Traditional Vienna august 7 and 8 2010

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We fly with Air Berlin from Berlin Tegel to Vienna. It is comfortable and cheap.

Berlin and Vienna are both cultural cities, but the contrast cannot be bigger. Whereas Berlin is working on its future, Vienna is cultivating its past. This is the town of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Schubert, Schoenberg, Sissi, Franz Joseph, Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele, Freud. Where else can you find such a high concentration of celebrities?

Near Stephansdom we run into a group of Mozart lookalikes. If we are interested in a concert, they ask. They show us the program, all works of Mozart, like Don Giovanni. "There are only a few tickets left Sir", they warn, "so be quick!" Actually the concerthall is closed during summerholidays, so we wonder who is going to give the concert. Students? We walk on right into a shop with pastries. Oh, how sweet they are! And that coffee!

We walk on surrounded by "Mozarts" who still like to sell their tickets, to the Seccesion building to see the Beethovenfries of Gustav Klimt. It is based on Richard Wagners interpretation of the 9th symphony of Beethoven. The apotheosis is in the end where a couple is kissing, surrounded by angels. "Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt"are the words of Schiller in Ode an die Freude. No one can paint a kiss better then Klimt. It is an extasic happening. What a difference with the kiss between Breznjef and Honnecker on the wall in Berlin. I wonder why Klimt depicts his women always like hysterical anorects, as if they come right from the sofa of Freud. Take e.g. how he painted Judith who beheaded Holofernes, the Roman centurion. Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander in the movie "Men who hate women" is just a shadow of her. The Venus of Willendorf that 25,000 years old fertility sculpture here in the Natural History Museum of Vienna has big tits and a fat belly. What kind of evolution took place in the mind of men, that they like women as killing machines instead of as breeding machines? And I must admit I would rahter like the women of Klimt then those of Willendorf.
In the same Natural History Museum where the Venus of Willendorf is the main attraction, we meet the biggest collection of meteorites of the world. It was a personal hobby of Franz Joseph to collect them. The biggest weighs about 900 kilogram.

Out of the center is the Hundertwasserhaus. The building is amazing with all those colours. Nothing is rectangular. It reminds me a little of the buildings in Barcelona from Gaudi, Domenech i Montaner and Cadafalch. But whereas the Modernistas are in the very center of the city, in traditional Vienna you have to undertake a long trip to see the wonder. However, once you have found it the reward is big, specially when you take a Hundertwasserpizza in the Hundertwasserpub.























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