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One CITY. One BOOK.

27 Nov

I am finally catching up with the “One CITY. One BOOK” initiative of the City of Vienna, among others, which is in its 11th year. (I’m a bit slow about these things!)

The way it works is that the mayor of Vienna together with a team of people from echo medienhaus select a book they feel is relevant to the people of Vienna. 100,000 extra copies of this book are printed and then distributed for free at all kinds of different venues. I picked mine up this morning at the bank across the street from me.

This year’s book is “A Hand Full of Stars” by Rafik Schami, a Syrian (how is that for timely?) author of considerable renown in the German-speaking world. He has lived in Germany for over 40 years, received an overwhelming number of prizes for his books, and still wakes up every morning (he said in an interview) wishing he could walk through the streets of Damascus, his hometown.

As I walked home this morning with my bright, new copy in my hand adages about money and the value of things were running through my head. “You get what you pay for” was one. Hardly relevant here, it seems. I have paid nothing and received a book that promises to be a very good read. The next one was “People don’t value what they get for free.” This one is only appropriate–as far as I can see–in the sense that I first heard it in reference to psychoanalysis, the founder of which was Viennese. 😉

The next saying that went through my head was “Put your money where your mouth is.” This, finally, seemed to fit. The City of Vienna wants people to read–perhaps also wants total strangers to reach out to one another and ask “What did you think of the book?”–and is willing to support the initiative knowing that when people read the same books they suddenly share a language.

Perhaps the name of the initiative should be: One BOOK. One CITY.

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Specialty shops – 1

6 Oct

The search for bobbins for my sewing machine has reminded me of the confusion and fun of the first year or so of living in Vienna.

In different countries you can find that things you need or want are not sold where you would expect them to be sold. What I most clearly remember was the search for contact lens solutions. Used to the all-service supermarkets in the U.S. I tried there first. People looked at me as if I were crazy. I fled. Then I thought, “I bet they have them at the pharmacy” (a much more restricted concept in Austria than in the U.S.), but when I asked there they thought I was crazy, too. But at least they told me where to go. In Austria, still, the one and only place to buy contact lens solutions is at the optician’s.

The Austrian culture is higher on uncertainty avoidance–that’s a technical term and part of Geert Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions–than the U.S. American culture. One way this expresses itself is through the credence given to experts. What might happen if we were allowed to buy aspirin or contact lens solutions all by ourselves at the supermarket? (Other than the disintegration of the pharmacies and the opticians’?) Heaven alone knows! Better to be safe than sorry.

So back to my sewing machine. I thought I had figured the system out by this time. I went to a specialty sewing shop to buy, among other things, bobbins for my perfectly normal, nothing out of the ordinary Singer sewing machine. And was told I could only get them from Singer direct!

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Concert

16 Sep

I had the great privilege this evening of participating in a very Viennese event–a concert in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein. It wasn’t just any concert. It was a reunion of two exceptional Italian, or more precisely Milanese, musicians, Claudio Abbado and Maurizio Pollini, with two of the greatest Austrian composers on the program, Mozart and Bruckner (Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G major and the Viennese version of Bruckner’s Symphony Nr. in C minor). The audience consisted of well-dressed, but not necessarily well-heeled, Viennese and a mixture of others–the usual music students in standing room, the Asian (no longer exclusively Japanese) tour groups, diplomats, politicians, and elderly concert goers with a lifetime of such experiences and in some cases grandchildren to ensure a future of concert going in this city of music.

The Mozart was first. It lacked some clarity (perhaps Pollini was playing a Bösendorfer instead of a Steinway?) but was tenderly and fervently played, and was beautiful. The Bruckner was almost overwhelming, in a wonderful way. Like the ocean it had many moods and paces, great calm and small waves and then overpowering tidal waves of sound, concentration and energy. The orchestra (the Lucerne Festival Orchestra) got better and better, swept up in the music they were making. I think they’ll forgive me for not mentioning them until now as they themselves repeatedly refused to stand for applause, partly sensing that the audience had come to pay tribute to and enjoy once again two greatly loved and respected musicians and apparently also wishing themselves to honor those great musicians.

The applause after each piece was as overwhelming as the most intense moments of the Bruckner, expressing gratitude and recognition not only for the wonderful performances this evening but also for two lifetimes of exceptional music making–although  the two gentlemen (70 and above) themselves would almost certainly say, “Not yet a lifetime.”

