43. øøøøøø

Greetings from somewhere in the Baltic Sea. We are, in theory, heading for Stockholm; in reality we’re sailing in the opposite direction. This is because Stockholm is just too far to reach in one overnight sail, and not far enough for a day and a half’s sail. So instead of (a) going slowly or (b) arriving early and paying extra port taxes, we appear to be sailing somewhat randomly north and west; presumably at some stage during the night we’ll turn around and go south and east again. At any rate, it was a nice evening sail up the very narrow strait with Denmark on the left and Sweden on the right.

We had a nice stroll in Copenhagen today, a brief one because we got in late this morning so we didn’t get into town until almost 1pm. But that was enough time to get two good coffees and one gorgeous Danish lunch – smorrebrod (I think there’s a couple of øs in there somewhere) and salad. We didn’t have the smorrebrod with ‘home-made herring’, but one with very nice smoked salmon instead. The cafe was called Amadeus and there was a well-read volume of Mozart’s letters in Danish translation sitting around; this very soon found its way to our table and we had a very nice time trying to figure out the language. It’s a lovely mixture of words that are work-out-able – from German, English, French, Dutch – and others that are unfathomable, but can be guessed at from sentence structure… and many bits that we hadn’t a clue about.

Possibly the best thing about Copenhagen, however, was that it was not the ship. We are currently confined to our cabins because there is a bad gastro outbreak and they’re trying to keep us out of the way of the passengers – for our safety I think, not theirs… While I’m certainly happy not yet to be projectile vomiting (I said it was a bad one), I nearly went insane being stuck in here all day yesterday – it was a sea day and too cold to sit on deck – and am not particularly looking forward to tomorrow. I have work to do, but found that it was impossible to do it trapped in the cabin – on this ship I work best sitting in the cafe looking out at the water! At least there’s a bit more air. Anyway, I will try and be patient and uncomplaining tomorrow. If the weather is warm, at least I can go sit on deck and try to work out what meandering path we’re taking.

A somewhat related reflection:

The English spend an awful lot of time moaning. Particularly about Europe and the EU. There are EU parliamentary elections happening next week, and we’ve been getting plenty of election propaganda from anti-EU parties whose platform is basically to dissociate Britain from Europe. What they’d do in the European Parliament I really don’t know. (Abstain from everything?) If anything goes wrong (eg, we’re an hour late getting into port, as this morning), it’s the fault of the EU (‘must be some EU regulation…’). In Australia, it’s been twenty years since a politician of a major party tried to suggest we weren’t or shouldn’t really be part of Asia. Britain is part of Europe. That’s it. Why wouldn’t they want to engage with that? It’s so much more interesting over there (here) anyway…

I thought this was the best steeple ever

Wind farm in the middle of the Baltic Sea; the Queen Victoria sailing past. In the background, the bridge that links Denmark and Sweden (Copenhagen and Malmo)

Came up on deck this morning and the first thing we saw was Helsingor Castle – on the narrowest point of the strait between Denmark and Sweden. Then we sailed past it again this evening, so I took the photo.

42. Vienna pics

Fire station studies (I) (nb Art nouveau doors)

Fire station studies (II)

Judenplatz

Judenplatz (Holocaust memorial in centre)

Strange sphinxes with Valkyrie hairdos

Mozart spotted eating Macdonalds

Former U-Bahn station, now museum to the architect (Otto Wagner)

Beautiful Art nouveau bar, where we tried to have coffee but it was always closed

More gorgeous nouveau

They like having their porticos held up by Atlas

Apothecary in A minor?

41. Nach Wien

Vienna feels like… the former capital of a very grand empire indeed. It is very imposing. Beautiful, but imposing. We took a tram around the Ring (running around the boundaries of the old city) and it is one immense and elegant building after another – Völk-Kunst-Museum, Natural History Museum, Opera, Parliament, Rathaus, Universitat, Bourse, Grand Hotel, Grand Hotel, Grand Hotel, Grand Hotel. Even the U-bahn stations are magnificent, or at least the ones in Karlsplatz (Paris Art nouveau meets Schönbrunn). Within the Ring, in the Aldstadt, the city is still formidable at street level the immensity and grandeur of all those buildings makes you feel rather as if it is all happening above your head. It’s not cosy.

Wandering around vaguely we passed the apartment where Haydn lived between 1795 and 1797, a former concert room (now a gorgeous restaurant) where Mozart performed and the first performance of the Beethoven 5tet for piano and winds were given and, 100m away the building in which Mozart didn’t die (because it hadn’t been built in 1791). In those few old, winding streets filled with marvellous looking restaurants and cafes it was almost possible to imagine him and perhaps to think of the damp, cold December day when they carried him out.

 But he didn’t like Vienna that much… although it was immensely preferable to Salzburg.

…I wrote that two days ago. Since then, we have discovered Viennes Jugendstil. this is what makes the city beautiful at ground level. Windows, doors, gateways, shopfronts – and best of all, the big doors to the fire station!

