City Tour with Dr. O

08/03/09

Today was our first class session, followed by the bus tour with Dr. O. I enjoyed the tour immensely, Dr. O had such great insight on the different sights we were seeing due to her long experience with living in Vienna, which I thought gave it a better personal touch than from somebody who only knew the history of the places. Of particular interest to me were the Monastery that we drove past, the history of the Danube, and the architecture that we stopped and admired.

I enjoyed Dr. O’s retelling of the story behind the monastery with the veil in the wind, but for me (the thick-headed American) I’m immediately skeptical of the validity behind it. I suppose the stories and legends behind a lot of historical areas in Europe are due largely to the extremely long history that encompasses it, but I do find it interesting that we do not have more of this in America. I’m never quite sure if all the stories are supposed to be tongue in cheek, or if they simply got that way because our modern culture is generally unwilling to accept such stories as truth. The story of the veil is much more plausible of course than many other creation stories of certain monuments and buildings, but the idea of an unscathed piece of cloth that was in the forest for eight years requires a leap of faith that my 21^st century mind is not willing to make. Could the whole thing have been a trick by somebody who placed the veil there? That would make seem to make the story make sense, but I think it is more likely that the story was concocted in the years following the creation of the monastery, or possibly during construction, that was more useful as a way to justify its creation rather than actually explain what happened. But maybe life was just a little more magical back then, that wouldn’t be all that surprising either.

I really enjoyed the Hunderwasser(?) house that we stopped and looked at, I thought it was completely inspired. I really loved how committed he was to making everything non-linear, he must have been an absolute chore to work with. I wondered whether there were instances in the construction in which a foreman or some such worker tried to contend that it was structurally impossible to do what he was asking them to do, only to be shouted down with vague assertions about the non-linear tribute of nature. It may have made for some very interesting exchanges, as I can only imagine that all very talented and inspired artists come across these problems sometime in their careers. My favorite part was probably the encouragement of the tenants to paint around the edge of their windows, which I thought really enhanced the windows that had chosen to do so.

And of course I enjoyed Dr. O’s commentary on the “Blue Danube”, which I thought was quite funny. I’ve only been to the Danube once or twice before, and I certainly didn’t remember it being blue, but coming from somebody who has lived in Vienna for forty years it was even more telling. I also wondered about the reflecting pool at the Belvedere, is it usually more filled than it was? It seemed as though it had fallen somewhat into disrepair, which was too bad because it seems like such a beautiful pool that would provide a spectacular reflection if the conditions were correct.