Walking the streets of Vienna

Spazieren.

Walk the streets with me. I don't pretend the quality of the pictures is amazing, but the buildings are, so try to look through the paltry photography, zoom in on some of the architectural details and imagine what it is like to live in a city where beauty and order are valued.

Get lost in the geometry, the hues, the putti and gods, photoshop out the overhanging wires.

Inhale the smell of the streets: the aroma wafting from the opening konditorei doors on every third corner, chocolate croissants and tortes, and yes, yes, yes, espresso.

Many, actually most, of these buildings are residential apartment buildings. Some have retail spaces leased on the first floor, modestly comfited. Or restaurants with outdoor cafes. Too, closed roll-up awnings or a fitted iron gate in front of a door may be concealing a garage or repair shop, its door yawning open only for the immediate ingress/egress of a vehicle, creeping out or in, surreptitiously crossing the sidewalk.

Shopping is not so much the point of life here and its cheap banalities of garish advertising not afforded a tableau from whence it can, unbidded, assault the sensory life of the passerby. A few noted districts do offer up excess consumerism, notably the touristy central mall near St. Stephen's Cathedral, its predictable luxury retail chains offering the same fashion musts pedaled in the same storefront display in every major European and American city, and the long Maria Hilfstrasse. As Vienna is a multicultural city, there are also more specialized, smaller stores in neighborhoods scattered about the city offering wares catering to certain ethnic cultures and these are interesting to explore.

And so, wander the city with me and get lost admiring the buildings, castles, museums, churches and government buildings, here and there a theater or opera house, but mostly, mehrfamilienhauses.

The angels are in the details.

Smoldering piety.

Found this down a steeply sloping side street:

The duo of buildings below is one of my favorites, largely unseen on a boulevard busy with rapid through vehicle traffic, I could never remember afterward where I saw them, but found them again, around a dark corner from a metro stop whose pedestrian traffic radiates in all of the other directions. The couple sit quietly across from another concealed gem, a nearly invisible church tucked in the very shadow of the looming metro line and squeezed within a tiny diamond-shaped parcel of land, a remnant from another time, running against a bicycle throughway and the roaring boulevard. Weird that the photos I took of it never even made it to my camera roll.

I show you picture after picture because these are the city streets, not aberrant neighborhoods, but actually where everyone lives. The heavy entry doors are each elegant in its particular fashion, the tile flooring foyer and hallways are generally classy in an old Austrian way, the window ledges and hardware, the small ceramic sinks outside the apartment doors, the long polished wood banisters scrolled at the ends, the tall ceilings and picturesque border painting all contribute to a sense of contentment upon returning home. The first few years I came here I resented the orderliness. It seemed absurd to me to wait for so long for the okay of the Ampfelman before crossing a painfully empty street. But over time I've grown to both respect and adopt the advantages of orderliness. Many cities have haphazard traffic. Istanbul is one, where it is a life-or-death race to cross the heavily congested streets, with zero regard for the presence or absence of a crosswalk or intersection. I was the last passenger to board on a full bus there once and so had to stand next to the driver almost pressed against his bubble window. A woman pushed her baby carriage immediately in front of the moving bus. I will probably never forget that moment.

The driver only studied me when I gasped.

For years I found foreign cities packed with jacked-up cars spewing black crap from sawed tailpipes, unstable loads wobbling perilously high in pick-ups, and movable lanes amusing, cultural quirks, an expression of unbridled egos and sometimes unbridled donkeys; I willingly drunk the city's soul, let its air bubbles fill my bloodstream and take me in its flow.

Romance fades, but the mind can be a shoebox for storing the happier postcards.

I show you street after street so that you get it. This is it. This is everywhere. The boulevards, the side streets, the alleys with cafes spilling into them, the parks on castle grounds, the canals lined with benches and street art.

Spittelgasse, a busy commercial area. I often find myself at this intersection, so here is the detail of the building at the bus stop there.

Heading toward the municipal buildings and park.

The neighborhood castle gardens.

The Volksoper, the folks' opera house. Its performances even on week nights, fill to the rafters.

It's in just another neighborhood.

Here's the inside. Of course, I love the gilded opera houses too. But... there is something beautifully, approachably folksy about this one. We saw Fiddler on the Roof here the night of this particularly blurry photo.

At times, I become serious and I am relieved the goddesses are watching over me. It is fitting.

At other times I want the new: the art nouveau architecture against the oldness of it all. So many ghosts in the wind here above the river today. How many passed this lamppost, walking briskly home on a winter's eve, or laughing idly with friends after leaving a bar? This lamp has shone its light over so many, many lives whose own lights have long since vanquished.

Vienna is especially glorious deep in the night when the street lamps cast their luminous arcs according to the desires of the city, its ineffable romantic urges passing through noiselessly, inviting its artists to distill them, the scientists to discover them, the drunk to marvel.

The tourists are asleep and one has free reign of the city. It seems that the Austrian Parliament Building was under construction for years, garish yellow guards blocking the parts tourists weren't lounging against for selfies. Finally complete, I wanted to take in its beauty in unmarred.

Other night scenes.

The transitory experience of walking relieves the mind of the toil of entertaining itself but instead leaves it unabashedly open to absorb the next wonder, whether one of civilization or of nature or perhaps just an undefined fragment of the hallucinatory journey upon which we amble, sidling against our solitude unannounced, before vanishing just as surreptitiously. We can only smile.

It is safe and lovely to walk through the nights here. It is forbidden to own and carry guns. There is a sense of calm.

This weekday night I'd stayed out past the metro closing. In these small hours the number of trams and buses is greatly reduced and it is not unusual to have a car to yourself. It was in one of these instances that I sat sideways on my seat, facing the doors that would glide open at each stop just because it was convenient and I could. The doors slid open to reveal a charming gentleman sitting on a bench directly facing me. Our warm smiles and laughing eyes met. He folded his hands into a prayer upon his heart. Likewise did I. Our eyes were longing, but with the mirth and wisdom of age. As the doors closed, he rose and pressed his hand against the pane. I met his hand with mine on my side as the tram pulled away.

Check this display out! What better store window to encounter alone, in high spirits and poised to be amused in the wee hours of the morning?