oct - due to conventions, trade shows and the Marathon), one has to be flexible.
The street and district are named "Prenzlauer berg."  I think this is the only modern building in the entire area.  I had never previously known that when the major powers divided up Berlin, the Russians got the nicest part.  I had been taken into the East on a USAF bus tour in '67, and all we saw was endless and faceless, drab apartment blocks.  I never saw any of the nice part until now.

The most dominant feature of Berlin is "Museum island," where a large number of major museums in giant 19th C. buildings have opened.  The one shown above it the grimiest and dirtiest looking, but all the rest are restored and fresh looking.  But if you can enlarge this photo, and look at the pillars, you will see a lot of bullet holes.  Some in other buildings are bigger than an open hand.  Those are original parts of buildings.  The ones without Russian bullet holes are restorations.
In the lower photo, many of the tower pillars are shot up and dark, as is the ring above them.  Those are original, but the copper dome, and the light/ivory clean parts  are all new.  You can see the red roofed building is like new - because it is.  It is difficult to comprehend that so much work has been done in Berlin in the past 20-25 years.

No, no no, I sometimes may feel like the above, but it is not me.  This is a painting on a wall in front of an artist's studio in Berlin.  Obviously you do not want to see what he sees.  If you look closely at the two right-most fingers, in the middle you will see what must have been the bars of a window plastered over.
Nearby at the same art studio was a buffalo partly made of old wooden chair seats, and a two-headed monster in the tree probably made of plastic.  A thunderstorm was just beginning and I did not have time to stay longer.  But the monster was scarey.

In most old Euro cities, you see these arched doorways.  They were all designed to admit a two horse carriage, with the horses being side-by-side, and a carriage of a slightly less width.  Now, some of them are driveways into courtyards, but a lot have been replaced by doors.  I saw doors that surely would cost $10,000-20,000 to replace - often of the most beautiful wood and design, now defaced constantly by morons. The Berlin city centre is constantly being cleaned of this illness.  But the neighbourhoods cannot keep up with it.  Some actually paint over the trash weekly .I saw one painted comment somewhere referring to "Einstein."  I thought 'Imagine, one of the most ignorant people in human history pays tribute to the smartest.'  This disease has attacked Berlin for a long time now and the city - like Athens - is utterly defaced by idiots.

This is a beautiful pile of crushed junk in the middle of an office complex atrium.  It is about 40' tall and because there is a skylight above it,  every photo is over-exposed or under-exposed, but the detail above is probably the closest to the actual colours.  This work has been featured in many art and travel magazines.  It is clever.

The foyer of the Ka De We department store in Berlin.  This store is about as large as Macy's in NY and is v. expensive.  But it is a pleasant visit and there are a lot of nice things one does not see anywhere else - in our contemporary world where sameness seems to be celebrated.  This is but a fraction of the forest of trees with pink lights that created a most unusual Dept. store welcome.

As you know, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the most revered in the world.  It was with some surprise then, that a couple of years ago, they built and moved into what critics said was an indescribably ugly new hall.  I certainly agree.  This view of it is probably the most charitable and even it looks awful.

I am adding two images from Leipzig I missed earlier.  The blue church-like building is part of the prestigious Leipzig University, as is the tower in the lower photo.  The brown hat-like structure is the philharmonic hall of the Leipzig Gewandhaus - also one of most respected orchestras in the world.

Nearby the ugly Berlin philharmonic is the Gemaldegalerie - the museum level collection of art masterworks you expect in every major city.  But in Berlin - for some reason I cannot even imagine - this massive and wonderful collection is played down - way down.  Few guides even list it and no tours go there.  As a result, I was practically alone with maybe a hundred other people in this giant building and collection.  I really enjoyed it.
Somewhat by accident, I found the Helmut Newton Museum of Photography.  What a great place.  It was the most interesting show I saw in all of Berlin.  Newton was great and charming fashion photographer in his work time. He shot all the big Paris designers' works for the Spring and Fall shows for mags like Vogue and Elle.  He made a lot of money and lived a kind of charmed life.
He was handsome and fit and seemed healthy nearly to the end of his life. It seems likely when he died,  like Picasso's heirs, his estate would have been bankrupted by the huge amount of assets he left them (not necessarily cash or liquid assets) if they paid all the death duties due. So his widow donated a lot of his photos, videos, his entire home office including furniture, art etc., some of his clothing,  correspondence to and from him (much of which is framed on display), his handmade jeep which was made for him by an auto designer, his cameras, and many other things.
His own personal photography - which makes up the permanent museum show - is almost entirely  beautiful naked women.  Search his name on Google to get an idea of his special work.
I could not explain it, but it seemed to me that despite the nakedness, the photos are all very respectful.  In fact, his wife June, was present at many of the shootings.  I always liked the bold attitude and works of HN and it was a special pleasure to see so much of his non-commercial work displayed together.

