Austrian Alpine Spas, Klimt And Viennese Cafés

I have been away on my annual February grief getaway.  This time I chose to explore some Austrian Alpine spas sandwiched between a few days in Vienna.

Getaway is a misnomer in so far as there is no getting away from grief.  Yet, travel does offer somewhat an alternative distraction of sorts, not avoidance by any means.

Dealing with death anniversaries entails some advance planning on how you want to go through dealing with the day.

Fortunately, I had chosen Austria this time and not to return to northern Italy!  Two years ago I went to the Sud Tyrol region of Italy close the Austrian border, northwest of Venice not far from Innsbruck.

As you well know by now, besides the hard-hit Lombardy region of Italy, the surrounding northern reaches of Venice have seen clusters of viral outbreaks.

I haven’t been back to Vienna in ages, so I was really looking forward to seeing the city.  I really didn’t have any strenuous list of must-sees except one museum and visiting several cafes.

My first impression was how quiet Vienna is in comparison to Paris!  There wasn’t a honk to be heard! Ambulance and police sirens here and there, but what a revelation!

How I wish the major of Paris would visit Vienna and take note to forbid honking, which is an ongoing nuisance in the city of light.

Another delight is how orderly the Viennese drive.  I didn’t witness the constant serving in and out of lanes and the stark aggressivity seen in Parisian drivers who love like formula one.

There weren’t massive traffic jams either and in general fewer cars and motos.  Politeness and consideration seemed to preside in general.

The first café turned out to be my favourite.  There was a  line at Café Central with a top-hatted doorman that politely insisted that no one waited on the entrance steps.

The interior is really beautiful with delicately arched ceilings, adorned with ornate pillars resemblant of a church.   The wooden statue of a former habituée sitting in front of the pastry cases, make me do a double-take he looked so real!

Though the pretty cakes and pastries were tempting,  I guess that I am spoiled in being surrounded in pastry heaven back home!

Besides, I had come for the Kaiserschmarrn!  One word that I could easily pronounce!

Translated as “torn up” pieces of a pancake, dusted with powdered sugar and served with a red plum sauce, it sounded intriguing enough for me to try.

It is basically a sturdy souffle pancake baked in a pan, puffy and brown with slightly caramelised sugar bottom.

It was succulent!  The souffle pancake was more spongy than a regular souffle and not at all sweet. The plum sauce retained its refreshing sour tanginess.  Perfectly cooked!

Afterwards, we enjoyed seeing ice skaters in the lovely outdoor rink in front of the very Baroque looking Ratshaus, Vienna’s majestic town hall.

First night’s dinner was at Winklers  Zum PostHorn, within walking district of our apartment near the Belvedere Palace gardens.

I already had visions of those huge Weiner schnitzels I remembered and this one came out like a golden brown globe that filled the plate.  It was crispy perfection outside with a tender moist interior!

We enjoyed the food so much that we returned the next day for some Viennese dumplings.  I chose plump potato ones stuffed with well-seasoned spinach adrift in melted butter topped with parmesan shavings.

Aimée mistakingly chose sturdy egg dumplings, irregularly torn and grilled,  a rather bland and boring dish to our palates.

Next day we boarded the Westbahn double-decker train to Salzburg and then a jam-packed one that would drop us off in the ski village of Bad Hofgastein.

Unbeknownst to me, the reason the train was overflowing was because it originated in Frankfort and was heading to Zagreb in Croatia.

Georg, our very gracious host picked us up at the station. His rental apartment was perfectly lovely with mountain views and a large terrace.

Finding a bottle of sparkling rosé wine and chocolates awaiting us was only the tip of  Georg’s immense kindness and generous spirit.

Because we didn’t have a car, he insisted on giving us a tour the next day of the sister village Bad Gastein, known as being the casino in the Alps.  Both villages are well solicited for skiing.

I had picked the area for the two thermal spas with Alpine mountain views but was not aware of the surrounding history.

Bad Gastein was once a gold mining village of all things built along a steep rumbling mountain river and waterfall.

Georg informed us that the highest bridge over the waterfall was known as a suicide bridge for distraught and ruined gamblers.

The first spa attended was the Alpentherme in Bad Hofgastein.  It is a large facility with three outdoor pools and of course the inside ones, which I find much less interesting.

What I enjoy most is being immersed in soothing warm waters bubbling around my head in the midst of crisp frigid Alpine air surrounded by snow-capped mountains.

The next day, we took the bus to Bad Gastein to try out their Felsentherme. It was smaller, but the one outdoor basin had a pretty view of the nearby ski slope close enough to hear the squoosh of skiers coming down the slopes or falling.

Of course, throughout the trip, I imagined how much my son would have loved to be with us.

Seeing little boys splashing about immediately plunges me into the stark and dark reality that my once little boy no longer exists, at least not in the physical, but only in my heart.

Grief is laid bare, dark and naked.  There is no rationale nor understanding.  No escape, nor alternate reality.  My tears blended and merged with falling droplets from the bursting bubbles around my head.

The surging warm waters ruffling against my body offered a momentary balm.  I think it must take me back to before I was born.

In uterine, there is calm and safety before one is born to face all the pain and hurts life can bring our way.  Afterwards, there is no escape, only quiet acceptance and faith to keep us afloat in painful times.

