Love-Hate Relationship with Europe

I'm trying to get around to posting some pictures of fabulous paintings seen in Vienna, but for today let me just say that you really can sit for hours in a cafe and nurse a single cup of coffee.

The pink thing on the table is friend Ed's dangerous dessert; mine is the more modest one in front, with the large glass of latte. (Picture of rest of cafe to the left.)

I'm glad I went to Vienna, even though sightseeing is awfully wearying. It was my first time on the continent (aside from a trip to western Ireland last summer for a week of mountain walking) since the year 2000. After September 11, 2001, I didn't feel like getting on an airplane for a long time. Then, as time passed, I found myself more and more irritated by the anti-Americanism to be found in European newspapers. By the time I went to Vienna, I was feeling pretty negative about Europeans. Friends of mine were doing research in Vienna, and, when they heard I had never been to Austria -- despite having a Ph.D. in German literature -- they invited me to stay with them. So, it was a case of cultural tourism.

But, as I said, I am glad I went, because I found myself encountering all the things that had once charmed me about Europe and had been important to me when I was a young woman of eighteen to twenty years of age. Vienna (though surprisingly different from Germany: there is that Habsburg imperial background) likewise offers that mix of a long cultural tradition with a way of life that is simply not American. When I arrived on a Saturday morning, the day after the Annunciation (a holiday in Austria), the city was simply closed down. (If Friday is a holiday, then so is Saturday.) And Vienna is a city of one and a half million. (At the height of the Habsburg Empire, in 1910, it was the fourth largest city in the world, with over 2 million population.) I'm not going to compare the U.S. with Europe here; suffice it to say, I appreciate the custom of not doing business on a religious holiday.

My first year in Germany, when I was eighteen, young and uninformed, I used to think that I would be happy living there or indeed in a foreign country. I never took to Japan, of course, where I lived for several years. As I said, this time back in Europe I liked the way of life, but there now remains too much that is simply alien to my taste. When you find the advertisements in the subway strange, you know you are a stranger. I have not aged spending my afternoons sitting in cafes. I have lived for decades in a city that never sleeps. That shapes one's mentality.

I recently had some correspondence with the managing editor of The Complete Review's literary blog (called The Literary Saloon), who objected to my way of talking about "Europeans." I think what I most object to about Europeans is that they take their way of life for the natural state of affairs, without realizing that the ability to sit in cafes is actually a kind of inheritance, like the objects in museums. Are Europeans willing to fight to preserve what their forefathers have made possible for them to enjoy?

Thus, my love-hate relationship with Europe.

Vienna

That's me on the couch at the Sigmund Freud Museum, though of course not on the couch that Freud used for his patients. It was the main object in a room at the museum and represents, I suppose, a contemporary version of the psychoanalytical setting. What struck me most at the museum was the way Freud surrounded himself in his work by objects that figured in his thinking about the psyche.

 

Six days of sightseeing, even in a city as interesting as Vienna, are plenty. One has to be selective, and the only thing I really missed out on, for the true Vienna experience, was the opportunity to attend a performance at the famous Burgtheater or the opera. On the other hand, there was this public toilet where, for 60 cents, you could use the facilities and hear music by Johann Strauss.

I naturally made it to the Schönbrunn, the summer residence of the Habsburgs, a few miles from city center. The rest of the year they resided in the Hofburg (thus, the "Burg" theater) Here I am in the "backyard" of  Schönbrunn with Anna Paula, a lovely Brazilian gal I met on the city bus tour.

Another charming residence was the Albertina, that of Archduke Albert (1738-1822) and his wife, Marie Christine, favorite daughter of Maria Theresa.

Here (on the left) you have the staircase, leading up to what are called the "Prunkräme" (below right), meaning "sumptuous rooms," and indeed they are that.

Not to forget the more intimate writing room (below left), with a picture of Maria Theresa on the wall in the back. The Albertina is also a museum, with a changing collection of artwork.

More to come in my next posting, especially on the art I saw and my reflections on the difference between "classical" and "modern" art.