Leipzig, September 2012

The visit to Leipzig was my own Johann Sebastian Bach groupie pilgrimage.  I think Bach was such a powerful influence on European music and culture that I wanted to go to his primary home.  It was one of the smartest things I did on this trip. The city is a beautiful one.  Like Dresden, the War damage was terrible, and it resulted in another 19th century city being pieced back together and a very old city looking sleek and modern.

But I was excited just to go directly to Thomaskirche - the church and attached school where Bach worked and taught, and the Bach Museum across the street.
  The church exterior is not remarkable.  However, the interior is simple but beautiful.  I do not exaggerate when I say that from the moment you enter the door, there is a calmness, and divorce  from the outer world that is palpable.  Because Bach died in 1750 at 65 yrs of age, you can imagine that the pipe organ he played on was in need of replacement.  Shortly after I enter the church that morning, a genuine pro organist began rehearsing his program for a scheduled afternoon performance.  One of the odd and dirty little secrets of the church world is that churches seem to yearn for the fanciest and most expensive pipe organs available.  Yet, church organists are rarely - if ever - the equal of the pipe organs they have access to.  Therefore, it is always a real pleasure to hear both a pro organist and a grand instrument.
I cannot imagine how much they spent on this instrument, but it was so much that they ran out of money and had to beg more from the EU and also hold a fund raiser to complete it.  Whatever they spent was entirely worth it.  I believe it is the v. sweetest sound and the most balanced sound I have ever heard from such an instrument.  It is common to praise giant cathedrals with powerful organs because of the "decay" time.  That is the sound that reverberates through the hall after playing has stopped.  But in this medium sized church, the sound is so wonderful, that I am sure I will never hear the like of it unless I return there.
Bach is always there it seems.  He and his wife are buried under the approach to the altar.  Originally, he was buried near the church, but no one was certain exactly where.  Then some construction was occurring and it became necessary to follow the directions on an old paper which said he and his wife were buried 30 some steps from a certain store in a certain direction.  They dug there and found his belt buckle, his wife's wedding ring (which was stolen then in '44) and some other items that identified them both.  The hard items went to the Museum and the softer went to the church altar.

I was back in the afternoon when a motet was sung there and the intro. was the Bach works I had heard that a.m.  It was one of the highlights of my trip.  Much like the Wien opera, the Thomaskirche has a fine set of speakers on the exterior and people can stand out under the trees and listen to the performance in the church.  BTW, Bach has his own stained glass window (above) and excellent statue.
I also walked over to the (composer's) Robert and Clara Schumann house.  It was pleasant and a kind of way of converting people like them from historical abstractions into real people.  Their pad is shown above, but they only occupied part of the second floor.
Leipzig is a wonderful place.  You cannot imagine the amount of classical music going on every day there.  I think it must be the most civilized city on earth.

Dresden

I was surprised by the beauty of Dresden.  The large buildings and churches that look so attractive are reconstructions completed mostly in the past 20+ years.  The result is a pleasant looking city on the beautiful river Elba that has the stature of the 19th century and the conveniences and freshness of a 20th C. city.  But if you look back at old photos of Dresden - and Leipzig - you will see that for the most part, the grand open plazas are not the pattern in which the old cities lived.  Those gaps are mainly urban renewal caused by WWII.
There are many nice buildings, but my interest this time was the Semperoper - shown in the top photo.  It is a large building in the style that is what most people think of as a traditional opera house.  It is attractive on the outside and comfortable on the inside.  I saw La Boheme there and it was as good as any opera company in the world.  The audience was nearly feral over it and I don't recall any performance anywhere, where I have witnessed more curtain calls.

