Hundertwasser’s buildings…and music. Thursday 12 June

 Ah…where to start? 

Perhaps with some description of the neighbourhood that Geli and Ian are living in.

Although less than 2 kms to the city centre, in many ways it’s a world apart. It consists of many apartment buildings, some less delubrious than others. It was, and still is, a strongly Jewish area. It’s wonderful to see men, both young and old and everything in between getting around on foot-powered scooters-like overgrown children dresses in black pants, long black coats, large black hats and with beards and ringlets down each side of their faces. The women are dowdy and wear wigs and the young girls are in training to look the same, with tights and long skirts on in mid-summer. There’s a permanent police presence outside their community centre. And just down the road the sad little play park is full of Muslim mums and children!

Outside many houses are poignant reminders of the thousands of Jews deported from the area-brass plaques set into the pavements with each person’s name and dates on them.

But it’s the place many call home and there’s always some activity, whether it’s the scooting Jews or the many Viennese taking advantage of the sunshine and sitting out at numerous street side cafes and bars.

Stark contrast-the clothed and unclothed!

And one of the locals is a Turkish man called Mustafa, who shot out of his taylor’s shop when he saw me admiring a beautiful orange leather bag hanging on a rack outside. Once he told me I looked “sexy” with the bag swinging from my shoulder, he’d made a sale (after all, it’s a while since I’ve been called that!).

A great Viennese souvenir.

Robyn with new bag and new boyfriend!

Time to go out…watch this space for the next exciting episode…

Well, it’s amazing how much you can see on the way to the post office. And it all turned out to be quite funny. Mrs Googlemaps directed us to walk 800 m to the closest PO. When we arrived and said we wanted stamps to send cards to NZ, the clerk looked horrified! After getting into a huddle with her colleague she said that she would have to ask her boss before she could sell any FOREIGN stamps! And her boss was out to lunch. So she directed us to another PO a further 800 m away ( which obviously has less stringent policies about the sale of foreign stamps). So off we went again…but the extra walking is never a waste of time. On the way we saw the oldest restaurant in Vienna, visited a very ornate Greek Orthodox Church and ate enough food samples in a gourmet Spar supermarket to enable us to skip lunch!

And I haven’t even mentioned most of yesterday’s activities…

As you can imagine, Hundertwasser’s apartment block was astounding, and the tram trip and walk as interesting as ever.

Beautiful balcony gardens

Big church and colourful buildings 

A museum for everything in Vienna 

Home to rest up for the big event…donning our smart clothes for the wonderful concert-Hayden, Mozart and a most amazing rendition of Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons!

But first a delicious dinner at a local restaurant…

 Note the background…much social housing was added to the neighbourhood in the early 90’s and they make sure you know about it

The restaurant 

The greedy one in the party had to try the apfelstrudel.

Note the old(er) woman behind me. She and a very wobbly husband are obviously regulars. She had very specific demands about every aspect of her meal which had at least 3 waiters scuttling around and then ducking inside to laugh! The best bit was them donning pinnies before they ate…she a pink one and he a blue.

And onwards…

 

Pleased as punch in the Dress