Our Brief Stay in Grand Vienna

 

Our record of our stay in Vienna is scant. Many of my photos didn't turn out, and the ones that did fail to do justice to this city of grand buildings and monuments. What's more, we were there only a few days. We should have allowed more time.

It was cold in Vienna in November, and the city was just putting up its Christmas lights. Vienna has one of the largest Christmas markets in Europe, and the lighted venues added some holiday cheer.

We didn't get to the Schonbrunn Palace. Nor did we see the Lippizaner horses, though we did see their stables. The timing just didn't work out. We did, however, get to spend a lot of time in the Albertina Museum, which displayed works from Dürer to Monet and Picasso. (Dürer's "Young Hare," which I love, was not on display. Because it is a fragile work on paper, it is only shown every 10 years or so.

A highlight of our visit was a walking tour that featured sites mentioned in The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, a book we discovered last year in Paris. Although it is non-fiction, it reads like a novel. The book recounts the story of de Waal's relatives, the Ephrussis, a Jewish family from Vienna, and their collection of Japanese netsuke, carved miniature sculptures. The story explains what happened to the family and its collection when the Nazis came to power. We were so fascinated with the book that we sought out the family tomb in Montmartre last year. So we had to take the tour in Vienna.

Among other places, we visited the building that was the Ephrussi home in Vienna. Another wealthy family occupied half of the building's lower floors, while renters inhabited the top floors. (This was in the days before elevators, so having the view from the top was not coveted.) 

The tour guide pointed out a few errors that de Waal made in his book. For example, he described the marble in the entry. But the "marble" is actually wood painted to look like marble. At the time, the faux marble was actually more stylish than the real marble. 

The marble in the Ephrussi building is actually painted wood.

We also saw much of central Vienna, learned more about Austria in World War II, and saw the last authentic coffee houses from the earlier era. The Café Mozart, while lovely, is more of a tourist stop.

Performances at the Vienna Opera were sold out, but we got tickets to Carmina Burana at the Vienna Volksoper (people's opera), a marvelous finale to our stay in this grand city.