2023 Austria – Vienna
21st April 2023
We thought this year we would treat ourselves to an extra week’s holiday before the annual slog of getting everything ready before our holiday apartments are open. Direct flights at that time of year were patchy, so I was surprised to find one to Vienna and even more surprised to find a direct train from Vienna to Prague, the two places we had been wanting to go to for years.
What a joy it was to travel at that time of year with airports virtually empty, and with only hand luggage we were in the departure lounge within minutes. The plane was half empty, so we had three seats to ourselves which always seemed such a luxury. We arrived in Vienna mid-afternoon where we had arranged for a taxi to pick us up. Having only carry-on luggage we had intended to go by train to our hotel, but it turned out a taxi wasn’t much more expensive. Federika always likes to ask where the taxi driver is from (which is rarely from the country we are visiting), and things got a little awkward when it turned out he was Serbian. Neither of us cared where anyone was from but you never knew what the other person was thinking. There was no shortage of criticism about Dubrovnik and how much better things were in Montenegro but he was pleasant enough and the journey went quickly. We discovered that the city was full of people from ex-Yugoslavian countries and we heard Croatian being spoken everywhere.
We checked in at the Mercure Grand Hotel Biedermeier. It was a modest four-star hotel and cost nearly £200 a night and if we wanted breakfast it was an extra £21 each a day. Neither of us ate much for breakfast so we had intended to go to a local café but that wasn’t much cheaper, so we ended up in the hotel which was much more convenient. Being tired from the journey we were caught off guard when the receptionist told us they were part of a scheme where if we agreed not to have our room serviced, they would put the money saved towards a children’s charity. We agreed, but it later occurred to me that the scheme made no sense. If our room didn’t get cleaned, then the cleaner didn’t get paid, so it was effectively the cleaner that was giving the money to charity.
We had planned to have to have a short rest before going exploring but Federika discovered she had lost her passport. We spent ages scouring every inch of the room but it became obvious that the only place she could have left it was on the plane. She phoned the airline but it was a nightmare getting through to anyone these days and some companies refused point blank to give you a number to call. She did manage eventually but all they would tell us was to contact loss property at the airport. It was even harder to find a number for lost property and when Federika finally managed to call, all she got was a message saying look on the website. The website told me to fill in an online report form which I was sure would get sent to that great email eating machine in the sky but I did as instructed and having accepted there was nothing more we could do until the next morning, we were determined to enjoy what was left of the day. Even if it was lost it was not the end of the world as Federika always travelled with her Croatian passport as well as her British so we could at least travel as normal. The main worry was the nightmare of getting a replacement passport in Croatia.
We were surprised to find that the hotel offered a free walking tour the next morning so we booked ourselves on that and went for a late lunch. We were very tired and hungry and certainly not up to hunting around for a place to eat so we ended up in a shopping mall food court eating Korean food. It was ok, but hardly what we were expecting to eat in Vienna, although apart from Schnitzel I had no idea was passed for local cuisine in that part of the world. As always, we took a stroll around town after dinner and ended up at the cathedral with its large square in front. There were lots of horse-drawn carriages waiting for customers with very bored-looking horses who were perfectly happy with the lack of trade. 
We walked a lot so it was a relief to get back to the hotel for an early night.
Next morning we made our way to the meeting point for our walking tour which was already a fair distance even before we discovered the receptionist had sent us to the wrong place. My leg was hurting and I was already tired so as we were obviously lost I pleaded with Federika to let me use Google Maps. She hated Google Maps but was gradually coming around to it after the number of times it had got us out of trouble. I was shocked to see we were still a kilometre and a half away but Google took us straight there, where the guide and a small group of people were waiting.
The tour guide was brilliant and took us around lots of small streets, telling us all the things we would never have found out for ourselves. From our starting point, she pointed down to a two-lane highway where once the river Danube flowed before they moved it to a more convenient place. There were secret tunnels everywhere and in the past, we would have had great pleasure in walking through them but thanks to health and safety and the fear of insurance claims no one was allowed to use them anymore. During the tour, she gave details about Mozart’s time in Vienna and pointed to a museum that was once one of the many apartments he rented and did his composing in. I was very interested and made a mental note to go back later to visit it properly. We seemed to walk for miles but I managed to find somewhere to sit in some of the places so it turned out to be a very enjoyable experience and just what we needed on our first day. I was always torn between the love of freedom and coming and going as I chose, and the fact that half the time I had no idea what we were looking at.
During the tour, we were shown a café that was famous for its Wiener Schnitzel. You usually had to book well in advance but as it was still early when we finished the tour, we managed to get a table. I enjoyed the Wiener Schnitzel which was about the size of a football pitch but it has to be said that a Wiener Schnitzel doesn’t taste much different in Vienna to one in Mlini. Federika had some kind of boiled beef thing which she was disappointed with.
During the morning I was amazed to find that the airport’s lost and found office had sent me an automated message that Federika’s passport had been found and that I had to go to the office to pick it up. I was very impressed with the service but it did seem weird that they would only keep the passport for 24 hours. What was that all about? If we couldn’t get to the airport that day, were they going to throw the passport in the rubbish bin or sell it to a passport dealer? Fortunately, we had nothing planned that afternoon so at great expense we took the fast train directly to the airport. The office had a price tariff of what they charged to return items and a passport being the smallest size, cost ten Euros. Heaven knows what a suitcase costs. It was such a relief to get Federika’s passport back, which she had apparently left on the plane.
