#wien2025

From a final day at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, a couple of busts of the Habsburg Jaw (on Leopold I, a fine example of a deeply odd profile), a bear shooting a rifle that is actually a drinking flask when his head comes off, and a Muslim bridal fashion shoot outside.

Proof of cats at the Lipizzaner stables when I wasn't visiting on tour and had to stand outside and watch wistfully through the window

Mystery pipe--no idea what it carries, or from where to where.

Freud's building, now home of the Freud Museum. As a New Yorker I was mostly flabbergasted by the size of his apartment. Fourteen rooms!!!

Another sunny weekend, another heuriger. This time we took an Uber from the end of the U4 up to Mayer am Nussberg, where the vineyards were green, the clouds dramatic, and the wine delicious. Both glasses you see were mine…. On the way back we got a glimpse of one of Vienna’s famous collective housing sites, the enormous Karl-Marx-Hof, which if you ask me sounds like a great way to live. And we also passed the incinerator and fuel generator in Spittelau designed by Hundertwasser, whose building designs I greatly admire.

Scenes from a “spooky Vienna” night tour we did in the Innere Stadt one Friday night. When a woman on the tour said she was from Canada, I said, “We still love you!” And another guest from Pittsburgh chimed in, “I didn’t vote for him!” Indeed, although friends and family have expressed worry about how visitors from the US will be perceived in the new era, we’ve gotten nothing but expressions of pity and support. Which is good; the news makes me feel so terrible that I’d have a hard time dealing with hostility from Europeans.

Leah and I also did the stable tour, where we saw the tack room and a brown(?!?!!!) Lipizzan stallion in the stables where no photos were allowed (and no touching, and—although we were promised stable cats—no visible cats). The brown stallion performs just like all the others except he’s not allowed to join the ballet of the eight white stallions. Because racism. But the saying goes that as long as there’s at least one dark horse, the tradition will live on, so he is also considered a lucky charm.

Cafe Hawelka, the place to feel arty old Vienna in your bones. I am both arty and old and thus fit right in.