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The Beautiful Blue Danube

16 Sep

Anyone who has spent any time in Vienna knows that the beautiful blue Danube of Strauss waltz fame doesn’t show itself very often. Far more often the river is gray or even brown. Even this afternoon, when Mylo and I decided to have a change from the Vienna Woods and walk along the river, it didn’t perhaps achieve a real blue. Nonetheless it seemed worth a picture or two …

The Danube

The Danube looking north to Kahlenberg and Leopoldsberg

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Weather camera

12 Sep

I have just discovered there is a “weather camera” on top of the Burgtheater (State Theater): http://wetter.orf.at/wien/webcam?id=568

It’s good for more than just seeing what the weather is like in Vienna!

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A Friday morning in Vienna in the summer (an e-mail to my mother)

24 Aug

Good morning, dear!

It’s promising (threatening? ;-)) to be very hot today. Mylo and I went for our usual walk and I took my usual break on my usual tree stump in the meadow at the Narrenturm. We were having such a nice time outdoors I thought “I don’t want to go home” and decided on the spot to go to CafĂ© Weimar, dogwalking shorts and naked face notwithstanding. So Mylo and I traipsed off to CafĂ© Weimar where we sat under the awning and I had a croissant and caffĂš latte. As Maylo’s vet is very near there and I needed to pick up the food I had ordered for him I considered hanging around until they opened at 9:00 to save myself an extra trip. However it was only 8:15, and I thought that might be a bit too much hanging around.

Then I found myself staring at the big sign announcing the weekly open-air market of organic and (relatively) local produce at the WUK on the other side of WĂ€hringer Straße. I’ve thought about checking that out for years and never gotten around to it. They didn’t open until 9:00 either, but I decided that those two things together were worth waiting for so  I pulled out a little notebook from my bag and started making notes for work on Monday and my interview on Tuesday. I was able to pull my thoughts together really well (amazing what a cup of strong coffee and nice surroundings will do for one’s concentration) and then went off and bought grapes to take to M’s party tomorrow and picked up Mylo’s food.

Just to top it all off—I texted P from CafĂ© Weimar and arranged to have dinner together this evening in Pötzleinsdorf.

I have now closed up all windows and lowered all possible blinds to stem the onslaught of the heat and am sitting here with the fan blowing on my legs.

Wishing you just such a nice day!!!

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The vineyards

15 Aug

For those of you who don’t know, Vienna has quite a number of vineyards within the city limits. There are historic reasons for this, dating back to the days of Maria Teresia, if I remember correctly. This means there is not only a good supply of local wine 😉 (and wine taverns–Heuriger–to sit out at in good weather) but also that there are very picturesque walks. This photo of Vienna was taken from the vineyards in Neustift am Walde in the 19th district.Image

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MA 42 – Parks and gardens

15 Aug

I’m still not going to do a proper post on this “Magistratsabteilung” but I did want to give an example of their work. Someone chooses a mixture of flowers that is then planted in all the public places. This photo was taken at a traffic triangle near me. When they put these flowers in I was skeptical that they would amount to anything. Now that the plants have grown and filled in, though, I think it is a most successful combination.

This season’s choice

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24 years in Vienna

1 Aug

I do want to commemorate my arrival 24 years ago almost to the hour, even though I’m not up to a long post.

On August 1, 1988 my mother and I flew over from London on the last Austrian Air flight of the day into a hot and steamy Vienna, were awed by the spotless, shiny marble floors in the airport (now gone, apparently, lost to the latest expansion effort), and were delighted to be met completely unexpectedly by a school friend of hers. (In those days, before Vienna with the fall of the Iron Curtain once again became the hub of central Europe,  the airport busses stopped running at 10 p.m. or so.) The school friend, who with her husband over the course of my first few years became my Viennese parents, hurried us out to the parking lot and drove with great elan into the city to get us to the student residence where we were staying before they locked the doors. I remember with incredible clarity the moment she pointed out the floodlit Staatsoper on the great Ringstrasse. Spectacular.

I have just come back from a long walk in the Vienna Woods in summery temperatures followed by dinner with a few “G’spritze” (white wine spritzers) in Neuwaldegg with a friend so am off to bed. But what better way to celebrate?

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Bösendorfer pianos

30 Jul

Somehow I had missed the news that the Bösendorfer building in the 4th district of Vienna with the beautiful concert hall, as well as production floor, was going to be torn down. Last Wednesday I picked up a copy of the free newspaper in Vienna “Heute” and what should I see on page 13 but a photo of the building already half gone and a caption that says the site would provide room for 80 new apartments. The company will go on. There is a new Bösendorfer concert hall now in the Mozart House on Domgasse, and the showrooms with practice facilities and the factory in Wiener Neustadt continue to operate, but somehow it is not the same. Apparently someone in Vienna’s Office for the Preservation of Historic Sites said that the building was a classic case for a commemorative plaque only. Even in Vienna.

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