Week 4: People

3 August - 9 August: back in Austria

(Technically, this happened on the Sunday of week 3, but who’s counting?) Out the front of Autocamp Liberic, northern Czech Republic, an old man with no teeth beckoned us to stay at his campsite. In a delightful mixture of English and German, he explained to us where we could stay, that we could use his very own Czech power adapter so that we could leave the campsite whenever we wanted as the adapter was locked in the power cabinet and our cable could be attached from the protruding the adaptor. Once we had settled he rode his bike to our plot and made sure we had everything we needed. He was very sweet, but the only problem was that the campsite sucked. It had a pool, but by the time we’d arrived we had no energy or desire to go for a dip. The grounds were under leafy cover, sure, but very close to a public pathway into the forest where numerous bushes and trees had been freshly felled but not cleared away. There were also bungalows to rent; beware anyone who is lucky enough to book number 45. It’s near a compost heap and the smell is so overpowering as to make one swoon upon passing by. The shower block loomed tall and concrete grey; it looked disconcertingly concentration campish, and the showers were operated by 10 krone coins; once inserted, you were obliged to use the shower whose light lit up. There was nowhere to put your clothes or toiletries, so they had to be placed outside the shower. As the instructions in German and English were so bad, no one knew they had to press an extra button before water would be released in said cublicle. Shy, naked girls scuttled from their cubicles to the coin machine and back in confusion and noble modesty. All in all we spent one day – no, 12 hours, in Liberic, as we had toyed with the idea of continuing northwards to Poland, but despite the kindliness of the old toothless man and his attempts to win our custom, we headed southeast towards Vienna.

In Vienna there is a Dom, St Stephen’s, so named as throughout this region all along the Danube river, the patron Saint is St Stephen. The building is a sort of pastische of styles, having taken 250 years to build and while started out in the Gothic Style, Baroque took over and resulting confusion set in. It was an interesting construction, whereby its renovations was achieved through the help of all the states in Austria e.g. Tirol did the windows and Styria did the floors etc and they are attributed their assistance by having their shields depicted wherever they have made their contribution. It has not one, but two organs. One has 10000 pipes, but as it was made with inferior materials, it doesn’t work, so the Austrians simply built another one with only 4000 pipes and it is used almost every day. As the cathedral has 26 chapels, in the middle ages mass was said something like 120 times a day by 60 priests! At the base of the pulpit, you can see a window gazer, in fact, a depiction of the stonecutter who considered himself so endowed with talent by God that he deserved to also be part of the interior. A revered statue of the madonna looks like she is made of bronze, or a darkened copper, but she is made of sandstone and has been blackened from all the smoke from votives that were lit around her once upon a time. Marble tombs weighing 45 tonnes, looming stone sculptures made only from three individual pieces. All these are fascinating details that we learnt from our guide who never formally introduced himself to us beyond a sigh of disgust when he sized us up. He was a young, handsome Austrian, who it seemed to me used the Governator’s accent as a model for his very quick and hard to understand English. He was humourless, it seemed at first, and smirked when he saw the pathetic gathering of French, Slovenian, Dutch, American (New Yorkers, which seemed to irritate him further) and Australian (me!) to come on his tour. He did check every so often whether we understood him. We all always said yes, because, well basically we were afraid of him. This check must be the result of feedback he has received, which he is - to the new tour participant - somewhat defensive. After each station of explanation, he would say, “Are there any questions?”and there would be a fearful silence. If we were to ask a question we would be deemed stupid. If we didn’t offer a question we would be considered vacuous tourists. Timid questions came up, some silly, some difficult (like Edwin’s, about what does the golden eye surrounded by a triangle and streams of light signify?) and when the tour guide invited us to hazard guesses as to what sort of material that was made of or how old this might be, he would look at us with arched brow, as though he thought us very ignorant indeed – and particularly so if we submitted to the enforced audience participation. The rest of the time there was much eye rolling and upward glances to God to give him strength if for example he had to wait for a straggler to take a photo and he was ready to talk at the next station. If the gimick of the tour is to makei t memorable, it was. It was als entertaining purely from his rudeness, and although I only understood about 80% of it, it was mostly interesting. (The poor Slovenians did, as they said to him weakly, their best to understand his very quick accented English. My guess they understood about 10%). Edwin and I paid €4.50 each for the 25 minute tour, and lit a candle for €0.65 (but only had €1 coin left over, so spent it all). This time we lit the candle for ourselves and our trip, although whenever lighting candles is concerned, I do give a blanket thought to all my family all over the world – just for good measure.
There is nothing more cringeworthy than watching beautiful, talented people be forced to perform substandardly. Last night at the Palace Auersperg - where not only the 6 year old Mozart once performed, but where Emperor Franz Joseph and Sisi danced many a night away -we were treated to the Vienna Residenz Orchestra and Dancers and watched another type of dance. A beautiful blonde Austrian girl (who seemed too tall to be a real ballerina) and her handsome (somewhat too skinny and too short/small for my taste) dance partner execute some schmaltzy narratives. One was about a wind up doll (she) and her animator (he) prancing about with highschool-quality (over-) acting faces to the dulcive tones of Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turka. In the second half, she and he were made to dance the Tisch Tasch Polka (she in a – ugh – polka dot dress) and they were to play the chasey type schtick of boy meets girl, boy kisses girl, girl slaps boy, but boy gets girl. Finally there was a waltz to the Blue Danube, which was lovely but there were too many weird moments where the only height the ballerino could hoist the ballerina up in front of him was where her bottom was right in front of his face. The inclusion of dancing in this setting – the Palace Auersberg – was very odd as it was on a raised stage, she without pointes and it was an unsprung, carpeted surface. The carpet was series of a hacked pieces of material, unfinished and merely placed on the stage in layers. The stucco on the Rosenkavalier Room’s walls was crumbling and faded and there was something cramped, sad and unpreserved about the surrounds. The photo does do far too much justice to the space as it looks rather glamorous and large. The accompanying music was played by a bored but very capable ensemble of 9 players (in period costume, I ask you) All in all it was the touristy, commercial evening it promised to be when we suspiciously bought the tickets the previous day from a salesman in period costume in front of St Stephensdom. However last night, despite my musical snobbiest best, I couldn’t help clapping along to the Radetsky March. Really, I am not at all a Johan Strauss fan, but there is something about ultra-cheesiness that makes you just sigh, shrug your shoulders, and join in.