Every third shop or cafe is Mozart-something or has Mozart tat in the windows. So much for Schubert, Haydn and Beethoven, let alone Schönberg, Berg and Webern. I guess Webern-chocolates and busts mightn’t be quite so interesting, and concerts of the 2nd Viennese school in period costumes wouldn’t get quite such an audience. But this is a city of music and musicians, and you feel it everywhere. The stars on the pavement have the names, not of film stars, but of composers and conductors and performers. When you walk around the streets, you hear music being played, coming from open windows everywhere. We ate dinner tonight at a lovely little restaurant with an amazing CD collection; over the course of the evening we heard a Haydn symphony, a Bach cantata and a Handel concerto grosso. And they were playing loudly, filling the platz (really a piazza, it felt so Italian) – so it attracted the sort of clientele that wanted to sit and listen to great music over dinner. Even the trains from the Sudbahnhof to places like Prague and Bratislava are named after composers: the 3:45 to Bratislava is ‘Hummel’ (he was born there); there are Dvorak and Smetana and Mahler trains to Prague… and one train called ‘Asparagus’. Not sure about that one.

We visited the house where Schubert died – not a house actually, a three room apartment that also housed his brother, his brother’s wife and their several children. It was bare and the floors creaked. Roy got teary here. Then we visited the Mozarthaus – the only one of his many residences in Vienna which is still intact and visit-able. In this apartment – the grandest he ever had in Vienna – he wrote Le nozze de Figaro and the piano concerti K466, 467, 488, and 491. There are three floors of museum; the top two are ‘Vienna in Mozart’s time’ and ‘Mozart’s musical world’ and they’re very modern and helpful and nice but they don’t feel like anything much. On the lowest floor is their actual apartment, and although there is nothing original in there, and all the documents are reproductions, it still felt extraordinary. And I got very teary indeed. At least until we stumbled into the shop on the way out and ended up laughing at all the incredible Mozart tat. (Mozart golf balls? Mozart mouse pads? ‘Eine kleine’ t-shirts?) I was hoping for postcard copies of for example his own Work-list (where he wrote incipits from each work and the date he finished them – the C minor concerto (K491) immediately followed – I think 2 weeks later – by Figaro)… or perhaps some of the great illustrations from the first edition of Beaumarchais’s Figaro. But no… only Mozart golfballs and ‘Mozart tea’. I don’t think Mozart would have drunk tea with caramel bits in it, actually.

Yesterday we discovered the Judenplatz. This has been the Jewish centre of Vienna for centuries. In about 1401, the entire congregation of the synagogue on the platz committed suicide before the Viennese could get to them. And from 1938… well, we know what happened. It’s easy to imagine the square hung with swastikas. Mozart also lived on the Judenplatz for a while. But the extraordinarily moving thing was that the Judenplatz is now the gathering place for Viennese Jews again. When we wandered in yesterday evening, there was a bunch of Orthodox Jews just chatting, standing around, clearly as they do most evenings. A group of them were sitting on the steps of the Holocaust memorial, a big square concrete bunker that now sits starkly in the middle of the square.

It is an interesting three-way meeting point here, of Western European culture and architecture with Eastern European Roy was often reminded of Prague, though he says that’s more beautiful (because less imposing) and, to make it interesting, a generous dash of Southern Europe… lots of great Italian food, lots of platz-es that could be piazzas, with enticing sidewalk cafes and checked tablecloths. Italy feels very close. This is good because the Austro-German diet (wurst und kartoffen) is not to my taste, and Roy has no desire to relieve childhood memories of being force-fed this stuff by his Omy.

Everybody has been very friendly here (I have to say this surprised me a little, since affability has not famously been a national characteristic of the Austrians), except the taxi driver from the station who was insane. He was perfectly cheerful when we flagged him and set off, but after about 2 minutes he started ranting furiously about something, yelling at us alternately in incomprehensible German (Roy’s German is excellent but he had no idea)and equally opaque English. We had apparently offended him grievously. This was bad enough, but then he began driving like a maniac accelerating full speed towards the backs of cars, tailgating terrifyingly, cutting in and out of lanes with no warning, all over the road. Roy then ordered him to drive in something more closely approximating a civilised manner, whereupon he relapsed into sulky silence, pulled up at the hotel (mercifully close) and handed us out politely. It was extremely weird.

We get home tomorrow, and I’ll come back to this and add photos then…

40. A happy Roy

Hurrah!!

The Art of French Piano Music: Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, Chabrier arrived back from the printers one day before tomorrow’s launch at the Royal Academy. It was getting to the stage where we were worrying about the truck having a breakdown on the M3…

I’ve found the first typo (and, argh!, it’s my fault) in the Index – Laideronnette, Impératrice des Pagodes, has suddenly turned into multiple Impératrices. Not too serious, but still…

Also in the Index, a computer glitch or two (not my fault).

But generally it looks very beautiful and we are very happy.

It’s heavy, too.

39. Vale Snowy and Annie

Wherever good dogs go, that’s where our Snowy is.

He probably arrived there to find Annie sitting in his basket.