Vienna was excellent for a weekend trip. The Noicelings did not enjoy the Viennese Waltz muzak as we boarded our early morning flight. I thought it was a nice touch to set the mood for Austria.
We arrived in time for brunch and I wished, not for the first time since moving to Europe, that I had the nerve to order two coffees for myself right away, because it’s so good, and the portion size (one size only, a bit bigger than a shot glass) is so tiny that I always finish that first “cup” immediately. There’s no such thing as a warm-up because it’s not filter coffee. Vienna has it’s own coffee drinks menu, my favorite was the Vienna mix or melange. Delicious! The trick is to make frequent stops for coffee.
The Museum of Natural History is absolutely amazing. I could spend many days there, but since we only had time for a sampling, I tried to stick to the top 100 exhibits with an audio guide and 3D tour also accessible online. Using my phone and the audio guide together I was able to find most of the items and descriptions in English. The space itself is fabulous, and if I had to choose one favorite from the trip I think this would be it. Everyone enjoyed it. But finally my crew gave in to exhaustion so I persevered and finished on my own, emerging after dark into a misty, old-world cityscape.
It is always fun to see things recognizable from pop-culture, such as a sculpture (Jondalar’s “Mother”) from the Jean Auel books, a rare mounted oarfish, and extremely rare taxidermied specimens like a nearly complete dodo, tasmanian tiger, fantastic fossils etc, stuff so bizarre they seem fake!
Next up was the Belvedere: 800 years of art history, where we had a timed admission, and it was still pretty crowded in the popular galleries. We probably should have paid for audio guides and we’d have gotten more out of it. It was cool but less interesting. We got hangry before we were finished and the cafeteria was swamped, so we had to settle for the coffee shop cakes. Not bad, but too sweet. The truffled celery soup was very nice, and the kids were sorry they didn’t order it. I shared a little bit just to keep the peace.
After lunch we walked down to the lower palace for this exhibition, GROW-
Art as reflection of the symbiosis between humans and trees: The Lower Belvedere exhibition builds a conceptual bridge from the tree as knowledge of good and evil, to the tree of wisdom, to the tree as the metaphorical axis of the world. The significance of the tree in art is explained by a thematic “branch” that stretches from the spiritual to the rationally perceptible to statements of environmentalism.
The selection of works is drawn from the Belvedere’s collection, supplemented with international contributions. The artistic works cover a period from the 15th century to the present.
The tree exhibit was intriguing. It had a more relaxed feel and no crowds. But we ran out of juice for the last gallery and caught a taxi back to the hotel.
There you have it, three days in Vienna!
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