| Vienna 4.05 | ||
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Life got so tough the week that we went away. Disappointment followed
unbelievable family stress, everything piled on top of me. If I
believed in the stars I'd have said that there was some cruddy misalignment
of some supernatural force at work, busily wrecking my happiness.
One piece of luck remained, however: a weekend in Vienna, booked
long ago when life rolled on at a gentler pace. By the time it came
round, Kay and I were desperate and very very ready.
That song As soon as we booked the weekend I was plagued by the earworm that shall remain unnamed. You know the one. Think 1980s, pretentious video, new romantics, the song that's named after the city, bad electropop, Midge Ure in a raincoat. Don't deny, you know the one! Now you're humming it too, I know it. Niki Lauda Niki is my new favourite budget airline. The cabin crew wear silver tabards, they look like people from the future as they hand out an impressive array of newspapers and magazines. We watch awful candid-camera-style comedy on the overhead monitors, and clips from Mr Bean. We're so tired from the early morning flight that it cracks us up. We eat yoghurt and applesauce. We write letters to Niki Lauda himself, assured by the crew that he reads every one of our feedback forms himself. I think I like this man. The Art Hotel If I was rich, I would have insisted that we stay in the Royal Suite at the Hotel Imperial for its over the top opulence, but I'm not, so we stayed somewhere else instead. At first they put us in a room with twin beds, maybe they thought that a lady would not want to share a bed with another lady, but we made a fuss and they moved us. The rooms were confusingly numbered in corridors that made us dizzy with their sameness, but not as dizzy as the free minibar. Downstairs were colour-coded business meeting suites with names like Cool Grey, Smooth Beige, Happy Pink and Serious Blue. Crabby and indecipherable modern art was everywhere. The hotel's bar featured holograms of lightbulbs and square furniture, placed at an angle, just so. But I'm bitching. The hotel also featured a beautiful swimming pool surrounded by big rocking recliners, towels big enough for two, an in-house masseur with hands so strong that I felt he was touching my soul when he squeezed my neck, a polished marble steamroom and a gigantic glass bathroom, all for us. For someone who loves pools, bathing, water and spa culture as much as I, this was the right place to stay. Riesenrad The Riesenrad is the big, famous, ancient ferris wheel of Vienna. If you've seen The Third Man you'll remember the scene in which Orson Welles has a fight with some fellow in one of the cars. Zip forwards to 2005 and I might have enjoyed some of the spectacular views over the city had I not been gripped by vertigo. The cars move in a scary and random fashion. If, say, one of the party of boisterous Germanic folk with whom you are sharing the space decide to walk to one side, causing the cabin to wobble and tilt alarmingly, or to open the window with a bang, you will find yourself, like me, sweaty-palmed and keeping a low centre of gravity so as not to die. The Prater The permanent funfair is a mess of hallucinogenic sculptures, giant hydraulic-powered monsters, incredible signage and rides that I was probably too fat to fit. We walked until our feet hurt, stopping by for one incredible moment. The ride was called the Cyclone, or something like that. It was a spinning disk, with a sitting shelf around the circumference. It span and tilted, allowing its users to jump up and move against the changed gravity, bending against thin air, defying nature. One of the riders was a fat girl, maybe 13 or 14 years old. The only fat girl on the ride, in trainers and a pink jumper that she'd pull down over her tummy now and again. She had the best moves. As the wheel span faster she hopped up and got going. She was magnificent, fearless, stylin' amongst her thinner peers. She ruled the ride, no one could touch her for the assured risks she took and the sheer lawless control she had over her moves. I stood and watched and bawled. Cake Vienna has cake that you can barely believe. From the home-cooked apricot sponge (there's no better name in English, unfortunately) at Café Berg, where the lesbians meet, to the full-on baroque splendour of the dobostorte, phenomenal cake is available everywhere. Cafés have their own signature cakes. I saw miniature portraits of the artist Canaletto rendered in chocolate for a cake decoration. I ate layers of cream and pastry, intense chocolate cake and a memorable apple strudel. When we could eat no more cake, we wandered the