This was published 13 years ago
Warmth of cool baroque
In one of the world's most liveable cities, Helen Anderson joins the Viennese in their favourite pursuits: art, music and coffee.
White city ... the Vienna State Opera.Credit: Getty Images
Winter has arrived early. To people who endure wet shoes and freezing weather for months, this cannot be a welcome surprise. For me, however, this confected landscape of marzipan mountains and Bruegel-like scenes of farmers, dogs and children throwing snowballs is unexpected and exhilarating. Everything that might have been ugly or dreary is frosted uniformly - from farms to factories - and the rivers run black and fast.
Snow falls steadily all day as the train heads east from the Italian border, snaking past muscular mountains and through hushed valleys, to Vienna.
Vienna under snow. I'd not have wanted my first visit to the old Habsburg capital any other way. I imagined the city's imperial grandeur and assigned it an air of regal formality, perhaps aloofness, assuming this would characterise a city once at the centre of an empire and renowned for high art and intellectual drive.
I had not imagined, however, Vienna's softness - the candles and fairy lights of Christmas markets, the smudged profile of belfries and steeples, the steamed-up windows of neighbourhood beisels, or bistros. Nor had I anticipated the unhurried ease of life - the midweek groups of friends standing in the chill in down jackets drinking hot gluhwein and gossiping, the casual drift of conversation spilling from cafes.
Nor had I imagined playfulness and yet I'm walking up stairs carpeted in a hand-woven riot of colour at Altstadt Vienna, a hotel where every room is a salon of striking contemporary art, in the boho district of Spittelberg, its cobbled streets lined with experimental galleries and boutiques. At an artists' collective along Burggasse nearby, I buy a purple faux-fur hat with a pair of cat's eyes peering from the top, by far the most conservative in a witty collection by a young Viennese milliner.
Next morning the snow catches the sun, glittering like tinfoil. Dodging the footpath ''Dachlawine!'' signs (Watch out for falling snow!), I walk to the imposing Kunsthistorisches Museum, the city's 19th-century museum of art history. Within its splendid marble-inlaid interior is the Bruegel gallery, for me one of the greatest of all fine-art experiences. Since yesterday's journey I've been eager to clap eyes on Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Hunters in the Snow, one of six landscapes painted by the artist to mark the passage of the seasons. Of the five that survive, three are in the KHM and they line a room devoted to the work of this most humane of the northern renaissance masters.
It is a sublime picture: the frozen landscape retreats in tiers from the returning hunters in the foreground with their weary dogs. Below the bedraggled hunters are villagers careening around merrily on grey-green ice beneath a leaden sky. Perhaps there is a moral to the picture: some have to work while others play. My favourite is Bruegel's Children's Games, depicting 230 children playing 83 games - a teeming comedy of a canvas; an encyclopaedia of play.
As I wander through the galleries from one must-see work to another, I make use of a wonderfully congenial feature of the KHM: its galleries are furnished with sofas that invite viewers to relax, recline and while away an hour or two, perhaps even a day. What might have been an intimidating theatre of high art has been humanised.
An entire winter could be spent indoors in the Museumsquartier alone, housing galleries, studios, public space and the biggest concentration of the city's astonishing 180 museums. I can do no more than skim the surface at the KHM, the Leopold Museum, the Belvedere, the Wien Museum and the Secession building and wish for more. It is enough time, however, to absorb the significance of the intellectual energy and artistic flowering of Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, when artists such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, architects such as Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, composers Mahler, Strauss, Bruckner and Brahms and a generation of radical Viennese thinkers and artists were at the height of their power. (A landmark exhibition of works from this period will open at the National Gallery of Victoria in June; see box.)
My days are filled with art, my nights with music, for at any time of the year and every night of the week there is a clamour of concerts - from opera to klezmer, jazz to gypsy. Viennese concert-goers are famously discerning and notoriously difficult to please, though one night I witness an inversion of the theme.
The Mozart Hall of the Konzerthaus is sold out for a piano recital by the Hungarian virtuoso Andras Schiff, performing Bach's Goldberg Variations. (Best wear clean socks and nice shoes to a concert here, for you might find yourself seated on stage.) It's a work that demands concentration from the audience; it was written to soothe an insomniac count and listeners can nod off for a bit in the middle. It finishes quietly, with no telltale flourish, and we wait a moment too long to applaud. With brow furrowed, the maestro shakes his head in displeasure - the Viennese audience has been ticked off.
The intervals between viewing art and listening to music in Vienna should be spent in its coffee houses, for this is where the impression deepens of a city in which culture is not so much revered as lived and the qualities of grace and ease are specially prized.
There are plenty of grandly formal cafes, such as the famous Cafe Sacher opposite the Opera House, home of the original Sachertorte; Demel, with a baroque interior to match its elaborate confectionery; and Cafe Central, where a pianist plays every evening beneath the neo-gothic vaults. More to my taste are the lived-in Cafe Hawelka and the faded elegance of Cafe Sperl.
On my way to Sperl, map in one gloved hand, I count down the street numbers and note an unusual number of psychiatrists working from these genteel apartments. There's a promise of snow in the air and the brass chandeliers and wood-panelled embrace of Sperl seems the warmest place in eastern Europe.