Back in Vienna, we walked through the gardens made bare by winter to the Belvedere Palace.  One of several of the Habsburg palaces, it is now a museum housing the largest collection of Gustav Klimt.

He painted in the time of Freud and was said to have been influenced by his psychosexual theories.

One must remember that the only populace that Freud drew the majority of his theories, were from Viennese bourgeois women undoubtedly sexually suppressed and oppressed.

As I gazed upon several of Klint’s masterpieces, I was struck by the fact that much of his subjects’ bodies were hidden or camouflaged by dazzling geometric jewels.

 

This is especially evident in his most famous masterpiece, The Kiss, where only the faces are visible. 

Others except for a few exceptions show partial nudity.

 

Without knowing anything about his life nor personality, I wonder if he like the majority of Viennese felt that one showed only a restrained public persona; keeping the rest of themselves securely in obscurity and opaqueness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He reportedly was heavily criticised for his impressionistic paintings, but  I found them enchanting and well-executed.

Besides Klint, I was most fascinated by a painting by Oskar Laske, The Ship Of Fools, enough to write a whole post perhaps.

 

 

 

 

 

Other artists I especially enjoyed were Waldmüller’s family portrait and Seligmann’s surgical theatre.

Café Gerstner is said to have the prettiest room on the third floor, which was unfortunately closed.  Too bad, as even the nice views of the Vienna Opera house across the street did not make up for the dismal strudels we ordered.

Supposedly their best offerings, the strudel dough was limp and both the sour cherry and apricot filling had too much thickeners making them gummy.  Clearly, they were not freshly made.

Though neither fruit is in season, even frozen ones have enough pectin when reduced to not need much thickening agents or none!

In my opinion, the Hungarians are the great and original strudel makers.  A small Punschkrapfen bought to take out fared better, though was overly sweet.

The night before we left I chose to indulge in another last crispy Weiner schnitzel.  Aimée opted for Tafelspitz, the beloved Austrian boiled beef.

Not something I would travel to eat, but supposedly the favourite meal of Emporer Franz Joseph.  Besides the lovely cakes, The Austrian culinary scene is built around huge portions of hearty stick to your ribs cuisine.

The last day with time to spare before an evening flight back to Paris, we locked our valises up at the main train station in Vienna.

As we were heading out to Saint Stephen’s Cathedrale to attend  Ash Wednesday mass, I was startled to see a man draped with the unmistakable priestly purple robes standing in the hall in front of a small chapel.

His face was illuminated in kindness and I automatically made the sign of the cross.  He asked if we wanted to have the imposition of ashes.  Of course, we did!

Reciting half in English and German he made the sign of the cross in ashes on our foreheads.  More tears flowed and he asked if we wanted to stay in the chapel for a while.

On emerging, he told us that he was a monk at the Heiligenkreuz monastery about 20 kilometres outside of Vienna.  It is one of the oldest Cistercian monasteries in the world, dating back to 1133.

His name was Father Marion and this was one of his monastery’s missions.  Thank you, and blessings to you Father Marion, for your kind outreach to travellers, who may not have had the time to make it to church.

Saint Stephen’s Cathedral appeared smaller and less ornate than Saint Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest.  Noon Mass was starting so we sat in a side pew near the organist.

A rather rotund elf-like face with rosy cheeks,  he kept suddenly jumping up, grabbing his keys to rush through the locked wooden carved barrier separating us, or going towards the altar to converse with the celebrating clergy.

Grinning from ear to ear each time he sprang from his organist’s bench like he knew something we didn’t, this unusual distraction became rather comical.

Although I could easily follow the Mass despite not understanding a word, as all Catholic Masses follow the same order of liturgy, his curious behaviour I found amusing and intriguing.

Perhaps because he faced the side wall, he could not keep pace with the Mass, and had to constantly leave his organ to keep check?

Already anointed with ashes, we did however take Holy Communion.  By the end of Mass, I felt chilled as surprisingly the Cathedral didn’t seem to be heated!

Another pretty church is the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Nicholas.  My hopes of catching a sighting of my favourite theologian, Sister Vassa Larin, an American born Russian Orthodox nun living in Vienna, were dashed as she was in America on a speaking tour.

A last Viennese coffee house to warm up was in order and we headed towards Café Sperl, noted to be one of the most authentic.  Close to the Naschmarkt, the central market of Vienna it did have an understated quiet elegance.

There was little pastry displayed other than a rather bare looking plum tart, and a thin cheese strudel so we just ordered café Viennois with extra whipped cream, that came out liquid in a pitcher; perhaps a misunderstanding.

Afterwards a quick run-through again of the central market looking for some lettuce to take home as we would be arriving late, I chose a pretty pale green one streaked with pink, never seen before in Paris markets, but left behind some strangely shaped grapes.

Waiting to board the plane was when I saw for the first time a few stray travellers donning masks, a forwarning for the reality that lays ahead.

The late-night air in Paris greeted us with a familiar cold misty wind.  Vienna is Vienna and Paris is Paris, no comparison needed. Both are beautiful cities but each with a different character and energy.

Paris has an air of undefinable gaiety and exuberant sensuality like a naughty lady hanging out around the corner, waiting to be seen.

Besides it being home, and yes the noise, it is always thrilling to come back.