FRIDAY, JULY 5
Tired of museums and relishing the cooler weather, we created our own walking tour, starting on Wharinger Strasse, where our Airbnb is located, we moved east over the Danube Canal to the Augarten Park, then back through Leopoldstadt and into the city center. It took six hours.
AUGARTEN PARK, FIGURINES AND BUNKERS
Augarten Park, designed by the same landscaper as the Belvedere and used by the Austrian rulers as a summer house, is the oldest Baroque park in Vienaa. The Boys Choir practices in the palace. There is a contemporary art museum on the grounds, and the second oldest porcelain factory in Europe. The Vienna Porcelain Manufactory has a beautiful lobby displaying its finely painted plates, cups, saucers, bowls, and figurines.
What we saw first in the park, though was a huge, monstrous, round concrete tower, a bit crumbly on top, that was used by the Third Reich as an anti-aircraft bunker. Imposing and dark, it stands as a reminder of darker days in Vienna. There are bunkers on either end of the park, and they rudely dominate the park’s combination of rustic and manicured landscaping.
ALONG THE DANUBE CANAL
The Danube Canal reminded us of the Seine, in Paris (because of its width) and the Tiber in Rome (because of the restaurants along its fast moving waters). Some restaurants have beach chairs and sand. Along the canal the city’s graffiti, absent almost everywhere else in Vienna, colors embankment walls.
Our first day in Vienna, we couldn’t quite figure out why Vienna felt so different than the Italian cities we’ve visited. It felt cleaner, for sure, and we realized it had to do with street art and graffiti. Also there are very few balconies in Vienna and apartment buildings are painted in light pastel colors, like faded Easter eggs, or white…lots of sparkling white. The buildings are definitely as ornate, if not more so, than Italian buildings. Without Italy’s busy balconies dripping with their flowers and plants, covered in multi-colored dawnings, and street-level graffiti everywhere, Vienna presented a tidier and cleaner feel than Milan or other Italian cities.
After some rich, sweet (not nearly as good as Italian) ice cream, we climbed some stairs into a narrow passage that lead to the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. It’s been on the site since 1781 as a show of tolerance by this mostly Catholic country.
ST. STEPHENS CATHEDRAL: A SYMBOL OF AMBITION
On the way to St. Stephens Cathedral, throngs of tourists crowded the pedestrian street. Rick Steves’ audio guide specifically for St. Stephens took us around the outside of the church, where we learned some of it’s long history, dating back to 1137 and before that to the Romans. When St. Stephens was built it was far too large for the population of Vienna, but it signified the city’s ambitions. The Gothic Tower was also built as the tallest in Europe at the time (1433), a message to Prague that soon Vienna would be the empire’s capital city.
INSIDE DEMEL WITH A THIEF
Next was the famous chocolate and cake shop, Demel, where we saw someone painting a cake in the back and caught sight of a man who tucked some very expensive chocolates under shirt and sneaked them out of the store.
After some shopping, we ate dinner in the garden by the Film Festival, where many different types of food are on offer. Chloe had falafel, made fresh; and I finally got my Viennese sausage.
