a little viennese culture

queen maria theresa

german lesson for the day. lächerlich: ridiculous. (just came across that in our handy german-english dictionary. you're welcome.)

great afternoon at the kunsthistorisches museum yesterday. a tremendous collection of art and history set in a huge, wonderful, italian renaissance, purpose-built space to present all the spoils collected by the hapsburgs. as soon as we walk in we're hit with that feeling of "oh, THIS is why we come to these great old cities. THIS is where we need to be at this very moment." now, let's hit the bathroom before we start.

zoom in, bottom right-hand corner, that's durer

rubens for wall after wall in this place. the entire east side of the first floor is flemish, dutch and german paintings and this place goes on. one great detail about this museum is the number of soft couches thoughtfully placed in front of some of the largest paintings. we could sit for much longer than we could stand in front of one and take our time absorbing it. settling down in a town for a few weeks, with no need for the planning or scheming about where to go next (yet), has allowed us to settle in and not feel the press of time. perfect museum attitude and it paid off in spades. we moseyed our way through the east side, through rubens, dürer (amazing guy and a bit of an egotist, painting himself into several scenes of his painting), cranach, holbein... then, museum feet and hunger.

after some sacherwurst and water over to the west side where we moseyed again through caravaggio, titian, valasquez... it just went on. no hurry, no schedule, art and history handed to us in an incredible setting. five hours later we spilled out front to be greeted again by queen maria theresa waving thank you and goodbye.

beer time! off to a bar tipped off to us by daniel and dan, tucked in behind stephansdom called santo spirito. a step down into comfy, tiny pub with nothing but classical music over the stereo. great little capper to an afternoon.

is that neil young?

we made a new friend last night at dinner, too, and are headed out to her place at the end of the subway line for lunch and some afternoon wine drinking at a heuriger. will get a peek at how some austrians actually live, some tips on where to go in her country and a new friend. all good things.

autobahn, schmautobahn. berlin to vienna.

it was hard to leave berlin. why do we keep going there for only four or five days at a time? a very livable, visitable city in our opinion, with so much to do, see and absorb. ah well... no complaints, a trip down the autobahn over the course of a few days with vienna on the other end awaited us. you know what? we made it!

gladly in vienna

we picked up our peugeot 207 at the berlin hauptbahnhof. we're thinking, "yeah, man, we're going to push this thing up to 150 mph on the autobahn and mix it up with the locals and their bmws and audis. zoom, out the garage and away we... crap, traffic. but every stop gave us the opportunity to whip out the german-english translation book and learn a ton of new words. some like "this road is closed," and we swear, one translated to "silly american, where do you think you're going so fast." *sigh* to the right is michelle's navigation "work space," a.k.a. her lap. glasses, map and directions. our translation book was never too far away.

turns out the autobahn is, well, a freeway. albeit, a freaking amazing freeway with flawless pavement, stunning scenery (as you head south into bavaria), ZOOMING cars and some of the finest rest stops this side of georgia, us of a. the germans give you a TON of information. it's almost overwhelming just how exactly you know where you are, what lane to use, what town is next, how far the next rest stop is... it's a masterful display of highway design. luckily, we studied this handy site before hitting the road. otherwise, it would have been "what the hell was that sign?! i think it was bright red, too! that's gotta be bad."

marienbrucke, passau

three nights on the road brought us through naila (franconian hiking nirvana, spitting distance from the czech border), passau (where the danube, the inn and ilz rivers all meet and, wow, is it beautiful) and gablitz (more hiking, this time in austria). each night, after hours of driving, it was a challenge to find places to stay. we stayed in some humble yet comfortable pensions with extremely nice and charming owners. we particularly enjoyed the nice old lady in sandals and socks in gablitz who, when handing me my passport back said "new jersey," with a huge smile. NO ONE says new jersey with a huge smile. she's also the woman who, when in our stilted german said "we understand only a little german," asked "what language do you speak?" we replied "english," and she replied "and?" um.

trail system in bavaria, outside naila

man, it's good to be back in vienna. within hours of returning the car (including a wrong way turn down a one-way street and pulling a u-turn on the ringstrasse) we dropped off our bags, found free-wifi while waiting for apartment to be cleaned, met our host, bought groceries and headed out to the rathaus for vienna's free open-air film festival. hard to capture the contrast of a mega screen propped up in front of a huge gothic building showing a modern dance performance from the netherlands to thousands of people. we rented an apartment for three weeks from barbara lenz, from whom we've rented in the past. we knew we could trust her, that her spaces were clean and safe and comfortable. it's tiny, but it's home.

ok, one more thing, but check this out. this may be the coolest feature of a car we've ever seen. well, butt warmers aside, of course. it's purely european-centric, with their tiny, tiny medieval streets. one admission, in the video i mistakenly referred to german engineering but this is a french car. sorry french people. like we said, driving all day and then searching for lodging is a tiring affair!

next up, the esperanto museum (and the museum of planned languages). that's right, we typed that. some secessionist architecture and some otto wagner and koloman moser history lessons and, over the next few weeks, some hiking in the wienerwald, some wine drinking in some heurigen and some more free movies in front of the rathaus.