One of the most dominant features in Dresden is a mural 30' x 300'.  It was originally painted around 1589, but the dampness from the nearby river and other problems caused it to deteriorate.  Over time, several repairs and solutions were attempted until finally the Meissen porcelain company suggested that it make the mural in small tiles.  This worked well, and less than 700 were damaged in WWII.
The title of the work is "Procession of Dukes," and shows all the dukes that ruled in the palace (this is on the exterior wall of the palace).  Some were not terribly distinguished although one is said to have sired 300 children.  No, I did not notice Arnold Schwartzenegger's portrait there.
One of the great pleasures of Dresden, was the Staatliche Kunst Sammlungen - the great art museum.  I had read a good deal of specific Euro histories and wars this past winter.  I was surprised at the looting by Napoleon of the lands he invaded.  He hauled back to Paris just about anything that could be transported.  But he showed a particular interest in art and relieved individuals, cities and nations of vast amounts of sculpture and paintings.  Then the Russians and allies came along and were not shy about their gratis shopping habits.  Some of the treasures were adequately hidden to evade looters.  But this collection and others I saw are so immense, and thorough in breadth and depth, that I think there must have been a lot of negotiations which resulted in the return of many collections (but I doubt that happened with the French and Napoleon).
The Dresden museum has the slightly quirky asset that some director liked sculpture and went crazy buying it.  As a result, there is so much of it that busts are shown on racks like a fancy Price Club.  But the painting collection is amazing.  There are so many major artists and works that it is overwhelming.  Additionally, there is one room of Caspar David Friedrich's work, which we usually see only one of - if any at all - in collections.  He was a local artist, so it is natural for them to feature his work.  It is kind of mysterious - look it up on Google.
While I was on this trip, it seemed that China was spoiling for a war to show its new prowess.  I think every Chinese ought to be given a copy of the Otto Dix painting - in five panels - entitled "War."  It reminds all of WWI, and I think it is an even more powerful anti-war statement than Picasso's "Guernica."  It is simultaneously horrifying and yet the message and images are perfectly painted.  You can also see this on Google images.
There is a bronze Degas (ballet) Dancer statue in the same room that I did not know existed.  Oddly, this incredibly beautiful dancer about 3' tall has a tulle dress on over the bronze.  As you would imagine, the tulle is pretty dirty and worn and is an odd combination of a delicate material against a nearly indestructible one.  I so wanted a photo of that statue, but the guard absolutely forbid it and said to buy a postcard of it in the gift shop.
I really liked Dresden, and like all my stops on the whole trip, the food was wonderful there.

