The Road Goes Ever On

Monday, October 31, 2022

Vienna Scenes

An assortment of further scenes from a beautiful and historically important city, still thriving...

Haas House, a contemporary structure opposite the
cathedral, which is reflected in its glass

A curvy street here and there

Christmas decorations ready for the season

Construction and renovation everywhere

Near the Albertina, the Monument against War and Fascism, with
a still pertinent, even urgent, message

Lobmeyer building, 1830s

Church of the Knights of Malta

All in German, we guessed

Prince Eugene's town house

Among many pretty portals

Many contemporary buildings

Sofien Sale, an 18th century building with a long

history, updated to an art nouveau facade in the

early 1900s

Some ugly buildings too

The studio of

Ernst Fuchs

Painter, designer, sculptor, composer, architect; died just in 2015

Colorful block

Part of the Vienna we didn't see

Russian Orthodox church

Across from the Russian Embassy, construction workers have
flown the Ukrainian flag

The Albertina Museum...maybe next time

Burial crypt for the Habsburgs

Another beauty

The first Bauhaus construction; Loos built it right across from the
Hofburg: note its lack of "eyebrows" on the windows

Our last day in Vienna we wanted to visit another heuriger, so we took the train and tram out to Stammersdorf, east of the Danube, to check out several recommendations. We didn't find anything to our liking--we like our heurigers to have nice views of vineyards--and so hopped back on the tram and eventually a bus back to Amstift am Walde and a sure thing, old friend Fuhrgassl-Huber. Between the tram and bus there was a walk across the Danube Canal and past the Spittelau incinerator, the one re-decorated in the 1990s by Friedensreich Hundertwasser (at the city's request). Still processing 250,000 tons of household waste per year. Artfully. Well worth a detour, with plenty of smiles. So Viennese.

Crossing the Danube Canal (note: this is the channel that historically
went through Vienna, now called the Danube Canal; the BIG river
is a couple miles east; and paralleling it is the New Danube Canal,
recent, and primarily for navigation (I guess))

Back-lit sighting of Spittelau

So Hundertwasser

So if you cross-bred Bowellism and Hundertwasser,
it might look like this

Ground level

In Spain, the Catholic bell-towers often conceal the Moorish
Minaret; here, the 1960's brick smokestack peaks out above the
Hundertwasser "hat"

All of it producing tons of electricity, cleanly; beautifully; well,
interestingly...

Definitely worth a look!

Sunday, October 30, 2022

Fashion...

"...a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months," according to Oscar Wilde. Residing however briefly in the various capitals we have visited recently has provided ample opportunity to observe fashion, changes in fashion, and so on. We are not students of fashion nor do we have nor do anything that anyone would describe as fashionable. It's not possible to see the things we have seen, however, and not comment. So here, in a few pix, are some of the extraordinary things, loosely described as fashion, we have seen the past few weeks, in Vienna.