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.