Ach, Vienna!

This vacation I'm back in Vienna after twenty-three years, and I am really excited about it. I spent a year in Vienna from 1989 to 1990, doing the research part of my master's thesis. During that time I got to know Vienna, visit its many corner and find the places that were interesting to me. Now I get to see the 21st century version of these places, and figure out what changed, what remains the same and, most interestingly, what have I forgotten.

I got to Vienna the modern way, sitting for over 12 hours in a plane with very little legroom and courteous, but very limited service. I don't remember planes being this cramped when I last came here, but I do remember that airfare was double of what I paid this time, without any correction for inflation, so I am ok with it. I had to change planes in Franfkurt, and that was old school, with the plane parked in the middle of the tarmac, with us having to go down stairs and then taking buses to the terminal. I kind of like that, especially since it allowed me to get a view of the airplane from a different angle than I normally would. It looked like this:

Since my first full day was a Monday and the museums were closed, I decided to wander around town. My first destination was the site of Beethoven's first grave (just like in life, when he kept being evicted and moved from apartment to apartment, in death he too was evicted when the cemetery was closed and moved to a new location).  I remembered the place as a small park  with a little fenced off area for the grave, a fifteen minute walk from where I used to live, going East on Laudongasse. Turns out that the universe expanded, magnetic fields realigned and the ex-cemetery was now much further out going North on Waehringerstrasse. And that fifteen minute walk took me an hour! The place, now known as Schubertpark was definitely not as I remembered it; I had pictured in my mind a little run-down park with old trees and found it bigger and well-kept. Schubert was there too, which might have something to do with the park's name. I did find the grave, though, and paid my respects by listening to the second movement of his 7th symphony, which I find very solemn and appropriate for this kind of occasion. I had an urge to play it out loud, but restrained myself and used the ear buds instead. The park and the grave, by the way, look like this:

On the way to Schubertpark I went by the place where I used to live. That was something that definitely looked exactly the same! What was more amazing was that there was this little rinky-dinky cafe at the corner that I thought would be gone by now, but it was still there and looked pretty much the same. So I took pictures of the cafe, of the street and of the building and went happily on my way.

I had forgotten how fast the Viennese walk! I had mothers with little kids whizzing past me as I ambled along, making me feel like I needed to pick up my pace in order to not cause a sidewalk traffic jam! I did pick up my pace, as I am acutely reminded by my aching legs as I sit here typing this.

My favorite type of transportation when I used to live here was the tram, or, as they called it then, the bin. I had expected some modernization to have happened there, and that the bin would look very different and I was not disappointed. They used to look like this:

and now they look like this:

Well, ok, I am exaggerating a little since the pictures were taken within a few minutes of each other. Apparently they have bot the old and the new trams running side-by-side! I did take the tram back to the apartment, since I did not want to walk for another hour, but I made sure to ride on one of the old ones for old times sake. Here's a picture of me being happy with that decision.

After a nice lunch with my hosts I took a much needed nap (still trying to deal with all that jet-lag stuff). An old friend dropped by in the afternoon, and after coffee and some apfelstrudel we took off for a walking tour of the inner city. It was fun going around corners and seeing both things I remembered and forgot. Earth had not rearranged itself here, and things were pretty much where they were supposed to be, except for the Graben, a pedestrian-only street, which had turned 90 degrees and moved further away from the Hofburg than I remembered. Oh, and Karlskirche had grown since I've last seen it.

the Graben

Karlskirche

We did walk by Technische Universitaet where I had done my research work, and I couldn't resist taking a picture of the building where my office was.  The office was on the third floor, and by the elevator there was a sign that, in my bad German, I translated to "do not use this elevator if it is on fire." This is what the building looks like:

And that was it for the day. After spending over two hours walking we got on the U-bahn, went back home, the jet lag caught up with me and I promptly crashed.

I had forgotten how many bookstores there are. Every few blocks you run into one, selling old books, new books, comic books, travel books, whatever kind of specialization you can think of. I would have thought Amazon and the internet would drastically decrease their numbers, but this does not seem to be the case. And please don't correct me if I'm wrong, I want to believe that reading is surviving in this country.

I'd forgotten how cold beverages here are not ice cold, but just slightly less than room temperature. It's gotten better, though, and now you can find ice cold beverages in a few places, or at least this is what the sign below promised.

So that was it for my first day back: too much walking, some things remembered, others learned and very, very happy to be back here.