Vienna; September 2012

I flew Toronto to Heathrow on September 14th, where I changed to Austrian Air and flew directly on to Vienna ("Wien" in German is shorter to write here).  I did not realize that the flight from Toronto to Heathrow could be completed in 6:18.  We must have had a powerful tailwind.  We arrived over London so early that he airport was not open yet.  As we landed, the crew announced that we should remain seated as the aircraft parked, until "authorities come onboard and complete their work."  Once at the gate, a paddy wagon pulled up to the end of the wing and four heavily armed police men and women entered the craft and headed directly to a seat across from me.  There was a very surprised and nicely dressed young brunette whose face went quickly from pink to red as she was escorted away.  Then the police waited for the plane to empty before they began searching it.
My pensione in Vienna
Once in Wien, I stayed at a Pensione. It has been many decades since I did that, but trip advisor said that Pensione Suzanne was the best deal in all of the city.  That probably was true.  For 89 Euros ($116 Cdn.). the inauspicious exterior revealed a very cozy interior.  The room I had was small, but had a nice bed, new and large bathroom, and was clean and quiet.  It also came with the finest breakfast of the entire trip.  It is not until you have a problem with gluten that you realize that the majority of a Euro breakfast offering is dominated by nice bread, rolls, pastries, cereals etc.  I mentioned the problem to the mistress of the place and she immediately produced a box of great Swedish Wasa crackers.
The major hotel brands have all adopted the practice of sucking out what brains twitter-aged job applicants may have and replacing them with a keyboard and monitor.  This modern adaptation presents the hotel customer with a robot with the new capacity of  something like 50 sentences and nothing more.  Then pensione offers genuine hospitality and - at least in Austria - people who cannot do enough to be hospitable.
The Suzanne also had the grand feature of being a block from the opera house.  That is the point regarded as the centre of the city and from which every distance is measured.  It must be the shortest distance to everything the visitor needs and wants to see.
The old city of Wien - where all tourists want to be - is remarkably large, and pleasingly beautiful and manicured.  It includes many palatial buildings, museums of different types, cathedrals and churches, wide avenues and nice parks.  The national museum collection is overwhelming as just a few of the major artists are Rembrandt, Durer, Titian, Raphael, and Breughel's.  It is a great experience just to be there.
Hundertwasser
Some of you may know Hundertwasser.  He died some years go, but he produced really interesting and high level art posters that sell for about $100 unframed.  You can look at his site - Kunsthaus Wien - or see his work on Google "images."  Over the decades, I have learned that I prefer to see originals before I decide whether an artist's work really has any merit.  I admired his posters (altho never sold them) and his ability to command such high prices ( they are good value for money as the ones with several foils are costly to produce and suffer a lot of waste).  Finally I was to visit his house and museum which is always shown in photos to be wildly eccentric and almost bizarre.  It may have been at once time, but now it is worn and tacky.  The exterior is hidden now behind large trees that have matured since he built the place.  His idea of "different" in part, was to create uneven floors and walks that roll like waves.  This is not amusing to tred at all - constantly scuffing into the next unlevel bump.  Lots of walls and places are somewhat crooked or off centre.
 It is four stories.  Usually there is an elevator somewhere nearby.  I asked.  Being a senior, I guess they thought I needed one, so a man was called to give me a lift in their freight elevator. I was not expecting such a lot of trouble.  He took me to the 2nd floor.
  I said to him "Sorry, I wanted to go to the 4th floor and start there."
 He replied "But everybody starts at two and goes up."
 I said "No in museums even a few stories high, it is usually the smart practice to start at the top and walk down."
He was kind of irate saying "That is not true.  Nobody would do that."
Finally in a state of obvious irritation, he took me to the fourth floor and got rid of me.
There was a photographic show of Erwin Erwitt.  I had seen this travelling show before somewhere and always had thought he was a better photographer.  In fact, it seems to be his darkroom talents that were lacking.
I went to to the two floors of Hundertwasser's own work.  I found it wanting.  His decades of repeating the same patterns over and over struck me as possibly a neurological problem driving this repetition.  I think he was one of those master ego maniacs who made himself famous and somehow happened to produce brilliant posters which brought him a good income and functioned to increase the value of his originals.
The meaning of life
The purpose of this trip for me was to get back to major masterworks of Euro art and major opera.  The Wien opera house is traditional, beautiful, comfortable and revered as one of the great venues of the world.  Gustav Mahler reigned here as conductor for more than a decade. He was the first conductor to lower the orchestra below the level of the stage until it eventually ended in the pits it remains in today.  Others like Herbert von Karajan and Toscannini conducted there as did most famous conductors.  So it was actually quite a thrill to walk into the grand and beautiful house.  I had an expensive seat on the centre aisle in Row 8.  As I walked to the seat, I was so pleased with the location I had been sold.  Then I sat down and was absolutely shocked.  I had the tallest and widest man is all of Wien sitting in front of me.  He was not so fat, but kind of football player wide.  His head was the size of a Toyota steering wheel inhabited with  an explosion of white hair going every direction looking like a forest fire in Colorado.  He was blocking about 33% of the view, and that view was the center of the stage where all the romance, conflict, murder, and by the way, best solos, duets, trios and quartets occur.
 During the first scene of the first act, I dodged back and forth trying to see something other than the giant.  Then suddenly fate showed me two empty seats empty in front of Zeus.  While the lights were dim and the scenery was changed for Scene two, I jumped up and then down into the aisle seat and thereby avoided a complete mental breakdown in Wien.
Now the singing was wonderful and the ultra-modern set was impressive in its functions.  But wait, two seats to my left was a woman making the strangest knocking sound.  It seems as tho she was hitting wood.  But the floor was not wood.  During the 1st intermission, I tried to duplicate the sound and discovered that she was kicking against the wooden seat back in front of her.  Fortunately she and her escort finally left after the second act.
It astonishes me that conductors, directors, composers go to such extraordinary lengths to create something as insanely difficult as Grand Opera with heroic singers and great orchestras and set designers.  Then, about 10% of the audience of the donkey class arrives.  They suddenly remember that they meant to speak to their companion about something, maybe in a loud whisper or even a lowered voice, one near me even hummed along, and then this well-dressed blockhead even constantly kicked the back of a seat.  In the 60s, I went to the old Opera Garnier in Paris a few times.  I swear half of the French there were all whispering or talking to the other half.  They sure didn't attend to hear grand opera.  Human are often inscrutable.
Despite all that, Verdi's Sicilian vesper's performance was one of the great nights of my existence.  The audience went nuts with the most curtain calls I have ever seen anywhere.  The conductor was shaking hands and thanking different orchestra members for their extraordinary performances.
Remarkably, the Opera also has a giant digital screen of the very best quality hung on one side of the exterior.  There are also speakers out there that are also the best.  Each night, they set out some chairs between the sidewalk and house, and passersby can sit and watch the action inside the opera, and the music flows through the near neighbourhood.  It is truely an idyllic situation.
Wien is so organized and efficient that it is hard to imagine a more convenient place for a foreign visitor to travel. It was the only city of the five I visited that had signs in three languages pointing to major sites or transport.  Other cities surprised me in that they stuck solely to Czech or German and made no accommodation to the massive tourist industry as far as language went. Most restaurants offered menus in English, altho that was much less the case in the other cities. The transport system - including the subway - in Wien is probably 30 years ahead of Toronto.  In all five cities, food and restaurant service were unquestionably and far superior in variety, quality, and taste to my home city.
Wien is an ideal city for a visitor.  It is somewhat expensive, but it doesn't seem to deter tourists at all.  Even in September, the crowds were quite vast.
The way to Prague
I chose to travel in the 1st class train Wien to Prague as it is a five hour trip and I wanted to minimize the number of people coughing and sneezing near me, and to have access to the best bathrooms available.  My earlier years in Europe have left a deep impression on me of train lavs and it is not a happy impression.  A 1st class compartment has only four (leather) seats instead of six, and I had only one other person in mine.
I was surprised to see so many pointy and tall hills along the route.  I read in my guide that these are ancient extinct volcanoes.
The trees were still resolutely green.  But they were mainly deciduous and soon would be brilliant in colours.  The land was also still green except for the geometric sections where crops had been harvested.  I had made the trip earlier to Bratislava on a day trip from Wien, and on that route and this as well, were huge piles of sugar beets - some pyramids 30' high.
In Prague, I had reserved a Novotel.  It was the usual modern and efficient hotel one expects from Accor (altho there are some dogs among them - not many).  Their great asset is at least two free and best quaity internet CPUs in the lobby.
I was booked for a Puccini, Tosca opera the following night.  You know he wrote such wildly dramatic operas like Madama Butterfly etc.  But I was just reading yesterday about his own dramatic and tragic life.  I think it was his second wife - named Elvira of all names -  who was insanely jealous of him, and believed that he was having an affair with one of their young housemaids.  She made his life and the maid's life so wretched that the young maid drank poison and died.  The autopsy found that she was a virgin.  Imagine.  The wife got five years in jail, but I don't know what the charge must have been.  The Tosca performance was just okay.
The crowds in Prague are immense.  Nothing is more attractive in the city than the St. Vitus cathedral on the grounds of the Prague castle.  It was started in 1344 and took 600 years to complete, although I saw one statement that it was more like 630 years.  It is the Notre Dame of the Czech Republic.  I had never seen stained glass windows in such lively colours.  Most of the statues are extraordinary.  Although it is hard to imagine, a solemn ceremony with pipe organ in such a monumental place must be prodigious.  I once attended a midnight mass with a fine organ and choir in the massive 1,000 year old double-ender (rare) cathedral in Mainz, Germany (lit only with 100s of candles) and it was unforgettable.

