Just wanted to report that there was a sister march in Vienna. Apparently, about 2000 people showed up in spite of the temperature (about -7°C or approximately +20°F). We started out at Karlsplatz, looped around to Stadtpark. In the photo above, you can see that someone put a pussy hat on the gilded Johann Strauß statue there. 🙂
Am waiting to board the last plane to Vienna this evening and am interested in the information about Vienna they are showing on a screen–that there are more people buried in the main cemetery (2.5 m) than live in the city (1.8 m) and that there are over 300 balls a year. Fun to have another perspective!
Charles Dickens in his book “A Christmas Carol”described the weather when Scrooge wakes up after his encounters with the three Ghosts thus, “No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; golden sunlight, Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. O glorious, glorious! ”
We don’t often get days like this in Vienna, but today is such a day. 🙂 And it is a holiday. Double :-).
Hats off to the ORF (Austrian broadcasting) for the creative intermission film they put together, showing the cake and waltz side of Vienna as well as the skilled handworkers.
Gustavo Dudamel, this year’s conductor, is the youngest at 35 years of age. After listening to (and watching) the first three or four pieces I have to say I’m afraid he’s a little too young for the task. Not that the age itself is a problem, but he doesn’t seem willing to let go as an older, more experienced conductor might. (Karajan towards the end conducted more or less using only his little fingers. This is an orchestra that doesn’t need more than that.)
I hear / see this in two ways. He has been charging through the pieces, pushing rather than pulling any hypothetical waltzers, all very clear but a little cut-and-dried. He also seems to be trying to exercise too much control over the orchestra. Maybe he’ll relax as he goes along. If not this time, then next time.
He does look nice in the new Philharmonic suit, though. 😉
The EuroSkills championship has just taken place in Göteborg, Sweden, and once again Austria has done extremely well for such a small country (see below).
At the top of the list is Lisa Janisch, painter. She had the highest points of all competitors and with that got a gold medal and was “Best of Nation” and “Best of Europe”. The tasks she had to complete: painting an inside door in two colors, putting up wallpaper, painting Göteborg’s opera house on a wall (with some technical details I can’t translate because I don’t understand them), speed painting, and finally using a technique of her choice to decorate a 2 m2 wall area. (She chose to paint her shadow on the wall using a sophisticated stucco technique.) She said the hardest part was completing these tasks well in the time allowed and that she was helped by the fact that she had been practicing all day, every day for months until her boss told her to go home and get some sleep. I continue to love the fact that there are competitions for work performance.
From today’s Kurier the list of winners:
On our walk this morning, Maylo and I went past a construction site. One of the men took one look at Maylo in his little coat (it’s still below freezing here) and said, with a smile, to me, “You forgot something. Where are his gloves?” From his accent and his good humor at that hour of the morning I think he was one of the thousands of Poles who help keep this city running.
And the former president of Austria, Heinz Fischer, recently was at a gala concert in the Musikverein to celebrate pianist Rudolf Buchbinder’s 70th birthday. One thing I have always appreciated about Fischer is that he likes classical music and can often be seen at concerts, usually without any obvious security. The first time I saw him, I was dissecting a concert with some Austrian friends and interrupted to point and say, “Der Bundespräsident!” They glanced over and said, more or less, “Of course. What did you expect? He often comes to concerts” and turned back to continue our conversation. What did I expect??? A security detail taking the president out through a back passage, not this short, middle-aged man walking out alone looking contemplative.
ecbinvienna 