Vienna - Vast, Variable and Voluptuous

From the mighty Hapsburg Empire, once second in size only to the Russian Empire in the whole of Europe, Austria's missteps and the ensuing political realities have downsized the country into a virtual European backwater. With a population of eight million (about the same as North Carolina), this now landlocked country, slightly larger than the state of Maine, boasts a capital city, Vienna, that is the size of Houston and is home to a quarter of the population. While its former territories currently have a collective population of nearly 80 million, Austria today, is marginalized as the 115th largest country by land area with an economic output that falls between those of Norway and Greece.
But, what of Vienna? Nine hundred years in the making, many of them spent as a major player in Europe with lands extending from Spain to Hungary, the capital city was fittingly decked out. There are so many big attractions - museums, parks, palaces, churches, civic buildings, cultural centers, architectural wonders, a new, sleek business center and more - one could spend a month there and still have lots to see. Of course, for a couple of Philistines like us, a days hike and it was all over. However, because the city is so large and diverse it would seem prudent to thoroughly study a couple of guidebooks, select items of interest and then develop a schedule if one was contemplating a visit there.
So much for vast and varied, but what about voluptuous. From first setting foot on mainland Europe, it came as quite a surprise to find that there are still two genders, male and female, just like we used to have here. Europe, thankfully, has not succumbed to the Women's Lib Pop Culture lunacy, espoused by Germaine Greer and the double-baggers in the 1960's, with quite the same literal slavishness as appears to be the case in the USA. Most social settings in current America - shopping, working, gardening, sports, partying - all appear to have gone unisex with graceless sweat suits, jeans, T shirts, sneakers, body piercings and baseball caps being the universal wardrobe. Chivalry now demands splitting the check on a date rather than the "sexist" act of giving up a seat for a lady and heaven help those sensitivity-challenged individuals who wantonly "harass" others by offering a compliment. Humbug! Dresses, frocks, skirts, blouses, sweaters, hose and becoming hair styles are still to be seen in European cities. This has the dual benefits that firstly, mens crotches appear not to have sunk to the level of their knees, as seems so often to be the case here judging by the predominance of the five-sizes-too-large pants style, and secondly, it is possible to tell the sexes apart without a medical examination. Score one for anatomy! That being clarified, Vienna seemed to the apex of the trip as far as the quantity and quality of promising looking ladies was concerned. Now, what were we talking about... Vienna has no significant hill to showcase attractions on and it outgrew the original walled area back in the nineteenth century. At that point a ring road was built around the city to provide additional space for museums, palaces, the Opera, various parks and gardens and additional churches. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, UNO Park was built just across the Danube and these modern, curvy buildings further increase the size of the city. We confined ourselves to the old city and the ring road and ignored fabulous edifices such as the Belvederes and the Schonbrunn Palace, with their expansive, immaculate gardens and lakes.

St Stephens Cathedral - centerpiece of the Old Town


Cathedral interior


Rear of Peterskirche which is so built around
that not much more can be seen


Benedictine Schottenkirche. Although started in the 12th
century this church, built for Irish monks, was damaged
by an earthquake in 1443 and subsequently fell down on
its own several more times. It was finally completed
and was dedicated in 1893


Schottenkirche interior


The Votivkirche - literally the Thank You Church - was
built on the site where Emperor Franz Josef narrowly
escaped an assassins knife in 1853. This church is on the Ring Road


A major Jewish Museum and Memorial are in Juden Platz


The Palais Daun Kinsky


Palais roof detail


Austriabrunnen Fountain


The Zeughaus, the old Arsenal building
Zeughaus detail


The Town Hall being prepared for a concert


Austrian Parliament completed in 1883 is also on the Ring Road


Parliament building detail


Parliament building detail


Parliament building detail


Parliament building detail


Sigmund Freud, the infamous quack, went to medical school in
Vienna. Could this be his idea of the human brain, I wonder?


Field Marchall Erzherzog Albrecht who put down an Italian
revolt and then duffed up the Prussians in the 19th century


Maria Theresia, Queen of the Empire in the 18th century,
is remembered by this monument in the Museum Area


The Kundsthistorische (Fine Art Museum) at one side of Maria
Theresia Platz. This faces an identical building, the Natural
History Museum, across the square


Across the street from the museums is the massive Hofburg
Complex from where the Hapsburg ruled the roost for hundreds
of years. This studly statue of Mozart is in the backyard




The rear of the Hapsburg pad which covers many acres


Detail from the roof


One of numerous statues clustered around


A fountain in the garden


Vienna was visited by one of the last big plague epidemics in 1679.
King Leopold, who smartly left town, vowed to erect a mercy
column if the plague left. Seems that this worked - the plague
left and this busy looking sculture, The Plague Tower, took
shape over the next twenty years


A Vienese strip mall - nice, eh?


