From wandering about in Vienna, one thing I noticed on postcards was the Schonbrunn Palace which was in the south west of the city.
Vienna was the old capital of the Hapsburg empire and they had a particularly ostentatious style that was laid down onto the capital. The ringstrasse, that the night run was around I saw on day 1, was created to that end as it became home to wonderful building after wonderful building. As a shot in the architectural arms race, it was successful but it was not somewhere that the Imperial family necessarily wanted to live. For that, they built a palace with grounds.
Schonbrunn Palace interior
I went fairly early on the metro and there is a dedicated stop for the palace, with the appropriately named Schonbrunn[1] station on the U4 line, which is a little walk away from the entrance. Although it was a weekday morning, there were enough people to make the walk annoying and slow mainly because most people there seemed to be part of huge groups touring. The grounds were large enough to hold the numbers but the inside was a bit too busy to enjoy fully.
As you walk in the ticket office, there are an array of different choices for ticket combinations (which you can buy online here) that allow access to different rooms and attractions - the main reason seems to be to make the more expensive combinations seem reasonable. This is a classic tactic as you always think that is only a small incremental cost for what appears to be a big gain. I think this is basically how Sky persuade people to spend eye-watering sums to watch TV - upselling. Anyway, it kind of worked and I paid for the "middle" experience which covered some things outside the palace as well as the palace itself.
As sumptuously decorated as the rooms undoubtedly are[2], I found it a little tricky to feel really engaged with the place. This may be a personal point but the rooms felt a little bereft of intellectual grandeur due to what they were. And what they were, in my opinion, were recreations of reality - recreations made, paradoxically, by the real items in most cases. But it all felt so removed as a reminder of the past behind glass, or more likely clear perspex, and with hundreds of people doing the same route. There is an element of theme-parkism in tourist attractions like this but it was not disguised well enough here for me. There are quite a lot of rooms showing what the conditions were that the family lived in and an audioguide is provided as part of the ticket so there is plenty of information but I felt a bit removed. The segments on the audio about the relatively sparse (relative to the rooms and how hard the Hapsburg family worked for the people seemed at odds with the ostentatiousness of the rooms and general décor throughout. I'm not sure I can appreciate royal/imperial palaces so much, and I guess this is brought home to me by the visit to Austrian parliament where it felt genuinely evocative of something I cared about and vaguely positive. This just reminds of the unequal nature of history. As I say though, a personal view as it is a clearly a stunning set of rooms and palace in general. The multiple, massive tour groups probably didn't help and I find that these larger groups, usually older too, are totally oblivious to the annoyance they can cause.
Schonbrunn Palace exterior
The grounds were much more interesting for me for a few reasons although the weather definitely helped. I appreciated the extra space and the fact that it did not seem such a draw to the larger groups. The gardens are fairly open to the public although I had paid for access to three separate areas within the gardens - Gloriette, a pergola and the mazes. The palace grounds are also home to the Tiergarten which is the oldest zoo in the world which I did not get a ticket for[3].
Before I went toward the Gloriette and panorama, I headed to the Pergola. I had only recently learnt what a pergola was due to my stumbling across one in Hampstead Heath which I really enjoyed. This one, although it required a ticket, was not quite as good, or large, as the one in Hampstead Heath but it was still pleasant. I particularly enjoyed the little "tunnels" around the border that were made of plants which were slightly cooler and shaded and allowed some komorebi[4] which I always enjoy.
From the small Pergola, I then started to walk around the gardens (which are free to enter) which were very enjoyable. The gardens are really lovely but I was struck as to how highly ordered it was as a space - almost as if part of the remit was to conquer nature and make it do the designer's bidding. I really loved the trees especially as they had been cut and shaped to make them flat within the path. It is a strange effect and one that I had not seen before but I found it really compelling so I kind of soaked it in a bit - and also enjoyed some more komorebi. There were some other fountains and attractions but I made my way to the panorama point which is up a massive slope to the Gloriette (which is a building built on an elevated point). The view is sensational as the palace is, on its own, a great building but it is also great to see it from above and with the city in the background. The ticket to the Gloriette itself does afford a slightly better view but it is not much better and so I would not necessarily say the ticket is worth it.
Once you get back to the palace level, near the zoo, there is a little ticketed section devoted to the maze and labyrinth which are also quite fun. I have recently discovered that I quite like getting, or feeling a little lost[5] when I am watching films or playing games so it was a good test to see if I did. I did quite enjoy being lost and there were some interesting features at the dead-ends so I got actively lost a few times. The labyrinth was a little too long though, as the walls were a bit lower, you could always see the exit which was frustrating - which I guess is kind of the point! It reminded me, very much, of Unfinished Swan.
Vienna was the old capital of the Hapsburg empire and they had a particularly ostentatious style that was laid down onto the capital. The ringstrasse, that the night run was around I saw on day 1, was created to that end as it became home to wonderful building after wonderful building. As a shot in the architectural arms race, it was successful but it was not somewhere that the Imperial family necessarily wanted to live. For that, they built a palace with grounds.
Schonbrunn Palace interior
I went fairly early on the metro and there is a dedicated stop for the palace, with the appropriately named Schonbrunn[1] station on the U4 line, which is a little walk away from the entrance. Although it was a weekday morning, there were enough people to make the walk annoying and slow mainly because most people there seemed to be part of huge groups touring. The grounds were large enough to hold the numbers but the inside was a bit too busy to enjoy fully.
