Sarah and I met at 0810 to head out for breakfast. We meant to go to an Italian bakery that served coffee near the hotel, but they weren't open when we arrived. So instead we went to a place called "Coben's" a couple doors further down. We sat at a table in the arcade out front of the store, with an amazing view of the State Opera House and Vienna's morning bike and tram traffic (and I mean that as a good thing). I had a ciabatta with lox and an espresso doppio (which has become my go-to caffeinated drink while I'm here). Sarah had orange juice and (I think) a bagel with cream cheese. Raw onion on food is a thing here: a German (and Austrian) cliché, but half our meals seem to come with raw onion (I have no problem with that ...).
We admired the variety and number of bicyclists going by - so many. Less than Amsterdam, but way more than Toronto. Load-carrying bikes with the front third of the bike made up of a huge basket are common. The most entertaining of these contain two children under a full rain cover. But our favourite sighting of the day was a guy in a full business suit standing rigidly upright on an electric scooter in a feet-side-by-side stance as he whizzed by.
Bike lanes are generally in sidewalk-like territory: they're clearly delineated, but stepping over the line is hazardous to everyone's health as there are always bikers zipping past the pedestrians.
In a spare moment, I started to dig into the "Long Night of Museums" guidebook. I'm somewhat slowed by the fact that it's in German, but the ability to point my phone at a block of German text and see the translation on the screen is just amazing. I object to Google on general principles, but Google Translate is pretty fantastic. I came across a head-scratcher in the guide called the "Condomi Museum." It is in fact the Condom Museum - truly.
Our first stop of the day was the nearby and well known Stephansdom. We opted not to climb the tower right now - but if we want to later, it's not far off. Interestingly, we were both in agreement that Stephansdom has a decidedly oppressive interior - and that both of us had liked Karlskirche yesterday far better. Stephansdom has three organs - or at least three that I counted, maybe I missed one in a side chapel. The smallest is about four metres tall.
We took a circuitous route from Stephansdom to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. We had enjoyed our wanderings the day before, and hoped to be rewarded with more strange or wonderful views. This city is full to the brim with buildings dating back 100 to 300 years, and it's just beautiful to look at pretty much everywhere inside the Ringstraße ("Ringstrasse" - we haven't really been outside of that area).
At the Kunsthistorisches we went first to the cafe, which is in a truly extraordinary setting. The museum is in a former palace, the walls are coloured stone, the ceiling has frescoes, and there's a hole in the centre of the very large room that's an atrium down to the lobby. We had desserts for lunch. Sarah stuck with apple strudel, this time with a hot custard sauce, I had Buchtein ("2 pieces of oven baked yeast dumplings filled with apricot jam, served with custard" - although "floating in custard" would have been a better description). I can't speak to Sarah's, but mine was very good.
The next stop was the main reason I had wanted to go there: the Kunsthistorisches has "The Tower of Babel" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It's a fairly big painting, but I found it something of a let-down - I think because I've seen good reproductions and didn't really learn anything new about it. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure to see it in person.
The rest of the museum is a crap-load of Bruegel and other medieval, Flemish, and Renaissance paintings, plus Egyptian, Greek and Roman artifacts, and a number of very large and very well preserved (or restored, they do that there) tapestries. We went through the paintings fairly quickly, and flew through the artifacts. Poor Sarah is finding out the hard way something I've warned her of: my period in art is 1850 to the present, with a few odd exceptions like Gian Lorenzo Bernini. One thing we did slow down for was a set of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's strange, strange "portraits" (if you can call them that): "Summer," "Fire," "Winter," and "Water." I wouldn't say I like them, but damn they're fascinating. And massively influential.
Our next stop was the University of Vienna Library reading room. This is a classic reading room (opened in 1777?), a huge room lined with tables, every one with a couple of green-shaded lights. The ceiling is a huge translucent skylight, and the walls are galleried shelves.
photo: The University of Vienna Library reading room
Our next tourist adventure was to ride the Ringstraße tram. As I recall, the Ringstraße is not just a ring road, but one constructed by of one of the previous kings, which concentrated places of government and museums along the path. There's a lot to see. There's a tourist tram that does the whole ring, but if you're riding standard public transit, the trams have a habit of turning off the ring. We had to jump off a couple times and backtrack, but in the end (with a few hundred metres of walking), our GPSes told us we had made a fairly complete loop.
The final stop of the day was "Golser Bier and Wein Bar." Which turned out to be a fine choice: Sarah got a good Merlot, and I got two excellent beers. I was amused by what they called "a dark beer with roasty notes," which was dark for a LAGER, and had "roasty notes" compared to other LAGERS (I'm kind of a stout guy, and they don't do a lot of stouts in Vienna). Despite which, and somewhat to my surprise, I really enjoyed their dark and roasty lager. Not as dark as I'd hoped, but rather lovely. And they made a better Shandy than 1516 as well.
The food menu looked suspiciously like upscale bar snacks. And arguably, that's what they were. But the portions were generous, and the flavours were marvellous. We had a couple of toasts, one with sweet peppers and mustard on it, the other with something that they called "bacon" but was actually one of Europe's infinite variety of cured versions of pork - I don't like all of them, but this one was ... so good. The other thing we got was three kinds of dips (red pepper, egg, and almond-leek) with very dense Austrian bread. It was very filling, and good.
photo: The food at Golser
I drank the Polish Stout ("Browar Stu Mostów" "Chocolate Stout Nitro") acquired at Muttermilk yesterday this evening. It was good - although I do prefer my stouts cold (no fridge in the room).