Falling in Love with Vienna (November 11, 2022, the severed branch)
Combined with the quirky character of its storied cafes and unique museums, the beauty and historical intrigue of Vienna’s many parks made the Austrian capital one of my favorite European cities
A view of the Hofburg Palace from Burggarten in Vienna (photos my own)
With ten days in Vienna, I assumed I would have time to see at least a few of the city’s many art museums. Instead, I saw only one, the Albertina, which hosted a huge Basquiat exhibit in addition to several Monets and Picassos. Each day I would have gone to a museum, the beautiful outdoors of Vienna in autumn confronted me with its alluring temptations. In terms of the other museums, I found myself favoring the weird ones. There was the Globe Museum, exhibiting a vast collection of terrestrial and celestial globes stretching back to ancient times. I had never heard of celestial globes before, and it was quite interesting to observe the way they represented an earlier conception of the universe: the earth, surrounded by a spherical layer of stars, which are depicted on the globe with the artistic imagery of their constellations. Of course, they even had globes of the Moon, Mars, and Venus.
The Globe Museum’s five-euro ticket proved to be quite the deal. My admission included entrance into the neighboring Esperanto Museum, a celebration of an artificial language which was meant to be a force for peace but whose glory days unfortunately coincided with the rise of Nazism. Tucked away on the ground floor of the library, it might have been the smallest museum I’ve ever entered. Nevertheless, I was pleased and amused with my selections. On my sixth or seventh day in Vienna, however, I thought maybe I should see another major art museum, and I walked for something like an hour to reach the Belvedere Palace. There, “The Kiss” is displayed, a famous painting I’d never heard of before but wanted to think I had, and I was determined to do the cultured thing by paying the entry fee to see it.
A celestial globe in the Vienna Globe Museum
I had already walked through the palace greens and the adjacent botanical garden. I hoped that this time, I would have the strength to favor the new, rather than to repeat and enhance a past experience (as I normally seek to do). It seemed somehow essential to immerse myself in a unique art museum which is widely considered to be one of the city’s highlights. And yet once I reached the Belvedere, I only wanted to spend the next three hours moving between benches in the botanical garden, listening to music and reading a book in German, and so that’s what I did. Being in Vienna had conjured within me the yearning to improve my German, and the fall colors of the trees beckoned me to linger beneath them. In the garden, I lived out my fantasy of a literary oasis. How could I justify spending this gorgeous autumn day inside a museum? Merely to be able to tell inquiring people that yes, I had done that, I had seen The Kiss! It was on a checklist which the Internet had assigned to me. The ubiquity with which it was recommended made me wonder if perhaps I was the crazy one for wanting to just sit in the botanical garden all afternoon. Nevertheless, I embraced what I knew my mind, soul, and body really wanted, and indeed what they truly needed. Embracing a practice which has become my version of a beach vacation, I savored a few hours on the benches of the botanical garden.
My favorite places in Vienna were the many city parks in which I passed numerous hours. Prater, the old imperial hunting grounds of the Habsburg emperors, was the most impressive and certainly the most addictive. All by itself, it swallowed up some twelve hours which I might have spent seeing the most recommended sights. On my first day in Vienna, I went there for a walk with my friend who lives in the vast Austrian capital, and together with his baby in the stroller we traversed the miles stretching right up the center. Most tourists, he mentioned, didn’t make it there, and I could see why. The enormous park, complete with rivers, streams, dense woods, ponds, and thick layers of brown fallen leaves, is off to the side, significantly removed from the old town and the major sights of the city. It was especially far away from my hostel, which was on the clear opposite end of Vienna. And yet our one trip there, even though it lasted for a couple of hours, was not enough for me. To wander the winding paths within the woods of Prater, and indeed just to stroll down its central boulevard in the chilly shadows of the trees, is simply so crisp and refreshing that it calls all by itself for an extra day or two in Vienna. The park is so gigantic that a thorough exploration of all its hidden recesses, forested ponds, and secluded wooded hideouts demands multiple excursions, and this I still did not achieve. Yet even if I could have seen it all in one-go, I would have walked the same paths again, tormented by not having savored it enough. I awoke each day haunted by the idea that I might never see that wonderful place again. So I went three times. Once on that first day with my friend, a second time by myself a few days later, and a final time on my last day in Austria, when I might have been exploring the many museums I had skipped. I knew I was “supposed” to be seeing all that art and history, but I hadn’t the strength to resist just one last foray into Prater.