There is a famous Prague artist who creates bronze sculptures and places them around the city - usually for brief periods of time.  It is a kind of game for his audience to rush to a site where some new work has been placed.  In this case, a man is shown hanging only by one arm.  This is really a mild example of much of his work.
At the top, you will see two photos of a car with four legs.  This is a sculpture in the back garden of the German embassy in Prague.  The car is a Trabant, of which there are so many jokes.  It was the vehicle built in E. Germany which was probably the worst ever produced in the history of autos.  When the Wall came down and so many people wanted to flee to the West, they loaded their Trabants with their possessions and set off.  But the Trabants were mostly incapable of making such a (any) trip and there are many photos of them being towed along by horses, tractors, and even humans.  This is a satirical comment on Trabants.

In the old Prague and even now, the U.S., U.K., French and most other major embassies are in the same small area - down the hill in a lovely quarter below the Prague Castle.  It happens that this tall church is nearby.  The secret service of the USSR and Czech used to use the tower and dome to listen in to the phones of the embassies and track who came and went to them.  Today tourists can go up to where the spies earlier worked.  If you look closely to the top of the largest dome in front of the light stone areas, you will see tourists up there.

I like these porch/pillar supports and made a kind of project of photographing the better ones this trip.  If you can enlarge these photos, you will see there are two black slaves in chains on the front of the Romanian embassy in Prague.  Oddly to the left and over the fine wooden doors is a white woman with a happy smile.  I doubt there is any actual relationship between the slaves and the lady as they were once two separate buildings.

Near the Charles St. Bridge and on the bank of the Vltava River (Moldau in German) in Prague there is a structure of large wood poles slanted into the river.  What purpose this has I did not discover, except that when night falls, the seagulls sleep in nearly perfect rows there.  Night seemed to descend rapidly, and exactly as dusk turned to night, the gulls arrived and there was a frightful battle over who would sleep where, which made me think that each gull probably sleeps in the same spot nightly.  In the top picture, you can see the Prague castle in the distance.  That night there was a crisp quarter moon hanging in the heavens and the gulls had the best view of all in the city.