Smile! We’re in Budapest!

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Ginger

Moving on–at last!–from Austria to Hungary, we arrive at the part of the trip where my photographic zeal was so great I hardly know how to deal with the resulting volume of pictures.

The best thing, I suppose, is to pick up where I left off in Vienna, with a more or less random assortment of things that made me smile.

Budapest is a lovely city full of friendly people. There’s a lot to smile about here. And so it’s not a surprise that some of it has gotten, well, built in. For example, this set of urchins.

Too loud!

Too wet!

And here are some building entrance lights:

Children welcome!

Um… satyrs welcome?

Identification emblems:

Needs no translation:

Couldn’t agree on the color:

Buddha has his back to the window because…

…enlightenment must come from within!

And finally, just because dancing water is always joyous:

Welcome to Budapest!

Vienna – A miscellany of details I like

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Ginger

How I hate the category “Miscellaneous”! It’s that dark space under the rug of the disorganized mind where unruly items can be swept, made invisible, and thenceforth ignored.

But here I am, stuck with a miscellany of pictures that have nothing in common (besides for being in Vienna) and that I like too well to discard.

So please. Bear with me.

The angel in the woods

This golden angel seems a good place to start. She is not actually *in* the woods. But she certainly appears to be from this viewpoint. The sight struck me with a particular poignancy thanks to my friend L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright, whose latest book features a statue of an angel in the woods.

And while we’re on the subject of statues…

All day long they’re singing, mmm, my work is so hard

Give me water, I’m thirsty… My work is so hard

Watching from the top of the dome

We came upon what seemed like an unusually dreary neighborhood (well, maybe the dreary part was due to the weather) without much architectural interest. And yet, and yet…

An elegant overpass with its light pole

Watch your step!

This rapidly became our favorite bakery.

We walked blocks out of our way to visit this bakery a second time…

…and a third.

This looks like a good place to shop!

It doesn’t look like anything ought to be able to grow in a corner this dark, but…

Vienna is full of interesting upper-story pedestrian overpasses.

This one’s on the third floor (second floor above the ground floor)

It has a wonderful Art Nouveau astrological…er, clock?

Finally, I really don’t know what to make of this, except that as a reader and writer of fantasy I like it a great deal!

The corner looks unfinished, except that it’s much too deliberate.

Let’s see… a farsighted red cow reading strange runes while being shooed by a magical broom? Did I get that right?

Vienna – Austrian National Library

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Ginger

Why did I ever think there was just one list of “The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries”? I suppose any magazine, newspaper, or blogger might make one. There are the “most beautiful public libraries,” “the most exquisite libraries,” “the most spectacular libraries,” and many more. And are these lists all the same? Of course not!

So all I can say about the State Hall of the Austrian National Library is that whether or not it’s on any or all of those lists, it’s certainly on mine. (In this it joins the library at the Strahov Monastery in Prague, which I have described previously.) And I hope that in this post I can show you why.

Two whole stories of antique books, marble columns, gorgeously painted high ceilings, plenty of natural light, and a nifty statue in the middle…What’s not to like?

Vienna – Art Nouveau houses

Posted on January 14, 2014 by Ginger

As I mentioned in the previous post, Dan and I had come to Wienzeile in order to see a couple of noteworthy Art Nouveau style houses on Linke Wienzeile. And they were lovely–if a bit difficult to photograph in their entirety due to the pesky market buildings at our back. 😉 (Anyone who read the previous post will know at once that we loved the market on Wienzeile.)

The two Art Nouveau houses by architect Otto Wagner at numbers 38 and 40 Linke Wienzeile are indeed beautiful. And just as lovely is the way they meet each other as well as the next building–with a great deal of mutual respect, a value in architecture that has been much neglected by many buildings in modern times.

Starting at number 38, we see…

From the corner, it’s almost “just another gilded building.” You’d hardly notice the Art Nouveau elements. But moving along, the style becomes more evident.

This building is joined to the one at number 40 by balconies and by a nearly continuous wrought-iron railing.

I love the pattern of tiles on the facade of the building at number 38! And just look at the railings and the decorations on the insides of the balconies!

Now, you might be thinking that it’s no great wonder that these two buildings, different as they are in many obvious particulars, are joined together so harmoniously. They are, after all, by the same architect.

But look at how respectfully the house at number 38 uses its ornamented balconies ans wrought-iron railings to join with the Baroque building next door.

Vienna – the unexpected market

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Ginger

From the Belvedere, we headed over to Linke Wienzeile, where our guidebook said we might find a couple of remarkable Art Nouveau houses.

Wienzeile itself looked like an interesting street on our map. It was shown as two (Linke, or Left, Wienzeile and Rechte, or Right, Wienzeile) roads that run closely parallel to each other, divided firmly block after long block by what might have been–what? A railroad track? A park?

Curiosity is said to have killed the cat. I don’t know about that, but it can certainly exhaust the tourist. We had to go see what it was.

And that is how after another mile an a half of walking, we emerged onto Rechte Wienzeile exactly at Roni’s Wine, Cheese, and Delicatessen shop. Just what we needed!

After a pause for sampling wine and cheese, we headed down the middle area between Linke and Rechte Wienzeile and found… block after block after block of the most beautiful outdoor market!

