Oh Vienna… The Capital of Sausages

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The children stroke Chuli and Aphra goodbye.  We are off to Vienna, which, according to Zippy, is the capital city of ‘Sausages’.

We leave in the car with our faithful guides Franz, Petra, Paul and Emil, and pass the stork’s nest, the vineyards, and the border towns along the way.  Within an hour the landscape becomes square, industrial and mildly terrifying, and then we enter Vienna.  Through the window of the car, the city moves along like any other European capital, with its wide, tree-lined boulevards rubbing up against a conveyor belt of buses, trams, cyclists, and cars.  The Danube and its fast-flowing, muddy canals run alongside, ducking under bridges as they go.  There are brutalist facades, gothic and baroque gargoyles, art deco beauties, and post-modern markers.

Sausage

We’d only spent a week in the countryside but The Husband and I exchange a look that speaks of a mutual trepidation about going to a city after the freedoms (by which I mean the children’s freedom that entitled us to ours) of rural life.  There will be no trampolines.  No pets.  And we aren’t sure how a four- and two-year old will respond to a ‘city break’.

Fortunately when we arrive at our destination, there are children.  With children’s stuff.  THANK THE LORD.  Our new hosts are Martina and Joseph, old friends of Franz and Petra, and their little ones Eleni and Magnus are waiting to meet us behind their parents’ legs.

Martina, Josef and their children live in a large, luminous apartment in a grand but slightly tumbledown building on the corner of Glasergasse in the heart of the artsy district 9.  Most inhabitants of this block are students, and every hallway on every floor is home to a bicycle or a pushchair, numerous communal house plants, and a window overlooking the courtyard whose ledge proffers a packet of cigarettes begging to be smoked.

Apartment_Vienna

Whenever Franz and Petra need a bed for the night in Vienna, Martina and Josef invite them to use the flat next door, which Martina’s father permanently rents for the occasional visit to see his grandchildren.  (He does this because Viennese rates are so affordable.  I know because I asked.)  This weekend the apartment is free and ours, free-of-charge, which, in simple terms, means more sachertorte for meeeeeee!

We drop our bags and go next door to Martina and Josef’s place where we are immediately welcomed by the obligatory and delicious melange, Austria’s version of the Italian (and REAL) cappuccino.  Formally known as a Wiener Melange, this is what you order in a cafe if you want a single shot espresso with some steamed milk and a bit of foam on top.  In fact, if you order a cappuccino you will get whipped cream on top, which is locally known as a Franziskaner.  Or heart palpitations.

Unfortunately, The Husband and I are both coming down with the virus that poor little Roo had been suffering with before we left the UK, and which probably has the worst ever symptom you can have when visiting Europe’s birthplace of coffee, pastries and sausages: mouth ulcers.  Yes, those teeny purveyors of pain and poopers of parties involving kissing and eating cake are having an ironic blast in our cake-holes.  So, after the coffee, Martina doses us up with sage tea and propolis (Google it, it’s great), and hands us the hardcore mouthwash in case we’re really suffering.

Soon after, we take a walk around the block to the nearby Liechtenstein Park, picking up conkers and friends (a banker and a concert pianist no less – this is Vienna after all) along the way.  The streets are deathly quiet as it’s a Sunday and yet the stillness is silenced still as we pass the first of many pavement memorials to the 10s, 100s, 1,000s of Viennese Jews who were extinguished 70 years ago.  63,000 of them in fact.

Suddenly I start to feel uncomfortable again, just like I did in Sopron.  Everything here is refined, clean, straight, ordered.  The people we are with are neat and tidy and tall and stand up straight and speak German.  I do not.  Nothing about this place is out of place.  Apart from me.  I want to go back to the countryside.  I glance at The Husband who I sense has been humming the ‘Hava Nagila’ in his head in a state of anxiety.

And then we get to the park and the children run excitedly to the swings.  Breathe.  They clamber around the climbing frame, zip along the zip wire, and join a group of others splashing in the cool water trickling out of a pump.  Breathe.  There are other faces here, and other languages.  People look happy and I think The Husband does too.  I relax.

Playground_Vienna

We stay for an hour before heading back to the apartment where The Husband and I debrief about our temporary self-inflicted transgenerational post-traumatic stress disorder whilst dressing the children for bed.  We conclude that this is a new place with new people, and a lot of historical sadness, but that we shall try to move into the night with joy in our hearts…

And we certainly do, thanks to three bottles of Josef’s excellent wine (he shares a love of the vine with Franz, whom he grew up with in the same village in Burgenland), which he and The Husband brought up from the cellar that houses his collection of a thousand bottles of the stuff.  We dine with our new and old hosts on rare steak, crisp potatoes and Petra’s schwarze walnüsse (black walnuts), and we laugh and laugh.

One night in Hungary, Franz talked about an idea that drinking wine should not be about the palette picking out flavours and notes, but that it should be an experience that trips a memory, a feeling or a physical sensation.  I didn’t really understand what he meant until tonight; and so if I ever drink those wines again (whatever they were, Josef), I will remember today with great fondness.

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