The third time I went to Prater was the best of them all. I walked a few miles up the central avenue, which is flanked on either side by seemingly infinite columns of trees. The autumn had intensified over the ten days I was in Vienna, and the ground beneath my feet on that final day was utterly drenched by fallen leaves. It was, as I WhatsApped my friend, an “autumn wonderland,” seeming to have reached a climax over the course of my time in the city. I walked for two hours on that avenue, and when it came time to turn around and walk back, I veered off into the woods which sprawl out on either side of it. The small paths through the trees, narrow and poorly marked to begin with, were so covered with fallen foliage that it felt at times as if I were actually wandering around beyond the reaches and planning of human governments.
Prater’s central pedestrian boulevard stretches on like this for 2.6 miles
A strange feeling, given that I was in fact standing in the lands once reserved and managed for the emperors’ hunting expeditions. Maintaining wild stocks in preserves like this one was among the chief duties of certain government bureaucrats, all for the entertainment of the emperor. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was so addicted to hunting that he killed a total of 300,000 animals. Supposedly at one point, he killed 2,140 animals in a single day. Our furry friends, however, can sleep easy in Prater today, where they live out their lives in the peaceful environment that they and their human visitors can all enjoy. Now, the whole space feels like something between a well-designed park and an expanse of wilderness. While lost in the forests which flank Prater’s great pedestrian boulevard, it is almost incredible to think that you are still in Vienna, one of Europe’s most glamorously developed and elaborately constructed capitals. But it is a falsehood to imagine that these old imperial hunting grounds, though lacking in the stunning architecture which entices so many tourists, are peripheral to the soul of Vienna. If European history is just a story about kings and emperors, then Prater is as integral to Vienna’s political and cultural history as is any grand palace or cathedral. And if cities without parks are sad and gloomy hellscapes, then Prater is a part of what makes Vienna so rich with life, vibrancy, and beauty.
The central grounds of Schoenbrunn Palace
That final afternoon I was at Prater, over a hundred years after the end of the imperial line which nurtured the space, there were often only a few other people around in the forest. It was a chilly day with scattered light rain that fell gracefully into my hair. Unlike the bright light of the sun, which can soften and obscure natural colors, the gray air brought out a dark intensity to the soggy, orange leaves beneath my feet, and I enjoyed the sense of a little water soaking through my shoes. Sometimes, when I was concealed behind a thick mesh of bark and twig, no people at all were visible in any direction. And then some other dazed explorer, as enraptured by the beauty as I was, would suddenly appear from another hiding place within the woods, looking around her with the delight of a person who has finally discovered what she was meant to do with her life. Pitying the souls who were hiding in the museums, I thought that yes, this is what we are meant to do: stand here in the woods, slowly getting soaked in a light rain. I thought about Mary Oliver, asking in a poem what harm could come if she passed all her days walking up and down through a gorgeous field. And while strolling along the creeks and rivers, I felt as if I’d taken a day trip into the countryside. But I hadn’t. Prater is right there in the heart of a great European capital, challenging the tourist to think beyond palaces, cathedrals, and museums.
I found similarly tranquil spaces scattered throughout Vienna. I can only think that I did well to have seen them all in autumn. While at Schoenbrunn, the Habsburgs’ summer retreat on the other end of the city from Prater, I thoroughly explored the enormous gardens which surround the palace itself. Yes, I did enjoy a tour of the palace’s insides, which felt like a toned down version of Versailles. I strolled through the same ornate halls where Kennedy and Kruschchev met during a great gala dinner hosted by Austria. And I learned a somewhat whitewashed history about the imperial family, whose unhinged slaughter of countless animals was reduced to the display of a few intriguing hunting utensils. But the vast Schoenbrunn gardens, which alternate between rugged forest and manicured greenery, were the highlight.
