Talk of the Town

Café Central, by Jonelle Summerfield*

So my week in Vienna speeds by.  The days are spent toiling in the vineyard of corporate instruction, grappling with a very nice but definitely motley crew of new recruits drawn from various Golden Handcuffs locations across Europe and far beyond.  The nights, though... ah, that's another story.

All Kinds of Empresses

Forget Sissi; forget Maria von Trapp - this is the face of Austria in 2014.

When Will I Realize...

...Vienna waits for me?

A Sunny June Morning Like Any Other

They traveled separately from Vienna, she and her husband.  They left the children at home.

Birthday Diva: Black Beauty

She turns up in the damnedest places...

Of Bad Brands, Bad Trips, and Bad Moods

Amelia Earhart luggage?  Really?  Isn't that something like trying to sell Sonny Bono ski-poles or Marie Prevost pet treats?

File Under "Sidewalk Curiosities, Viennese"

What is one to make of this?  In Hindu mythology, I've just learned, this is Hayagriva, "an avatar of Vishnu."  How do you suppose he ended up in the Graben, playing wistful Mitteleuropische melodies on his battered accordion?

A Lunch with a View

What fun it is to discover something hidden...

Cathedral Bells

"St. Stephan deliver me to Opera Ring..." sings my inner Gooch, after a long night and day of travel, and lo and behold he has.

I'm a Travelin' Man

Life certainly is full of its little surprises, isn't it?

Mid Pleasures and Palaces

This week's fine weather, alas, failed us today, with glowering low skies, a biting wind, and sharp, sudden showers that scuttled, among other things my idle thoughts about going out to Schönbrunn, the Hapsburg's cozy little summer place at the edge of town (I joke, of course - when Marie Antoinette went from here to Versailles, she was probably disappointed that her new house was so much less impressive than where she grew up).

The Road Not Taken

I ran into myself this evening, and it was an experience both unnerving and thought-provoking.

Of Portraits, Pearls, and Pastries

I do hope you'll forgive yet another portrait of a bygone lady, but when I saw her hanging last weekend on a wall at the Vienna City Museum, I fell just a little bit in love.  And I don't think it's just her striking resemblance to Bert Lahr, either.

Lady in Red

This charming woman, whose roguish expression greatly caught my fancy this afternoon while I was visiting the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is Emilia, Princess of Saxony, and I don't know about you, but I'm just mad for her snood-hat combination.

Wiener Schmaltz

What could better summon up the nostalgic elegance of Alte Wien than that rarest of cinematic genres, the Hitchcock operetta?  Throw in those mitteleuropische sweethearts, Frauleins Matthew and Compton, and you have a confection that seems likely to be about as authentically and evocatively Viennese as Brighton Pier.

At the Fleamarket

So this was my last day in Vienna, and a lovely one it was, too.

Vilia, O Vilia...

My perfectly adequate little business hotel (sadly, a triumph more of function than gemütlichkeit) is located across the street from the Stadtpark, which even among the very high competition set by Vienna parks stands out as especially pretty and insistently themed.

A Simple Man

The last "real" Emperor of the unlikely entity that was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Josef I (his great nephew, Charles I, reigned for two short years at the end of the First War, to no avail) hovers like a gray ghost over the capital in which he ruled for nearly 70 years.

Memento Mori

So how was your Labor Day?  Had a few friends over; saw some family?  Me?  Oh, I spent the afternoon with a cryptful of dead Hapsburgs...

First Impressions

After only a few hours in this curious city, I think I can safely pass on one thing:  Vienna is, if nothing else, a city utterly unafraid to be itself.