Vienna

From my notes made during the trip:
“This place is too huge and too important to ‘do’ in one day. So we have to come back.” We took far too many phone camera shots to include here, so they’re all on the Vienna Photos page.

That’s an understatement if I ever wrote one, and it is strange that in all our European travels we never managed to make it to Vienna. After all, I taught music history for decades. I talked about Vienna and music from Haydn to Webern, and I always planned on a visit some day. I knew it should have been a longer visit before we stepped off the boat, but that’s the way it happens sometimes. “Prepare, don’t plan,” and all of that.

All in all, the day trip to Vienna was good, if a little rushed. We heard most of the talk about the Hapsburgs before we boarded a bus, and the ride from the cruise ship mooring port was entertaining. Entertaining but a bit overwhelming. Whizzing past the Staatsoper, the Musikverein, the Konzerthaus, and more museums than I could name was intimidating to say the least. Intimidating, but also inspiring. The first part of our walking tour was through the rose garden to the Hofburg Palace grounds, and we hardly paused in any one place for long. As was the case with all the Uniworld talks, lectures, and demonstrations, the one we heard before we boarded the bus did a great job of preparing us for what we would see as we walked around the multiple buildings to emerge onto St. Stephen’s Square. I’m not going to talk about each and every detail, but I will give you two glimpses of things that amused me.

The first was our quick walk by some of the Royal Stables. I have loved horses all my life, and enjoyed watching shows by Lippizaners of the Spanish Riding School. Yippee! During August, active troop is off on vacation in the countryside, but this was a great look at some of the retirees. It would have been great to have time to see more, but that’s another reason to come back to Vienna.

The other amusing scene was a marching troop of the Austrian Army. Really. Soldiers on parade. The equivalent of the US Army Band, I suppose. Our Austrian guide made a few remarks that implied that particular troop was not exactly comparable to Green Berets or Army Rangers. Maybe that’s why my mind took a turn to the left. At some point in my teens, when Mr. Dickey was talking about alliteration, my friends and I heard about a poem by Alaric Alexander Watts:

An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction’s devastating doom.

Are they all the same height? That’s a little strange, if they are. The only other time I remember seeing that in a military troop was back when Nixon landed in China for the first time. Don’t want to make a comparison, just pointing out the similar heights. Check it out here if you’re interested.

Eventually we left the environs of the Hofburg, soldiers, stables, and all, and made it to St. Stephen’s Square. At that point the group split up, with some people going off on their own while the rest of us went on to the Winter Palace and the art on exhibit there. Judy and I been through more than one or two similar buildings, and they never fail to impress. Only one of the works we saw exhibited there, a mural, was original to the building. It was fun to see a bicycle there in a battle scene. A seventeenth-century copy of Raphael’s St. Cecilia, with the pipes falling out of the organ, made me smile. Altogether an enjoyable visit, but like the rest of the day, too short.

We returned to St. Stephen’s Square, and the larger group reformed, then split up yet again. Judy went back to the ship for lunch and the afternoon, while I stayed to take some time to go into St. Stephen’s and look around a little more. As it turned out I fumbled around finding an ATM so I would have a Euro or two to pay for admission to the nave, then walked into the church during a service. I didn’t have to pay a dime. I won’t comment on the ensemble between the amplified cantor and the organist, but at least I got to “go to church” in Vienna.

When I left the church, I wandered around a bit, up and down some side streets, stopped for a sandwich and a beer, then meandered down the street toward the meeting place so I could take the shuttle back to the ship. I had a lot of time to wait, wandered through a flea market a while, and finally decided to take the subway and not wait for the shuttle. We had been given instructions on what train to take and how many stops to go before we got off, so I thought it wouldn’t be a problem.

I forgot that I wasn’t getting on the train at the “correct” place, though, so when I exited at the third stop, I ended up a little beyond my intended stopping place. A long bridge across part of the Danube away, in fact. Walking along the bridge wasn’t bad, though, because it was built for automotive traffic on one level, with the train and pedestrians traveling a level below. So long as I dodged bicyclists successfully, it wasn’t a problem to hike from the island in the Danube to the mooring place for cruise ships. I did have to stop and gape at all those ships lined up along the bank of the river. Two and three deep for just about as far as I could see. That’s the River Beatrice on the right, so we had to pass through the receptiion area on the ship on the left to enter or exit our ship. We were never the third ship away from shore, but we were in the middle of a cruise ship sandwich more than once.

The great majority of our fellow passengers had elected to attend a private concert in the city that night, but Judy and I declined the opportunity. After dinner we spent time with Alfred and Christine in the lounge, just relaxing and enjoying pleasant conversation. I can’t think of a better way to have ended the day. One thing that happened during the evening really surprised us, and I think it’s one of the reasons we remain so impressed with Uniworld and the way they operate their river cruises. The four of us were just sitting in the lounge having a quiet evening, when the Cruise Director, Carla, stopped by on what appeared to be a sort of nightly pass through the lounge. Just checking on things, you know? We spoke to her, answered her polite questions, and she turned to move on. For some reason, we asked her to join us — and she did !

She pulled up a chair and joined our little group, much to our surprise. For the next 30 or 45 minutes she became one with us. She asked us about our backgrounds and our reasons for being there. That’s part of her job, I’m sure. Then she answered our questions, about all sorts of aspects of her job, her background, the ship, her staff, the crew that runs and drives the ship, the company, what she had done in her past, what she would do next week, … . We grilled her! I can’t imagine a comparable situation in my professional life. Carla has my deep respect.

We got to the point in our long discussion that Judy and I mentioned that we had both loved the shrimp stoganoff we had enjoyed earlier. Could we have the recipe? She said, “Of course!”

When I asked if she needed our names or cabin number, she replied, “Oh, no. I know where to send it.”

Later, just as we entered our cabin and closed the door, there was a knock. Our butler brought us the recipe.

That’s boutique cruising, I suppose.