Inside Schoenbrunn Palace
In the center of it all, there is a hilltop from which one has magnificent views over the palace grounds and the heart of Vienna beyond. Paths spiral out from that midpoint, twisting through leafy and quiet woodlands which, though on a smaller scale than Prater, still inspire the same calming sense of peace. The whole environment filled me with idealized visions of the old aristocratic lifestyle, whose existence in the 19th century was threatened by a different, work-oriented value system espoused by the rising class of industrialists. I imagined myself as a noblewoman, engaged in luxurious strolls through the forest between long hours spent on tasks deemed pointless by the capitalists: sketching pictures of my natural surroundings, playing piano, reading novels, learning classical languages, horseback riding. Here were echoes of a different kind of upper class than the bankers, businessmen, doctors, and lawyers of our time; this was an upper class that relished not being productive, that saw it as vulgar to work for money rather than to pursue pleasurable hobbies. Although I was in Austria, it made me want to be a person in a Jane Austen novel. And if the space inspires rosy fantasies about the past today, it’s no wonder that it also did in the 19th-century, when the relentless pace of industrialization and technology inspired a Romantic artform seeking to glorify the past. Within the vast gardens of Schoenbrunn, a 19th-century architect designed and built Roman ruins, meant to evoke a dreamy sense of the long-last classical world. I laughed at first, especially since the Romans, proto-industrialists, did so much mining in Spain and the Balkans that they too managed to measurably pollute the Earth’s atmosphere. But then I couldn’t help but admire the authenticity and advanced stonework of the design. I joined for a moment in an unabashed fantasy about a better past.
All I had to do was push away from my mind the awful ideologies of the Austrian emperors. The last of them, Franz Joseph I (r. 1848 - 1916), maintained until the bitter end that he ruled by the divine right of God. In this outlook, he was only following in the footsteps of his predecessors and the Austrian Foreign Minister Klemens von Metternich (1773 - 1859), who during his time in office had organized Russia and Prussia around the so-called Holy Alliance, its goal being to uphold the divine right of monarchs in Europe against increasing pressures for parliamentary government. In a world that had just experienced the anti-aristocratic upheavals of the French Revolution, Austria stood at the vanguard of the drive to safeguard the divinely ordained supremacy of nobles. With this ideology as their bedrock, the emperors, police chiefs, and ministers of Austria spent the 19th century zealously resisting the advance of democracy, national self-determination, and equality before the law, all of which threatened to break up their empire, ruling as it did over numerous linguistic and ethnic groups who began antagonizing for their own independent nation states. From northern Italy to Croatia to Germany to Hungary, Austrian police rounded up those who stood for these principles and shipped them off to multinational political prisons at places like the castle in Brno, modern Czech Republic. And to think that these were the people among whom I longed to sit around playing piano all day!
A corner of Burggarten in the evening
Even so, I spent most of my evenings in another great imperial park, the Burggarten. The park sits at the base of the Habsburg’s main palace, Hofburg, and though I toured the inside of that one too, it was the outside which I really loved. There, at various points of the day, I sat on benches gazing out onto the pond. I shifted between reading my book, listening to music, and simply admiring the beauty and feel of the air as its colors, temperatures, and moisture levels shifted throughout the morning and afternoon. The end of the day was the best time to be there, as the Goddess seemed to treasure this spot for practicing her artistry, and I awoke each morning already looking forward to the moment I would arrive there for sunset. The colors were different every time, so that it was as if she were pursuing a slightly new painting each day, showing off the full range of her subtle creativity. One evening the sky over the palace-top exhibited the most serene pastel streaks of orange and purple, and then the next day that same space favored heavier shades of blue and black. For six wondrous nights, I always strove to be there an hour before the light of day began to fade away. I would sit reading for forty-five minutes to an hour, loving the cold and relishing the moment I would start shivering despite my cozily layered attire. Glancing up from time to time to appreciate the palatial architecture, set so perfectly behind the park’s trees and against the magnificent sky, I listened to the various languages spoken around me. Once the sun really began to set, I placed my book in my backpack, and I walked around in circles observing the colors change until everything was dark, at which point I would head back to my hostel in time for happy hour at the bar. No longer idealizing the past, I was most content with the present around me. I daresay I was even happy that the divine right of the Habsburgs has passed into oblivion, and that the spaces which they once kept for their own aristocratic entertainment have opened up to we eager commoners.
Of course, in the beautiful city parks of the Austrian capital, the traveler can hardly avoid a darker history than the divine rights of monarchs. Briefly, I walked with my friend through Augarten. Situated somewhat near Prater, that great park is itself also quite off to the side from Vienna’s sight-seeing heartlands. At Augarten, flowery paths through tightly trimmed greenery and bare green fields contrast with the monstrously huge and hideous anti-air defense installations which the Nazis built during the war. They would be too expensive for the city to tear down, and so the government leaves them up. They loom as giant relics of a darker time, grey and ugly reminders of a fascist-controlled Vienna which aggressively steeled itself against Allied bombings. Again, history is as present in the parks as it might be in the museums. Just as Prater reminds the visitor of imperial tastes for excessive hunting, Augarten showcases the leftovers of a genocidal regime which had hoped to rule all of Europe forever.