As sumptuously decorated as the rooms undoubtedly are[2], I found it a little tricky to feel really engaged with the place. This may be a personal point but the rooms felt a little bereft of intellectual grandeur due to what they were. And what they were, in my opinion, were recreations of reality - recreations made, paradoxically, by the real items in most cases. But it all felt so removed as a reminder of the past behind glass, or more likely clear perspex, and with hundreds of people doing the same route. There is an element of theme-parkism in tourist attractions like this but it was not disguised well enough here for me. There are quite a lot of rooms showing what the conditions were that the family lived in and an audioguide is provided as part of the ticket so there is plenty of information but I felt a bit removed. The segments on the audio about the relatively sparse (relative to the rooms and how hard the Hapsburg family worked for the people seemed at odds with the ostentatiousness of the rooms and general décor throughout. I'm not sure I can appreciate royal/imperial palaces so much, and I guess this is brought home to me by the visit to Austrian parliament where it felt genuinely evocative of something I cared about and vaguely positive. This just reminds of the unequal nature of history. As I say though, a personal view as it is a clearly a stunning set of rooms and palace in general. The multiple, massive tour groups probably didn't help and I find that these larger groups, usually older too, are totally oblivious to the annoyance they can cause.
Schonbrunn Palace exterior
The grounds were much more interesting for me for a few reasons although the weather definitely helped. I appreciated the extra space and the fact that it did not seem such a draw to the larger groups. The gardens are fairly open to the public although I had paid for access to three separate areas within the gardens - Gloriette, a pergola and the mazes. The palace grounds are also home to the Tiergarten which is the oldest zoo in the world which I did not get a ticket for[3].
Before I went toward the Gloriette and panorama, I headed to the Pergola. I had only recently learnt what a pergola was due to my stumbling across one in Hampstead Heath which I really enjoyed. This one, although it required a ticket, was not quite as good, or large, as the one in Hampstead Heath but it was still pleasant. I particularly enjoyed the little "tunnels" around the border that were made of plants which were slightly cooler and shaded and allowed some komorebi[4] which I always enjoy.
From the small Pergola, I then started to walk around the gardens (which are free to enter) which were very enjoyable. The gardens are really lovely but I was struck as to how highly ordered it was as a space - almost as if part of the remit was to conquer nature and make it do the designer's bidding. I really loved the trees especially as they had been cut and shaped to make them flat within the path. It is a strange effect and one that I had not seen before but I found it really compelling so I kind of soaked it in a bit - and also enjoyed some more komorebi. There were some other fountains and attractions but I made my way to the panorama point which is up a massive slope to the Gloriette (which is a building built on an elevated point). The view is sensational as the palace is, on its own, a great building but it is also great to see it from above and with the city in the background. The ticket to the Gloriette itself does afford a slightly better view but it is not much better and so I would not necessarily say the ticket is worth it.
Kunst
Within Vienna, I only now really wanted to see some of the interesting cultural sights after seeing the Museums Quartier. There was clearly a lot more to see in Vienna than I was allowing myself to, but I thought I would make my way to the Kunsthaus Wien (via the train station to buy a ticket for my trip to Brno).
Kunsthaus Wien is an art gallery/museum that is almost entirely dedicated to Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. There is a permanent collection of his and he helped to create the museum in his own image. It was an interesting building with a distinct Gaudi feeling with the use of cracked tiling and bright colours which also included some of the approach to the museum as well as the building itself. I enjoyed the collection as it is much closer to the type of art that I like, aesthetically and there was little apparent, classical influence with the bright colours. As it was quite subjective, I liked trying to pull shapes and feature out of a lot of the work but much of it was fairly forgettable too. Reading some of the spiel and ideas, he did sound like a bit of an idiot actually and he espoused quite a lot of nonsense about denouncing "rationalism" and the straight line. The floors of the museum are not flat as he suggests that this is more natural if they are undulating. It was quite silly, and inconvenient to be honest but it was quite striking. The similarities with Gaudi were too. I have to say though, due to some of the nonsense that I read, it felt more ridiculous and effected than other artists' work that I have liked, but I did still enjoy it and it was an experience.
Museums Quartier
I was running out of time a little to really enjoy the Museums Quartier that I had been through the other day. Even so, i felt that I could get to the Leopold museum and mumok which I was drawn to because of the building more than anything else.
The Leopold museum contains a lot of interesting pieces by many artists but the main works seem to be by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, both of whom created vaguely modern pieces which I enjoyed. The Leopold museum is quite large and there are plenty of pieces by other artists to of the 20th century and I had to rush through as it was closing early due to a private event. The basement, which was devoid of other people, had some nice abstract swashes of colour which I liked actually, but I am never really sure why.
After the galleries, I wandered around the quarter to no real purpose and returned, ready for an early train to Brno - The Czech Republic's second city.
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| Vienna 2013 Day 2 - click for photo album |
2. As in quite a few places in Central Europe, photographs are not allowed inside the palace.↩
3. I don't really see the point of going abroad to zoos, or generally things that I feel I could do fairly simply at home in London - though of course I know the quality could be higher.↩
4. This is a word that I have learnt recently which I saw in a list of words that apparently have no English translation. It means the interplay between the sun's light and trees/leaves and, since reading the word, I am much more conscious of it which has actually allowed me to enjoy it more. This ties in with one of my early beliefs about the power of NewSpeak from Nineteen-Eighty-Four, the strongest idea in the book for me, whereby language is restricted to enable thoughts to also be restricted.↩
5. I think it is a recent occurrence of being conscious of enjoying that confused lost feeling. And also seeing the destruction of a person mentally. See any reviews for examples.↩
6. for example, I do not think I can handle more than one floor at a time at the Tate Modern due to the numbers of people always there.↩
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