Bunking off in Vienna

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We say goodbye to Franz for last time this morning, blurry-eyed from last night’s wine but not heavy-hearted.  He’s off to Eisenstadt on business and tomorrow we leave for Italy; Petra and their boys will stay behind with us and show us around Vienna, before joining him back in Hungary this evening.

Before she takes her eldest, Eleni, to kindergarten, Martina offers us a delicious breakfast.  We all sit down together at her long, sunlit table, and over coffee and bircher muesli (which The Husband and I attempt to consume with great difficulty – read previous post – before giving up) we talk about school; specifically the differences between educating young children in Austria and the United Kingdom.

When we started our trip at the beginning of September, Zippy was supposed to be in uniform, starting primary school, full time, five days a week, 8.30am-3.30pm.  At 4 years old.  Martina and Petra are shocked.  Four is the school-starting age in the UK whilst here in Austria and Hungary – and in most other countries in Europe, in fact – children do not start school, and thus formal education (in their own clothes), until they are 7 years old.  Even then, their days end at around 1.30pm until they are nine or ten.  And before then, most go to a kindergarten for 4 or 5 days a week, for just three hours a day.

Eleni goes to kindergarten between 9.30am and 12.30pm, at which time she is collected by Martina to return home for lunch and the rest of the day.  Martina has taken two years full maternity leave so far, all of which has been paid for by the government.  Petra tells us that her twin sister has been off work for a year and starts her job again next week, when her partner takes his turn at a full year of state-funded paternity leave to be with their children.  Martina notes that if both parents work full-time and there aren’t grandparents around (who are relied upon greatly, as nannies and childminders are quite unheard-of), there are all-day kindergartens and after-school clubs available, although this is not commonplace.  People pay their taxes, shops close on Sundays, rents are low, and quality of life is high.

In the United Kingdom, the law states that all children are to be in full-time education (at school or at home) by the term after their fifth birthday.  Most children, however, start at around four-and-a-half years old.  They are then expected to learn to read and write, and be tested, not long after.  Of course, there is no greater thing for children to be with other children, playing and learning through play; however, the significant pressure that may be experienced by some children from such an early age in this setting is evidently negative and not conducive to the wellbeing of both the individual and society as a whole, as suggested by The University of Cambridge recently.  This year, the University’s Faculty of Education published an important piece of research about school-starting ages, which pretty much concluded that we Brits expect our little ones to do too much too soon: David Whitebread, one of the Faculty’s researchers says, “In the interests of children’s academic achievements and their emotional well-being, the UK government should take this evidence seriously…

The Husband and I took it seriously, and fled the country.

After breakfast, we leave to catch the no.1 tram, the finest way to explore Vienna’s innermost central district and its architectural charms.  It is also the finest way to keep young children happy when exploring said architectural charms.  Part bus-part train, a tram is almost too much to bare for small people who have never experienced the excitement of a wooden-bench-next-to-the-window-in-a-box-with-a-bell-and-a-driver-and-an-old-fashioned-ticket-machine-that-goes-along-tracks-tied-to-a-string-in-the-sky!!!!!

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We travel around the Ringstrasse, the ‘ring road’ that circumnavigates Vienna’s old city walls, and jump off by the national gallery.  From here we push our way through the grand shopping streets, past the fashion houses and the Hotel Sacher (the birth place of the classic Viennese chocolate sponge cake, the sachertorte), all the while negotiating with our exhausted screaming two-year old.  We stop to gaze up, open-mouthed, at the gloriously-gothic Stephansdom (St Stephen’s Cathedral), with its incredible, colourful geometric-tiled roof.  And when our exhausted child is blissfully asleep in the pushchair, we push on until we reach the kaffeehaus.

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Petra has brought us to Cafe Prückel, a Viennese institution and one of the most beautiful cafés I have ever seen.  Opened in 1904 by the European cycling champion, Lurion, who later sold it to the current owners, the Sedlar family, Prückel is famed for its 1950s interior, which the family commissioned Oswald Haerdtl to design in the middle of the twentieth century.

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We sit in the back room, which was restored to its original Art Nouveau vision in the 1980s by Professor Johannes Spalt, and of whom architecture journalist Jan Tabor said was responsible “for the restoration of culture in Austria after Nazi barbarism”  (translation).  It is lovely and we drink china-cups of melange (cappuccino) served on silver trays, and devour dumplings, baked cheesecake, flaky apple strudel and rich sachertorte.  Whilst crowd-controlling four children who are jumping on the upholstered furniture with chocolatey-fingers.

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After lunch we continue our city tour, past the Museum of Applied Arts where the children dance along the edge of the baroque fountain, and in between streets that remind me of those that make up the city of Tel Aviv.  It was Tel Aviv where many great German and Austrian Jewish architects, like Bauhaus-pioneer Arieh Sharon, fled during the British Mandate of Palestine or who were survivors who left Europe after the war; they went to build the White City in the desert, in the way that they had built their own cities at home in Europe.  It is extraordinary to see these traces and then stumble upon those other scars: that at every street corner there is a reminder of those who didn’t escape.  Petra says, “I feel ashamed“, and I think it must be strange for her to be walking these streets with us.

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Our next stop is the completely wonderful world of Hundertwasser, and his Kunst Haus Vien (Art House Vienna) – a place built by and dedicated to this extraordinary artist and man, reflecting his philosophy of life.  The Husband and I have never before heard of Friedensreich Hundertwasser but his art and life, his manifestos and ideologies, and his love for nature and humankind are so spectacular that they leave an impression on us both.  The children are in awe of his designs and model villages for factories, housing co-operatives, train stations and toilets, and they giggle at his enormous tapestry of a giant pissing a huge golden rainbow over a town.

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The Husband is smitten with his illustrious illustrations full of shape, colour and gold leaf.  I fall in love with his humility and positivity about the world: he designed green roofs in the 1960s (before they were called green roofs), published a ‘Peace Manifesto’ and made a ‘Peace flag for the Holy Land’ with a green Arab sickle moon and blue Star of David in the 1970s, and believed that architecture should benefit humankind and nature.  Here was a man who lost 69 relatives to the Holocaust – he himself was also forced to leave his Viennese home at the age of ten – and he lifted himself up to make beautiful art for everyone.   So I implore you to watch this wonderful film, Regentag (Rainy Day), that Hundertwasser made in 1972.  Zippy thought it was wonderful.

It is nearly time to say goodbye to Petra but she still has one last place to take us.  We jump on a tram to the 2nd district’s Weiner Prater, a glorious large park twinkling in the afternoon light when we arrive at the end of the line.  There are avenues of chestnut trees, acorns wherever we tread, dogs walking, people sleeping under the late summer sun in the long grass, muddy play areas, and pine copses.  It is lovely and the perfect end to a time spent with great friends.

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