Seen outside the University, love those little lefties, roughly
translated says "Prayer doesn't help, vote Communist
for a beautiful life". Must be great to be young

If you look closely you will see a senior citizen waiting to
spend her social security on a bus ride back to camp

Budapest, Hungary

Sadly, we misjudged Budapest, planned it badly, had obnoxious weather and generally frittered away a great opportunity. Even at that, it was another memorable education highlighting our misconceptions, misinformation and general ignorance of eastern Europe and its tortuous history. The weather was in the high eighties, both temperature and humidity, and the eye-watering smog rivaled anything America has to offer. Our campsite was in a tram terminal that had been abandoned twenty something years earlier and the Office was in the original depot building which was well past its "Best By" date.
A frighteningly ramshackle bus took us downtown through heavy traffic and past dreary buildings all garnished with uncut grass, knee high weeds and out of control shrubs. The bus terminated at the main tram, trolley, bus and train station downtown, at the back of which you can see a McDonalds. Once again, public transport abounds and, given time to study the options, one could get anywhere in town quickly and inexpensively. But, Budapest is H-U-G-E. Every other city visited on this trip, before and after this one, was readily conquered on foot, albeit often with a good deal of trudging. Not so Budapest.
History has produced a massive capital city of 1.7 million people - more than one in six of the entire population live there - for a country that is only the size of Indiana. The Celts, of course, were there 100 years BCE before being shooed away by the Romans. The original Roman city, Aquincum, was slowly replaced by the city of Obuda after the Romans had been routed and the Magyars had finally settled down to invent Hungary and all things Hungarian in the late 9th century. In recent times, Aquincum has been excavated and about a quarter of the original city is now unearthed and open to visitors. This is a major tourist draw. Obuda sits on the west bank of the river Danube.
Later on, the city of Buda developed to the south of Obuda and a fabulous palace was built atop a rock along with a church. At the same time, on the east side of the river, in Pest county, the city of Pest developed. The locals however, were probably too busy at the time to give this much thought, as they were overrun by the Turks for a couple of hundred years following which the Austrians made them part of their colossal Empire in the late 16th century. And so it was, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, when the slowly failing Hapsburg mob in Austria, agreed to split the Empire control between Austria and Hungary. Must have been a great party in Hungary where it was quickly agreed, in 1873, to roll all three cities into one and call it - what else - Budapest.
A huge Parliament building, befitting the size of the country at that time, was planned and, in this cultural and economic heyday, grand design schemes for the entire city were made and generally executed. Targeted for completion in 1896, in time for the millennium of the Hungarian nation, the Parliament Building ran six years past due, taking almost twenty years in all, before being opened in 1902.
From that time on sadly, for the next ninety years, it was all downhill. WWI loomed, Austria got smacked around and had most of her Empire removed, while Hungary gained independence but lost two thirds of her lands and was just left to get on with things. Slowly, as they were beginning to get their act together, WWII broke out and not only did much of Budapest suffer severe bomb damage, Hungary emerged from the war as a member of the Eastern Bloc, firmly manacled to Communism.
In 1956, a student led rebellion against the Moscow Masters was brutally crushed, and it wasn't until 1989 that Hungary become the second country, Poland being the first, to break free of the Warsaw Pact. Broken treasures were slowly rebuilt, some in new locations, with the net effect that key items are spread all about the place. One quirky outcome of the fall of communism was the collection of all significant Soviet era statues from public places, for redeployment in Statue Park outside of town. A brief, but somewhat eclectic history of Budapest can be seen by clicking the link.

This unusual sculpture lurks at the back

of the main tram terminal


Malodorous homeless persons campsite in a railway station

Margit Bridge over the Danube.
Juxtaposition of late 19th century bridge
ornamentation on the right and
impoverished socialist solution to
collapsing safety rail on the left


Presumably another holdover from the pre-communist period

Freedom Statue in Freedom Park
- post-Eastern Bloc

Parliament building from the Chain Bridge

The parliament building has more than 600 rooms and is far
larger than required by the current administration. Among
other activities, the main hall is used for orchestral concerts

Even so, access to the building was carefully guarded by armed
soldiers and, not having an official invitation, we gave it a pass

Across the street from the parliament is the Museum of Ethnology

Budapest sports numerous museums, many of worldly fame,
another legacy from the golden years 1870 to 1905

Library of the Hungarian Academy of Science

From the east side of the river there were smoggy
views of the Buda side - here looking north west

Directly across is St Mathias church and the Fishermen's
Bastion on the hill behind the riverside boulevard

Slightly to the south is the magnificent Palace

Crossing the river by the Chain Bridge it is possible to look
straight through the tunnel under the hill. Both the bridge
and the tunnel were designed by the same engineer in
the mid nineteenth century

In the prevailing weather, the climb up to the old town was
quite a chore. Indeed, the weather was so debilitating
that we elected to skip the Palace altogether

In a courtyard at the top of the climb
is an equestrian statue of St Stephen

Before he became a Saint, Stephen worked for a while as
the first King of Hungary after being appointed by the
founding Magyars in the ninth century

That's not a real halo by the way, you can see the mounting


Fishermen's Bastion - a pure piece of Hungarian Hollywood -
was finished in 1902 and was designed as embellishment for
the adjacent church. First, it is not a bastion and second,
the only connection to fishermen is it was built on the old
fishmarket. Looks pretty cool, though

From the "Bastion", St Stephen's Basilica could just about be seen

The Church of Our Lady, more commonly
known as the Mathias Church, undergoing
further reconstruction

The apse and other buildings associated with
the Mathias Church viewed from the Bastion

"Old Town" behind the church and the palace,
old being twenty years in some case!

Another "old" building about to be rebuilt.
All that remains of this church is the
entrance and the tower but, in a year
or so, it will look just like old