Vienna

June 3, 2014

Installed in my adequate room in the adequate Hotel Karntnerhof, though I’d like to know what message I send out that gets me a room typically overlooking the ventilation shaft. A placard warns me that I can be surcharged 50 euro if I leave a bad smell in the room. The journey here – though crushingly long--was not particularly eventful, except for the turbulent Turkish woman in the middle seat, who had to be up and down constantly, and who had to carry on a conversation with the German woman on the other side of her, invariably checking with me for translation.

Descending over the colors of the Austrian countryside I noticed that, whereas Ireland would be emerald and gold, Austria was sap green and dull gold, everything as if mixed with a little misty gray, with a little less edge and more dignity. The city is a little complicated to navigate, but I am finding where I’m going. First stop is Stephansdom, another of the world’s great churches off my list. Its gloomy Gothic is out of keeping with the rest of the city. Yet it is surrounded my carousels and merchant carts, and is the family playground of the city. I met there a young man who said he played bass with the Wiener Residenzorchester. Turns out he indeed does so, for I went to the concert at Auersperg Palace, and there he was onstage, in a tuxedo, looking far more uncomfortable than he did on the Platz. The concert was in the oval Rosenkavaliersaal, which may be the shapeliest and most civilized room I ever encountered. The program was ripe plums from Mozart and Strauss (the waltz one) and not what I would have chosen if music had been the point of the evening. That said, the music was beautiful in the context for which it was written–like seeing Shakespear at the Globe-- and everything gleamed with old gold and crystal and pink marble. The perfection of art which is such an effort elsewhere is here a mere gesture, a shrug, perfection being default setting and unexceptional. Even the loudmouthed hag a few rows back, who never stopped chattering, became part of the music, like one string out of tune, or noise from the distant street. In the midst of “La chi darem la mano” I burst into tears, everything was perfect.

As I type, one of the hotel workers sings in the basement, thinking no one hears her, the sound coming up my ventilator like smoke up a chimney.