The velvet banquettes are a little threadbare and the woodwork is worn but the torte is generous, the coffee strong and patrons are invited to linger among newspapers, conversation and the click of billiard balls. There is no sense of being hurried. You could write a novel over the course of a winter at Sperl, or read a small library.
The traditions of the cafe as a kind of society are alive in Vienna. There is a German word for this quality, ''gemutlichkeit'', and it suggests cosiness, charm and good conversation, the therapy of belonging and time well spent and the beauty of a life filled with art - the art of life.
There is no distinction between art and life for Otto Wiesenthal, whose Altstadt Vienna hotel is a case study in gemutlichkeit. Twenty years ago the former banker and technology executive transformed several floors of a 1902 building into a boutique hotel, partly as a gallery for his growing collection of contemporary art, partly to create a meeting place for ''interesting people''. His guests meet over long breakfasts in a series of primary-coloured salons filled with art on the first floor, or during afternoon tea and home-made cake beside the fire in the Red Salon. There are plans to open a lounge bar on the ground floor this year.
Wiesenthal says Vienna is a more ''community-minded, less conservative and more liveable'' city than it was during his childhood in the 1950s. (Last year the city was named for the second time as the world's most liveable by the Mercer survey, while this week the Economist Intelligence Unit named it number two, behind Vancouver and above Melbourne.) He points to the alliance between the Greens and the Social Democrats in last year's city council elections and to the creative energy of the city's artists and designers.
One night we join Wiesenthal at the State Opera - the opening of Mozart's Don Giovanni, first performed on this stage for the house's opening in 1869. The five tiers of boxes encircling the stage are full and so is the standing-room gallery for 567 patrons who have queued this afternoon and paid as little as €3.50 ($4.75) for a ticket. It's a sensational production and most of the 2000 patrons applaud with enthusiasm but many are booing just as volubly. People with a reason to leave early do so before the encores. There is none of the pomposity I might have imagined on such an occasion.
On our last night, we join the stylish regulars at Skopik & Lohn, a smart neighbourhood bistro in the second district, with playful black scribbling across the ceiling and walls and a menu of well-turned bistro staples (a perfectly roasted chicken with lemon and roasted grapefruit) and well-judged surprises (black pudding with apple puree, braised beef with lovage cream). It's busy but the owner, Horst Scheuer, translates the menu without haste and chats about Austrian cinema and wine. We taste several styles and with a two-course meal the bill is €65 - another surprise is how affordable the best of Vienna is.
The bistro is full now. Snow has begun to fall but inside it's warm with gemutlichkeit.
Helen Anderson stayed courtesy of Altstadt Vienna.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
Emirates flies to Vienna for about $2020 - to Dubai (14hr), then Vienna (6hr). Austrian Airlines has a fare for about $2150, flying Thai Airways to Bangkok (9hr) then Vienna (11hr 25min). Fares are low-season return from Sydney and Melbourne, including tax.
A Vienna Card costs €18.50 ($25) and entitles travellers to 72 hours of unlimited public transport and discounts at 210 sites, shops and restaurants; see wien.at.
Staying there
Each of the 42 rooms and suites at the Altstadt Vienna are individually styled with contemporary art and design pieces. The staff are terrific. Spacious double rooms cost from €139, including breakfast and afternoon tea; suites from €199. Kirchengasse 41, 1070; +43 1 522 66 66, see altstadt.at.
Viewing there
Vienna: Art and Design will show at the National Gallery of Victoria from June 18 to October 9. Its 250 works include paintings, drawings, furniture, fashion and photography; see ngv.vic.gov.au.
The monumental Kunsthistorisches Museum is open Tue-Sun, 10am-6pm (until 9pm on Thu), entry is €12; see khm.at.
The Leopold Museum shows modernist and expressionist Austrian art, including the world's largest collection of works by Egon Schiele and major pieces by Klimt and Kokoschka. Museumsplatz 1, 1070.
Wed-Mon, 10am-6pm (until 9pm on Thu), entry is €11; see leopoldmuseum.org.
The baroque Belvedere palace holds Austrian art dating from the Middle Ages and the world's largest Klimt collection, including The Kiss. Prinz Eugen Strasse 27, 1030. Open daily, 10am-6pm, entry from €9.50; see tinyurl.com/5e8fvf.
The art nouveau Secession Museum, devoted to contemporary art, holds the famous Beethoven Frieze by Klimt. Friedrichstrasse 12, 1010. Open Tue-Sun, 10am-6pm, entry €8.50; see www.secession.at.
An overview of the latest in art, design, music and literature is covered in New Vienna Now: Contemporary Vienna, edited by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (Schlebrugge.editor), email newviennanow@departure.at.
Eating there
Skopik & Lohn is a smart bistro offering excellent value. Leopoldsgasse 17, 1020; +43 1 219 8977, see skopikundlohn.at.
The slightly eccentric Stomach, with resident cat, has outdoor dining in summer. Seegasse 26, 1090; +43 1 310 2099.
Cafe Sperl is my favourite Viennese cafe. Gumpendorfer Strasse 11, 1060; +43 1 586 4158.
Cafe Hawelka, dark and reassuringly shabby, is an institution. Don't miss it. Dorotheergasse 6, 1010; +43 1 512 8230.
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