We took the train back to town and spent the afternoon walking around. I was keen to see the Mozart Museum but the reviews were not great so Federika went off by herself and we met up later. I enjoyed my visit but it was a bit cheeky calling it a museum. Every single exhibit was a replica or an example of the kind of furniture Mozart might have used. He was notorious for moving house, depending on his finances and how much money he had lost gambling so he only lived there for three years. I paid extra for an audio guide and was interested in discovering that contrary to popular belief, Mozart was very highly paid and was only poor because of his extravagance and his passion for gambling. He wasn’t buried in a pauper’s grave, but in common with everyone else at that time, he was dumped in a big hole because there was no room for individual graves in such a dense city. What made the visit worthwhile was standing in the exact same room where Mozart wrote The Marriage of Figaro so it felt like there was something of him present.
When I was a session musician in London I was able to read and play any piece of music put in front of me. I could also do modest orchestrations. Despite my ability, I used to marvel at the next level of musicians, the arrangers who could sit on a train on their way to the studio and write scores without an instrument. They were able to hear every single instrument in their heads and write down each part knowing exactly what the harmonies should be without needing to try them out. Then you had Mozart who was light years ahead of even the most skilled arrangers and composers. His ability to play and compose brilliantly at an absurdly young age was well known but less well known was the time he went to listen to a concert of Allegri’s Miserere at St. Peter’s in Rome. It was an extraordinary piece of music which was a heavily guarded secret strictly, only ever played at St. Peter’s church. At the age of 14, Mozart was so moved by it, that he went home and wrote out the entire piece from memory including all the harmonies and without a fault. To me, that goes beyond genius and into the supernatural.
So with all that in mind, I stood in that room and wondered what Mozart would make of the music concert that was being held down the road in the Burggarten where his famous statue was situated. There was a large group of youngsters standing around the stage where someone playing nothing more than a recording of a bass drum and hi-hat which was created by a machine. As always, the bass drum could be heard from kilometres away and for all I knew, poor Wolfgang might have been able to hear it from wherever he was.
I met up with Federika in a nearby café and enjoyed a fruit juice before continuing our stroll around the city while we got our bearings for places to visit the next day. I knew we had walked a lot that day but I was surprised to be told by my watch, that we had covered 24 kilometres. That was about the distance I usually walked in a year.
We noticed that there were preparations being made for a marathon the next day so it was pleasant walking around the wide streets that were already blocked off. There was a helicopter continually buzzing around and while I understood the need to use helicopters to coordinate the preparations, I do think they should be fitted with silencers.
Next day we visited the Schönbrunn Palace. 
We had recently seen a TV series about the Habsburgs which we really enjoyed. We wanted to use a hop-on hop-off bus but the marathon messed up that plan as half the city was blocked off. The train station was a five-minute walk from our hotel, so we took an underground from there which was very convenient. I had checked out ticket prices for the palace the day before and found they were offering jump the queue tickets which looked a little complicated with all the different options so we thought we would just arrive and take it from there. On our arrival, I was shocked to see that despite being the off-season, there was a sign saying, “Wait for entrance to the palace, in excess of three hours.” There was no way we were waiting for one hour, let alone three and I was cursing myself for not buying the jump the queue tickets the day before but I realised that the information given by the tourist office was completely wrong. There was no queue to jump. You couldn’t get into the palace without a ticket and if we bought one when we arrived there was a three-hour queue before we could use it. Federika was not keen on visiting inside the Palace and although I wanted to, I was well aware that I enjoyed those things for around ten minutes before boredom and sore legs got the better of me, so maybe it was just as well.
There was still the enormous garden to see. Some sections had to be paid for, like the orangery or a section with a few plants but they didn’t seem worth it. I really didn’t like the policy that was creeping in everywhere of charging a lot for a main ticket and then charging extra for some of the attractions inside.
The grounds were lovely and there was plenty to see. One area that looked weird was full of ruins that looked out of place. Federika thought they were Greek but although my knowledge of Roman history was limited to Monty Python’s Life of Brian, it all looked very Roman to me. It turned out that there was a weird fashion at the time of creating fake ruins so it was meant to be Roman but had distinct Greek overtones which must be horrifying for any real historian. 
We were really lucky with the weather and most of the time I was walking around in just a shirt. Up to the day before our arrival, it had been raining for weeks. The problem was that as soon as the sun went down, it got a lot colder. It meant that I had to carry a rucksack everywhere and continually take my jacket off and put it on again.
That afternoon we went to the Leopold Museum as Federika was very keen on the artists Klimt and Schiele. I went along and also took the audio guide tour but I didn’t even make my regulation ten minutes before getting bored. There were some very strange voices on the audio telling me what I should be looking for and what the artist was trying to say which always irritates me. As far as I am concerned, to say that I don’t like a work of art because I don’t understand it is a patronising cop-out. I followed Elvis’s footsteps and left the building where I found a wooden bench which I had no trouble understanding. It was created for me to lay on and have a very pleasant afternoon nap in the sunshine. I was very happy to hear later that Federika had really enjoyed the exhibition.
One thing that was a little disappointing was that we expected Vienna to be wall-to-wall pastries but we were coming to the end of our stay and still hadn’t managed to find any. We were determined to find these elusive treats but the main square and everywhere around it was so busy we couldn’t even find a seat, let alone a pastry. The closest thing we found was a shop selling ice cream with a small display of cakes in the front so we bought two cannoli and sat on the last two available places in the whole of Vienna. They weren’t even seats but a gap amongst tourists, on a stone step surrounding a statue. I had eaten similar pastries in Italy with light fluffy pastry and yellow cream inside but these were awful and I threw most of mine away. So that was the beginning and the end of our grand Viennese pastry extravaganza.
2023 Vienna and Prague
