A quote you often hear around Vienna is that, depending on the weather, the Danube can be grey, brown or even green. The one colour it is not, the locals will tell you, is blue.
My theory is the name for Strauss’ famous waltz may have been inspired by reflection of a beautiful blue sky on a calm day. In many ways, that’s a good allegory for the city itself. I suspect that, if you asked ten travellers what they thought of Vienna, you’d get ten different answers – answers that reflect not only the travellers themselves, but also the people they met during their stay. I won’t try to give you ten impressions, but here’s some extracts from the travel diaries of three people I may, or may not, have interviewed.
Ava. Ava’s a teenage girl from Wisconsin. She has a dream of becoming a singer songwriter and pleaded with her parents to send her to the fourteen-day Vienna summer camp. Here’s a couple of her diary extracts.
“Monday… Just arrived. This place is so lit! Peeps singing in the street, statues everywhere. I’ve already dropped about fifty selfies on Insta and everyone’s so jelly. Wait till they see my pics of those fierce cosplay dudes!”
“Thursday… Sooo tired! My roommate Olivia snores – and she keeps taking my charger. Hope that extra money from dad arrives today. And, who still walks everywhere? Hellooo – its 2019 guys!”
Margaret. Margaret is an older lady from Melbourne. She’s on a river cruise with her friend Doris.
“Ooh, Vienna is so lovely! We drove around and saw all the sights this morning. They always give us such beautiful buses and Marco was a wonderful guide. He knew absolutely everything about those emperors, the Hamburgers I think they were called, and even pointed out the little house where Mozart’s sister got her ironing done!”
“Tonight? We’re off to a special classical concert, just for our tour group. I hope the new dress I ordered on the boat has arrived!”
“Tomorrow? Um, I think we’re going to Italy – you know – Budapest.”
Bill and Sharlene. Bill and Sharlene are a couple from, well, anywhere really. They’ve brought their three kids to Vienna “to get them a bit of culture.”
Bill. “These people just don’t know how to organise stuff. We were ten minutes late for the tour yesterday, because young Johnnie was vomiting all morning, and they hadn’t even saved five seats together on the bus for us!”
Sharlene. “But you have to admit it was nice Bill. Little Emma just loved climbing on all those fancy balconies. Pity about that vase, but it looked pretty old anyway.”
So, where do we fit in this spectrum? Well, we haven’t quite reached the ‘all inclusive guided Europe experience’ stage yet, but ‘we’ rarely post more than one (or two) selfies on any given day, so I guess we fall somewhere in the middle. Our Vienna experience is probably best described as – ‘mixed’.
Yes, we saw some amazing architecture and soaked up a surfeit of culture and history that we didn’t even know existed – but – it’s scattered across a big city, so we had to work hard to get to it. And yes, sadly, we had some ‘below par’ experiences with guides who, perhaps, should consider a different calling in life – but – we also made all too brief connections with warm and welcoming people – like our conversation with the lady at the gift shop after she was wrongly abused by some rude customers. We know that her father had the shop for many years before she took over, and she doesn’t work in with the tour companies because they take such a high commission, and her son is …
Surprisingly, one of our highlights was our chat with the taxi driver on the thirty-minute drive to the airport. He gave us what I call ‘the working man’s view’ of the city he so obviously loves. In the middle of his anecdotes about famous people and places of the past, he points out a nondescript modern building. “That’s the headquarters for the Lotto. I would love to visit there one day – but not for the big 100-million euro prize, because even one million euro is too much for one person.” Like the Danube, he doesn’t care about labels like grey, or brown or blue. He just keeps flowing along, sharing his observations of life with the travellers who visit his cab.
LamondG 