I am astonished and pleased and happy to announce that today is the 10th anniversary of my first post. It is amazing for me to have this blog to capture special moments and thoughts about living in Vienna and to be able to share them with you. I’d like my readers to know that they belong to a small but fine group (in German: “klein aber fein”). There are about 50 of you. I may not post as often as I would wish, but it means a lot to me to be able to do so.
Thanks to the amazing generosity of a friend, I was able to go to one of the great concert occasions as we slowly and cautiously move back to going out again–the Jonas Kaufmann / Helmut Deutsch Liederabend at the Konzerthaus. What follows are just some quick impressions as it has been an exhausting week and is not over yet, but I did want to get some notes down.
The photo above shows the front of the Konzerthaus this evening, adorned with a flag that brought tears to my eyes with its jaunty text: Wir spielen! (Love the exclamation mark.) Literally that would be “We’re playing!” and essentially it means we are back in business. 🙂
The ingress was orderly and friendly even as the people at the door checked IDs, tickets, and test results. (Vienna is working on the 3-G system–gestestet, geimpft, genesen or tested, vaccinated, recovered. To take advantage of things opening up you need to fit into at least one of those groups.)
Once inside there was a kind of collective amazement at being back. Concert goers are loyal people and concert halls are often their second homes. It was like being back where we belonged.
Inside the hall itself we were very spread out, an unusual feeling for such a special concert. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that many people were more dressed up than usual and many had obviously just been to the hairdresser’s. (Why waste a test? 😉 You need them for services that involve body contact, too.) Many people seemed happy to see friends again and what was really warming to see was how much pleasure the ushers expressed at seeing their regulars again.
A note in the program (below) and announced before the start of the concert laid out the rules for “the current situation”: no intermission, to only sit in your assigned seat, when leaving the hall to allow 2 meters distance (wasn’t possible even using all the exits as requested!), and the mandatory FFP2 mask at all times, even during the performance. (Friends told me that at Salzburg last summer you were allowed to take off your mask once you reached your seat but had to put it on again before starting the applause. That didn’t turn out so well. The government, however, does seem to be learning.)
This evening’s program with the rules for the “current situation”
As the doors were closed and the lights dimmed the tension tangibly rose. Then the announcement of the rules, a brief wait, and there they were! The two extremely distinguished musicians in their tailcoats (which I appreciated). The applause was relatively quiet not from a lack of enthusiasm but rather from a lack of people. For that, it went on even longer than usual, everyone was so happy to be back.
Kaufmann sang with music rather than from memory. I can’t remember if this is usual for him. Personally I would have liked at least the first (long!) ballad without the music but it’s the artist’s choice. The songs themselves were absolutely beautifully crafted and I wondered if the time spent with Deutsch during lockdown–the two almost seemed to have quarantined together–gave Kaufmann a chance to polish that. As for Deutsch, his playing, which was always exquisite, seems to have gotten even more liquid or seamless. Incredible.
The Schubert and Schumann seemed almost subdued to me; but in the Liszt, Kaufmann let his natural flair for dramatic presentation free rein and the intensity rose. At the end of the official program, in Vienna there are (almost) always a number of encores, the two artists exchanged an elbow bump and allowed the public to express its now much louder appreciation.
A very blurry photo of the two artists
Four encores and finally a standing ovation. And then we started, with a collective sigh of contentment, to leave, few thinking about distance at that moment.
My heart goes out to the police in Vienna today. After over a year of extra work enforcing the pandemic restrictions, they now have to deal with 40 demonstrations in downtown Vienna today. Some are against the (ever more quickly vanishing) covid restrictions and some are to do with the situation in the Middle East. I can’t even imagine how you fit 40 demonstrations into the first district!
Things that aren’t happening that are a reminder of the pandemic: the annual May Day parades organized by the Social Democrats, a political force to be reckoned with in Vienna. Today the street outside my window is quiet. No brass bands are playing as the loyal SPÖ members make their way to the City Hall to celebrate this international day of blue-collar workers. Instead here is at least a photo of the flags I saw on our morning walk:
One thing that strikes me is how many reminders of the World Wars there still are in this part of Europe. Beyond the memorials, there are daily reminders that 80 years ago or so (or just over a hundred years ago) mines were being laid and bombs were being dropped.
There’s an article in today’s Kurier about the bomb squad, whose responsibilities include defusing bombs left over from the wars. Apparently, the squad gets three to four calls a day(!) to take care of old explosive devices.
It reminded me of the time, only three years ago or so, I almost missed the last Vienna-bound flight out of the Cologne airport because the highway was closed and traffic was being rerouted to give a wide berth to the site where an enormous bomb from the Second World War was being defused.
That reminded me of the story a German client told me. His company was in an area of Germany where a lot of bombs got dropped randomly as the RAF planes were on their way home. (This, apparently, was a common practice on both sides. I’m sure there’s a counterpart in the U.K. that defuses old Luftwaffe bombs on a daily basis.)
When my client company was breaking ground for a new plant, they came across one of the bigger bombs and called in the bomb squad. This, of course, delayed progress. When the (U.K.-based) parent company wanted to know why the project was no longer on track, my German client, with some relish (there were some of the usual tensions between parent company and subsidiary), relayed the information that they had been delayed by a British bomb. The head office was attuned to the irony of this and took some of the pressure off.
How easy it is in this peaceful Europe to forget that the E.U. grew out of a desire to never fight neighbors again. And how helpful to have these reminders.
There’s a bird whose song I’ve been delighting in on our morning walk. He sits on an old TV antenna atop a roof and fills the morning air with what sounds like rapture.
I thought he was a thrush but also, thinking of Romeo and Juliet, considered that he might be a lark. I even wondered if he might be a nightingale.
This morning I decided to find out so I checked out the bird songs from all those birds, and a few others, on YouTube. (Technology is good for some things. ;-)) None of the songs seemed quite right. Then YouTube suggested the song of the “Amsel” (blackbird) and that was it! 🙂 Wikipedia then informed me that a blackbird is part of the thrush family (as is, I believe, the nightingale), which made me feel I wasn’t entirely wrong.
A nice way to start the day, including having a bit of time this morning to go down this particular rabbit hole. 🙂
One year ago today was the last day I stood in a seminar room facilitating a workshop with any sense of freedom. Even then the Romanians in the group were very distracted by the thought that they might not be allowed to fly home or would have to quarantine for two weeks when they got there.
Afterwards, I sat with a colleague in the otherwise empty bar at the seminar hotel. We did our usual after action review, interspersed with unsettling tidbits from a population biology course he had taken as an undergraduate, enjoying a drink in public for what we thought would be the last time for several weeks. (Ah, the innocence!)
Then we gathered up our things and went our separate ways to make sure we had food for the next few days, not knowing what the lockdown, due to start the following Monday, would bring.
Those memories highlight two facets of a year of pandemic in Austria that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit as we neared this anniversary: that what seemed unthinkable and almost insurmountable (two weeks of quarantine???) have become part of our daily lives and that no one I know foresaw how long the pandemic would go on or was prepared for the uncertainty. (I don’t number any epidemiologists among my friends.)
A year ago Austria acted quickly and decisively and had low numbers to show for it. Now our numbers are bad, although not quite as bad as the rest of Central Europe, and our vaccine rollout is pathetic. It’s anyone’s guess when life will regain any of its pre-pandemic freedom.
ecbinvienna 