I just love markets. I love the visual beauty of the merchandise. Herewith, some pictures that need no explanation.

Vienna – The Belvedere

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Ginger

We visited Vienna’s Belvedere palace complex because we were on a mission–we’d promised my mother we’d go see Gustav Klimt‘s famous painting “The Kiss” while we were in Vienna.

And so we did.

Despite the threats posed by a day of dramatically changeable weather, we decided to walk from our hotel (the elegant Hotel Bristol, where we had a great view of the Opera Place from our room), a distance of over a mile. One the way we passed the photogenic St. Charles Church with its minarets reminiscent of Austria’s former enemy, the Turks.

We also passed the Russian war memorial, which expresses gratitude to the Russian army for liberating Austria from the Nazis. I found its large scale, grandiose, symmetrical formality so typical of totalitarian state design practices at odds with its poignancy, making the whole monument strangely moving. Perhaps the weather enhanced this effect.

The Belvedere is a beautiful arrangement of two buildings and their gardens, sloping down a gentle hill facing north. The Upper Belvedere is the grander of the two buildings.

Inside is a museum that contains a wonderful collection of Klimt paintings as well as works by many other artists. It was quite interesting seeing “The Kiss” in the context of Klimt’s historical progression as an artist–poised in a small number of years between his realism and his impressionism. I must add here that despite having seen (probably) hundreds of reproductions of “The Kiss” over the years, the original quite took my breath away. I always imagined “The Kiss” as a vertical work and not very large. In fact, it is a square painting almost six feet on a side. In other words, the figures in “The Kiss” are almost life size.

Beyond are the utterly gorgeous formal gardens sloping down toward the Lower Belvedere.

There are enticing views of the side gardens from within the Lower Belvedere.

Vienna – the arcade

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Ginger

I wanted to title this post by the name that appears over the doorway of the arcade, a narrow and delightful shopping passageway right through one of Vienna’s old-city buildings.

That would be the “Something-Complicated-in-German Passage.” I’m not very good at German, so I looked it up on Google Translate and discovered that this is the “Until Revoked Permitted Passage.”

Lovely! It’s a private way, and their lawyers don’t want to take the chance that through accepted use it might become a public passage. I need a sign like this for the private right-of-way across our property on Block Island! Except, of course, in English.

Thankfully, passage was not revoked on the day we were there, and so we were able to admire the elegant space and its wonderful detailing.

We stopped inside one of the shops (Xocolat, a chocolate store) and it was pretty nice too…

…and passed by a charming indoor-outdoor cafe.

Finally, we arrived at the courtyard where we would laterr learn that Cafe Central also sometimes set up tables.

Vienna – Cafe Central

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Ginger

Having ended the section on Prague with a lovely, historic cafe, I think it’s only appropriate to begin the section on Vienna with one. Continuity, and all that. So…

Welcome to the Cafe Central!

This appears to be a place favored by its regular habitues. This gentleman, for example, probably hasn’t left his seat for months.

In fact, Dan and I were seated at a table normally occupied by a regular. We had to assure the maitre d’ that we would be leaving well before 1pm (easy, since it was only 10am at the time).

The coffee was excellent–a quality we’d come to expect in this region–and the pastries were exquisite.

And–what we loved as much as anything–the physical space was magnificent.

It turned out that they also serve lunch in an intimate and charming courtyard that was part of the same building–at the very end of an arcade we’d walked the day before.

More about this arcade in the next post…

Prague — Art Nouveau Cafes

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Ginger

We were looking for the most beautiful cafe in Prague. This is hard work, since so many of Prague’s cafes might, in one respect or another, lay claim to this title. Besides, there’s no way we could check them all out in only three days in the city, not to mention the harmful effects of the caffeine overdose.

Fortunately, we had a tip from one of our guidebooks–Obecni Dum is an Art Nouveau gem. Located on the ground floor of the Prague Municipal House on Republic Square, the cafe looks out over the vibrant street scene. And it is elegant in its grace and proportions, and in its understated Art Nouveau ornamentation.

We also came upon the nearby Cafe Imperial, a much more wildly decorated Art Nouveau gem. Alas, we were by then all “coffee”d out. The scowling waiters did not seem to take kindly to tourists coming in to photograph their establishment without partaking of its fare–but I was able to get in a few apologetic shots.

Three markets in Prague

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Ginger

Crazy as Dan and I are for markets, it should come as no surprise that we stumbled upon not one but three of them while we were in Prague. One–the Havelske Trziste–is a permanent fixture of the Old Town. The other two, lacking names, seemed just to spring up, dare I say, to welcome us?

The Havelske Trziste (Havel’s Market) is a permanent market of fruits and vegetables, flowers, knick-knacks, and souvenirs. It’s small and charmingly situated in the middle of a pretty street. It seems to cater to tourists as much as to locals. While we were charmed–as we usually are, by markets–it wasn’t one of those ones that would knock you off your feet.

On our way to the palace compound, we stumbled upon a kind of French market in the Na Kampe Square just across the Charles Bridge in Lesser Town. There is no regular market in this square, although on July 14th they hold a French market here, across from the French embassy–as you might expect. This one, in early September, must have resulted from an excess of Francophile enthusiasm. We could have bought everything from olive oils to olives to grilled-vegetable wraps to lavender sachets and woven goods. There was even free music.