Vienna's Faces

We were only in Vienna overnight but, even in that short time, as well as seeing a dog that someone I know will love (the picture was on display in the window of a very grand curtain and upholstery material shop):

and an amazing, if headless, cake:

(plus reacquainting myself with Austria's K und K obsession):

(it appears that some people need to feel K und K right down to their underwear), I also saw an awful lot of new faces:

Among them were the figures on the facade of Cafe Central, which, apparently, represent all the different peoples of the Austro-Hungarian empire:

Can anyone identify which one is which?

Not forgetting @aptronym, I also snapped one or two particularly striking doorways:

Not Moving Forward

While sometimes I am led astray by my instinctive conservatism, (for instance, I now realise that screwtop wine bottles are great and corks, although traditional, are on a day-to-day basis, a bore), I think, when it comes to the changes wrought on most of my favourite urban landscapes since the 1960s, that a bit more conservatism would have saved us from the many small, dull hells that now pass as town centres across England.

I was provoked into this vein of thought by a link about the King's Road that my brother sent me, showing that Starbuck's has invaded the realms of my childhood and that, since I was learning to walk and ride a tricycle and eventually even a bicycle in the neighbourhood, the place has succumbed to the British chain shop virus.

To make matters worse, I had just been to Vienna when I looked at the pictures of how things were and how things now are in the part of Chelsea where I grew up.

The Viennese are not always the easiest of people. Looking at the pictures posted in the window of the appalling Eden Bar:

 gives you a taste of their less attractive side:

and their passion for Trzesniewski's:

 egg concoctions, which they serve at every available opportunity, is baffling, (although the 1949 frieze on the front is interesting in the way it reveals the preoccupations of the time - pineapple, chicken, Italian wine and lobster, all just dreams for most people in post-war Vienna):

and their fondness for establishments like the House of Gentlemen:

frequented by natty chaps like this one:

who will persist in that naff continental habit of marching about with their jacket sleeves empty, so that they look armless, is also not exactly admirable.

All the same, I bow to the Viennese in one thing - their sophisticated understanding that, when you've got something right, there's no need to fiddle with it any longer.Thus, passing Cafe Braunerhof, I glanced through the window:

and was enchanted to see that, not only had they done nothing at all to alter the interior, but, in fact, even the waiters were the same as last time I was there some years ago.

At WH Auden's favourite restaurant, the Ilona Stuberl, all also seemed well:

at first.

But, oh no, even in Vienna the winds of progress are blowing. Look, curses, over in the corner, there's a bloody great flat screen telly:

and, even more distressing, next door do you see what's opened up:

We are all doomed, damn it. Nowhere at all is safe.

Things You Do When It's Very Hot

1. Have a cold shower
2. Wonder why, even when you're boiling, some instinct makes getting straight into a cold shower not an entirely pleasant prospect.
3. Have another cold shower
4. Decide that perhaps that instinct isn't really all that strong and have a third cold shower
5. Look up temperatures since 1973 on the Internet to try to work out whether this is global warming.
6. Feel amazed by how difficult it is to see any pattern in temperatures
7. Feel envious of those who lived through the summer of 2009 when the temperature never rose above 25
8. Feel surprised that husband, who over a 30-year marriage has never provided a trace of evidence that he was aware of anything emanating from California in the early seventies, knows the Joni Mitchell song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa'
9. Have another cold shower
10. Put wet washing over fan in hope the air will blow through it, becoming cold via the wetness of the clothing
11. Discover that that doesn't work
12. Think the Joni Mitchell song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa' is a pretty song, but prettier in the original version than the one currently on offer in your apartment
13. Put wet washing over your head and then sit facing fan - find that that does work as a cooling method but makes reading very hard.
14. Run a cold bath and in attempting to get into it realise that maybe instinct is stronger than you think after all.
15. Empty bath and have another cold shower.
16. Look up long term weather forecast
17. Begin to wonder if perhaps the Joni Mitchell song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa' is not actually pretty after all
18. Try to decide whether the pleasure of being at the pool is worth the effort of going through the hot streets to get to the pool.
19. Decide it probably isn't, especially as everyone else in the city is almost certainly there already.
20. Look up trains to Iceland
21. Look up weather in Iceland.
22. Start to regret the fact that Joni Mitchell ever wrote the song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa'
23. Look up hotels in Iceland. Realise you don't have enough money or time to go there.
24. Have another cold shower.
25. Decide that being hot is quite nice really, provided you have access to a cold shower.
26. Realise that you will scream if you ever hear that Joni Mitchell song that contains the phrase 'the wind is in from Africa' again, especially if sung by your husband.
27. Scream
28. Have another cold shower
29. Decide to write a blog post so that other people will at least feel sorry for you

Creative Writing

A while ago on the wonderful Age of Uncertainty blog, Steerforth posted some pictures of a very strange document.  I'd never seen anything like it, but one of his readers suggested that it was the work of someone with autism, which seemed a bit sad to me. What made me sadder was noticing this man on the train to Vienna (he subsequently discovered he was on the wrong train and had to get off and go back to the beginning to start his journey all over again):

and what he was busying himself with (if you can't zoom in, there are pages and pages of multi-coloured meaningless semi-writing):

He didn't seem unhappy, but there was still something strange and lonely about the thing.

Thank You Letters

We went the other day to a monastery in Romania where Patrick Leigh Fermor spent a night or two:

In a little corridor to the side of the main church there was a display of the paintings people have donated over the years to say thank you for prayers answered. This one dates from 1934, the date Leigh Fermor was at the monastery:

There are others that are older as well as some of a similar vintage and many more that are quite recent. They are touchingly naive. The recurring themes are bad driving and agricultural accidents:

This one has a strange sense of Janet and John about it:

I think this is my favourite:

Two Things I Never Knew about Bristol

1. That Mr Koszcziusko, of New South Wales mountain fame (plus one or two other minor activities) stayed in beautiful Queen Square in 1797;
2. That the dog on the His Master's Voice symbol lived in the city - in Park Row to be precise (or at least his master did, so presumably he was there too) - and that his name was Nipper

Travel really does broaden the mind.