Art Nouveau, Opera, Sacher Torte

On Wednesday we returned to the Naschmarkt for a new supply of Pad Thai sauce, and to survey the colorful arrays of dried fruits and herbs a second time.

Naschmarkt translates literally to "nibble market." As you walk through, the vendors hold out bits of dried fruit for you to sample, saying "Suss, Suss." ("Sweets, sweets")

We lunched on Japanese food in one of the market's many restaurants.

Afterward, M repaired to the nearby Secession -- the gallery of the eponymous turn-of-the-century art movement led by Gustav Klimt and other Jungendstil types. The gallery today is as cutting-edge as it ever was, given over to avant-garde exhibits, the one exception being the permanent display of Klimt's Beethoven Frieze.

Above: the front of the Secession: "For the age its art. For art its freedom."

Across the street is the Cafe Museum, a favorite haunt for the Secession artists.

Above: the Jugendstil Karlsplatz U-Bahn station.

View from the flat's terrace.

Above: one of the six infamous and hideous Flakturme -- anti-aircraft towers built by the Nazis. This one's a block from us, in an otherwise lovely community park. One side of it serves as a wall to the children's playground, where kids play handball against it. The Flakturme are virtually indestructible. They've been left up all over central Europe because they can't be demolished without wrecking all the surrounding buildings in the process. So they serve as painful, unignorable reminders of a very dark time. This one now houses a small art gallery that's open on weekends.

Today, the weather was a blessed 71 degrees. Just before lunch, we set out for a classic Viennese Kaffehaus experience, choosing Cafe Central in the first district, a favorite of Freud and Trotsky, among others. The gothic exterior was matched nicely on the inside.

Zwei Cappuccino. Eins Apfelstrudel. Eins Sacher Torte. Eins Tow Truck.

 

 

After the cafe, we walked a few blocks to the Votivkirche, a nineteenth-century gothic cathedral built to celebrate Franz-Josef's survival of an assassination attempt by an angry Hungarian subject. The World War II stained glass windows were interesting.

Then we headed down the Ringstrasse to the Schubert Sterbewohnung, the house at Kettenbruckengasse 6, where Franz Schubert died at age 31 in 1828, having never heard any of his own symphonies performed.

We decided not to pay the fee to go inside the museum itself, but the building's corridors, eerily shabby, were evocative enough.

This evening, thanks to our home-exchangers' help in arranging a good babysitter, K and M headed out to Schonbrunn Palace again. 

This time we were there for a performance of The Marriage of Figaro in the old Schloss Theater, built as a private theater for the Habsburg royals in 1747. Mozart himself conducted his own work here. The small, plush interior is a time-capsule, and makes for an intimate musical experience.

(ceiling frescoes: cherubim)