Pt3 - 3:

AUSTRIA

29^th June – 3^rd July

 

Jürgen presented us with a pair of monogrammed Hacker-Pschorr beer glasses as a souvenir of our stay, a gift he assured us he didn’t bestow on just anyone. We’ll miss the good cheer of Wartaweil, although I left the place with a hangover visible from space.

The trip to Salzburg on the autobahn took five hours. Actually, it was more like a race. The expressways here are literally express, with speeds limited only to what your car can do. The bullet hummed along sweetly at a hundred and twenty clicks, disturbed only by the slipstreams of luxury marques whispering past at about mach 2. Big black Mercs with heavily tinted windows regularly loomed up in the rear view mirror then blurred by and were gone in a blink, leaving us to rock back and forth in their wake. There were so many of them you’d be forgiven for thinking there was a mafia convention up ahead.

And lo, a miracle occurred as we approached the Austrian frontier – it stopped drizzling and the clouds parted! The drive wound round the base of the Austrian Alps, through green valleys and villages dominated by onion-domed Byzantine church towers and cranes. Larger towns like Rosenheim had a nest of cranes, we counted seven in about an acre at one stage. We crossed into Austria with the windows down and the wind in our hair and arrived in the world’s Sound of Music capital in bright, glorious sunshine. At the tourist office I leapt out of the car and launched into The Hills are Alive; well I would have if my singing isn’t a crime against good taste.

The ground was still too soggy to camp, so we took room 2 at the Gästhof Hauslauer a few ks out of town. There was a bus stop right out front and a music shop across the road; the first handy for getting in to town tomorrow, the second so I can pretend to be a customer and go and play the drums for fun.

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Hohensalzburg is the imposing fortress built largely by an eccentric Archduke with a turnip for his coat of arms. Apart from its lofty perch with spectacular 360^o views, the most intriguing thing up here was the vast array of medieval torture devices designed to inflict all manner of pain and humiliation. The sheer range and diabolical ingenuity smacks the gob. From the Spanish vest, an iron girdle heated to glowing and placed over the victim’s torso; to the grotesque iron masks weighted to bring the wearer’s head ever so gradually down to their chest; to the chastity belt with ferocious outward-facing teeth around the anal aperture…can’t imagine how the lady completed the paperwork, as it were. You have to wonder if they applied the same zeal to creating their Christmas decorations. There’s also the war museum, which manages to tap dance along the fine line between expressing pride in Austrian militarism without actually confessing to the collaboration with Hitler. Subtle really.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, the shadow of Mozart casts long in Salzburg. His residence on Marketplatz is a substantial pile befitting his legacy of singlehandedly transforming the city from a salt mine into the classical music capital of the universe. Many of his instruments and copies of his manuscripts are on display, as well as a comprehensive genealogy and an illuminated wall map and expository video of his travels. Later, we took the balmy air by the Danube and repaired to the hotel to rest up for the next event.

In the evening, as you do in Austria, we dined lavishly on Mexican at Potatoes and Co in the city centre, then made our leisurely way to a concert at the Mirabell Palace. The programme featured Mozart (inevitably), Bach and Sarasate (no, I hadn’t either – a Spanish violin virtuoso). An audience of 200 plus were treated to a wonderful performance by the Salzburg Chamber Orchestra featuring two young violinists of prodigious talent, a fitting line to rule under our visit to Salzburg. Unfortunately, videoing was expressly forbidden…so I had to be discreet.

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In Vienna we got to pitch the tent at last. With typical Austrian flair the campground was called Camp West 2 because…I’m sure you can work it out. U-bahn line 4 ran right past the front gate so it was an easy trip to Schönbrunn Palace, a typically overwrought baroque extravagance enlivened with neo-classical indulgence. Pity the Hapsburgs for having to endure this miserable pile for their summer residence. Today it was seething with peasants from all over the world, including Bridgetown. The highlights of any visit to Schönbrunn are the vast gardens, the ornamental lakes with elaborate fountains and the outstanding Palmenhaus, an enormous pavilion of climate controlled biospheres from cool temperate to tropical rainforest, including an Australian collection.

Less than enthusiastic at the prospect of the world’s oldest zoo and the Emperor’s breakfast pavilion, we elected instead to take the U-4 into the heart of the city. We emerged at Karlsplatz. I’ll be straight up here: I’ll try to maintain some sort of balance but what follows is filtered through the instant dislike I took to central Vienna; I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’m afraid nothing happened over the next 36 hours to challenge that immediate impression. Our stroll took us past the Kunstlerhaus, St Charles Church and the hilarious fin de siecle Succession Building. The Academie, with its breathlessly promoted exhibition of Bosches, was just closing as we arrived so we continued on to the Art History Museum. The attractions here were the Breughels, closely followed by the fine but too few Rembrandts and Rubens, and finally Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath. The lone, poorly lit Bosch, an undistinguished religious painting from early in his career, was a disappointment.

Next morning we headed straight to the Academie for the Bosch “exhibition”. It turned out to be the exhibition of a single work, his “Last Judgement” triptych; typical Vienna – promise much, deliver little. Amongst the token Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian and Botticelli there stood out a brilliant still life – with parrot - by Van Heem, which waylaid the eye with its mastery of shadow and reflection.

If I had to summarise my sense of Vienna in a word, it would be pretentious. There’s an air of arrogance about the city, which would be ok if there was something to be arrogant about. It’s backward looking to lost empire and rank with empty promise - all piss and wind.

Back at camp I dropped Cristopher Stallone's map in the bin and plotted our course for Prague.

Next week: Czech mate...