A Nazi-constructed anti-air installation towers eerily in Augarten
It was in the unique environments of Vienna’s many storied cafes, with histories stretching back to the early 20th century and beyond, where I relished a happier continuity with the past. I was afraid they might be touristy, but other than Cafe Central (which I skipped due to the extremely long line), they weren’t. There was within them a nice mix of locals, tourists, and expats. They all had a few characteristics in common: the waiters in bow ties, black vests, and white shirts; the offerings of apple strudel and eclectic arrays of cakes; the half-good coffee and cheap beer; and, most amusing to me, the numerous newspapers laid out for guests to peruse. Older people, after ordering just a single coffee and maybe a piece of cake, would linger in these cafes for hours reading one newspaper after another. A few fashionable ladies in elaborate, wide-brimmed hats stepped in from time to time. And for many locals both obscure and renowned, it is a point of pride to be a regular at a Vienna cafe. I spent a few hours reading and writing in Cafe Bräunerhof, once frequented by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, and I was flanked on either side by elderly couples passing back and forth the newspapers they took from the racks.
I was thrilled to spend hours writing my essays and working on chapters for my book within several of them. Of course, I had to spend a whole morning in Cafe Jelinek, and that proved to be one of my favorites, but all of them have their own little quirks and unique traits. Cafe Jelinek, one of the oldest, maintains an old furnace in the corner, still operational, harkening back to the times of its origins. Cafe Weidinger, meanwhile, set in a working-class district, has the more casual feel of something like a dive bar serviced by men wearing bow ties, and the beer there flows cheaply into the night. My friend and I spent an evening there sharing a few beers and conversation. I also enjoyed Cafe Hawelka. Its crowded and dark interior would almost have evoked the sense I was attending a show by a local grunge band, if it hadn’t been for the American missionary there mentoring his saintly protege in the ways of their Lord. The first one I visited, Cafe Schwarzenberg, was distinctly more fancy, with a wood-paneled and classy interior of elegant window curtains to match the dress of its servers, whose rude behavior was simply a part of the Schwarzenberg charm. I lost track of how many cafes I visited in total. But one strange factor which seems to unite them all is that the servers are always men in bowties and vests. Women work in these cafes, but they are not available to take any orders, adding to the sometimes uneasy sense of a city preserved, for better or for worse, within an older moment of time.
The interior of Cafe Jelinek, where I spent a few hours writing one morning
On my last day in Vienna, I could have visited another museum with the time remaining after my exploration of Prater. But then I was both elated and saddened to have my first experience of yet another green space, Stadtpark. Since I would not be able to return the next day, I needed to use every second to enjoy it. It was a happy climax to the many hours I had relished roaming around the city’s wonderful outdoor spaces. In Stadtpark, paths run majestically around a large central pond, over which hang the branches of dense trees growing healthily along its shore. I found it in the morning, sometime before I was due to meet my friend nearby for lunch, and I read there for two hours even while it was raining. Overhead branches weakly sheltered me from the rain on a bench beside the pond. Wet leaves occasionally floated down onto my head, and I happily turned through the pages even as the odd raindrop landed now and then on the paper. I wanted to keep reading in the rain when the time came to meet my friend for lunch, and together we enjoyed one final cafe. After we parted, I wanted to stay in a cafe, but instead I completed my third visit to Prater, which I would find incredibly difficult to leave after wandering around for the few hours described earlier. I left so I could enjoy my new love one final time. During the two-hour walk back to the hostel, I stopped at dusk in Stadtpark. I sat on a bench while it rained again, securing my spot in that same partially sheltered space beneath branches. I savored the impact of every little raindrop that broke through the leafy barricades and landed on my skin or on my book. It was soon too dark to read, and all I really wanted to do with those final moments of faint light in Vienna was to stare out into the darkening park around me.
It was with great reluctance that I accepted the arrival of night. Fearing I had not sufficiently implanted Stadtpark’s autumn beauty onto my soul, I walked an hour back to the hostel. With mixed success, I soothed myself by making another pass through my beloved Burggarten. If only I could see one more sunset here, I thought, and I was even tempted to delay my onward journey to the Czech Republic, simply for another day of Vienna’s parks. But I left, urging myself on toward new experiences. One day, I assured myself, I would come back to Vienna for more.
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