city's konditorei looking at the incredible displays. We tried no Sachertorte though, Vienna's own cake. I don't know why. Eye candy Walk around the old city and you will find massive marble statues in the classical style, palatial buildings in winding back roads, facades covered with gold, and grandness on every scale. Wellness We took a lovely old tram to the Jörgerbad, a hallenbad-style pool outside the city centre. It was hard to negotiate the pool etiquette with our poor understanding of German, but we managed. The Saturday swimmers at this lovely pool included a number of ancient women; chugging up and down, an anorexic woman running in the water, compulsively, madly; some kids playing peacefully; us. I love the continental concept of wellness. No one, apart from the anorexic woman, looked as though they were exercising for punishment, the pace was slow, languid, it embodied movement for the pleasure of being in the water, of feeling one's body working as it should. It was beautiful. Kunsthistorisches Museum The palace to art has a room full of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. I stand and stare at his Massacre of the Innocents until my eyes hurt and then I look again. I walk through room upon room of painting after painting. A medieval painting of Lot fucking his daughter. A portrait of the devil. A still life of rotting fish, a baby seal as carrion. A woman holding the head of a man she has killed. A man being flayed alive. Jesus carried down from the cross. A rich man and his wife and children. A scene of drunkards feasting on pies painted seven hundred years ago. Painting after painting, room after room, it rolls on and on. Browse some of the paintings in the collection, if you have a few minutes to spare. Shoah Vienna's Jewish population was wiped out in the war but, like Susan Hiller's J-Street project, their presence is still felt in the city. Rachael Whiteread's Memorial for Austrian Victims of the Shoah stands in Judenplatz. I don't know what to say about this that won't sound stupid so I'll keep it simple: it's powerful, it's ugly, it's moving, it's painful, it's always under guard. Schnitzel I love european vegetarian restaurants because they always serve weird, slightly crabby food. At Vienna's Bio Bar we ate strange meat-a-like dishes. I had a Wiener Schnitzel made out of some kind of soya by-product, and Kay had a faux-meat steak with pepper sauce. We had Austrian pancake soup. We listened to a John Lennon CD and chatted with the waiter in mixed up English. All perfect. Oom-pah Outside the town hall we came upon a festival celebrating Styria, "the green heart of Austria." The Styria tourist board were in overdrive, there were stalls promoting the local wine and sausage, a wellness tent with a wrinkly guy floating around in a swimming pool, big pretzels and beer, more sausage, more wine, more crowds and more oom-pah bands in lederhosen than you could imagine, and all to tempt you and me to go there on holiday. Venus von Willendorf I've known about the venus for some time. The 25,000 year-old statue is an icon to fat people everywhere. Some people think she's proof that fat people were once revered as goddesses but I don't know about that. I never thought that she would move me, but I was wrong. As soon as I realised that she lives in Vienna, at the Naturhistorisches Museum (a place that also has substantial collections of taxidermy and meteorites) I knew that I had to see her. It never occurred to me that the Venus von Willendorf might be a star attraction anywhere, she's a fairly obscure figure in the world I inhabit, so it was a surprise to see venus paraphernalia for sale in the museum shop. As to the object herself, she has a special temple-shaped room, with mood lighting and obligatory panpipe muzak. Despite this, meeting her was a profound experience: Someone knew what a fat woman looked like 25,000 years ago; women like me are as ancient as can be. It was like holding hands with the past. And there she is, modest and cute, her head dipped and her arms resting across her breasts, just doing her thing. The last place we visited before it was time to leave The Schmetterling Haus is a jugendstil greenhouse, heated to a tropical humidity and filled with butterflies. You walk amongst them and they land on your t-shirt, thinking you are a flower. A man walks around with a gigantic butterfly on his finger. You look up and there are flashes of iridescent colour in the air. There's a glass case with chrysalids of various sizes opening up or tightly shut. A large black and white patterned butterfly sits on Kay's shoulder until it is time to go. |
 
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