“No Kerosene”: Journey Two

Monday 20th March: To London

This journey started with the rather curious experience (for me) of falling over backwards on a upward rising escalator at Kings Cross-St Pancras Tube station…..
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the person in front overbalanced and I supported them…. But the impact pushed me backwards and I ended up upside down on the rising steps…. Jacqui shouted ‘stop the escalator’…. It stopped but because of my position, it took several people to both lift and pull me upright!

Fortunately, despite the accident and drama I managed to keep my hat undisturbed and in place (on my head).

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Comments were received:

Feet first on the “Stairway to Heaven” Ian . Is that what you call St Pancras now?

People pay good money for a thrill like that at the fairground
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Tuesday 21st March

Eurostar was late into Brussels – fortunately so was the ICE train to Köln

There are four features in this area

The Dom

The Hohenstaufen Bridge

The River Rhine

The Hauptbahnhof

DB have stated that the weight of the locks attached to the bridge has no impact on its safety.

The Hohenzollern Bridge over the Rhine in Cologne. First visited in 1966. Later I sat beside it after hitch-hiking from Berlin where I’d had a ‘bit of a run in’ with the East German authorities (visa issue which we Brits now need to get used to again when travelling in EU). I sat by the Rhine and eat a celebratory ‘bratwurst’ from a van. When the owner realised this was my 21st birthday he refused payment. The next night was also interesting as I encountered a Belgian dentist.

Wednesday 22nd March: To Wien

Wednesday 22nd March

On December 12th 2019 we had left the UK knowing that, due to the inability of reasonable politicians to act in concert, a man of almost no political ability save that of amusing a crowd gained a majority in Parliament.

Now, after a period of rule which became so chaotic that even his own MPs turned against him, it would seem that we were absent from the country on a day (21st March 2023) when, in front of a Committee of MPs his lies and failings became, at last, ‘fully revealed ‘blindingly obvious’.

Having escaped U.K. on December 2019…. We arrived in Cologne…The day that Britain elected an untrustworthy, corrupt liar to be its Prime Minister. That evening in the depressed mood, we chatted to a local couple with whom we dined. ‘Do not worry’ she said ‘you are at home here’ Real and consoling sympathy. Britain is now slowly learning to live with the results of that electoral choice. Today the same person, having been removed as Prine Minister, is trying to build a future that will allow him to return. The whole process is a farce. Note the ‘thought for the day’ in the picture.

… (Wednesday) we cross from the Rhine (flowing north) to the Danube (flowing east). When crossing the continent this was always significant…. Air flights do not provide this sense of culture, history and even still (fortunately) social reality. We are taken and dropped…. And have no time to recognise important change. For me the marker of this European change was ‘the onion domed’ church…. As I recall, a moment first realised in 1980 somewhere near ULM in Germany (it drew on memories from 1968…. More of which later in this journey). Now, until 19.42 hr, we are in Wien.
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I’ve just been told by our very nice guy who has served coffee, that the train us going to stop for 20 minutes.

This is to allow everyone to go to the toilet….. all the train toilets are closed because they have run out of water!

A plea from the train manager. ‘Please only use the toilet (on the station) if it is really really necessary’
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Vienna – the introductory architecture.

What’s the point of Vienna?

I’ve never wanted to be here

… and I’ve never understood why others wish to (visit).

Our focus is not Vienna but on lands east & south – Bulgaria & Turkey – accessed by train through Romania as Serbia has not, since Covid, been internationally reconnected by rail.

Our view: Vienna: a mere ‘stopover’ – though essential as it will occur 5 times in the next 2 months.

The journeys also include passing through Budapest 6 times (but with only one opportunity to move a short distance from the station).

This evening:

We arrive & walk towards the centre, quickly learning (due to the unexpected distance required) something of the size of the city.

Slowly, as we walk, a ‘growing awareness’… 5 times we will visit! … One with an extra day included.

Whatever I may feel about the place, this physical requirement to be here underscores its importance.

This first visit to Vienna becomes the start of an ‘Encounter’.

It marks the beginnings of a learning process & an attempt to understand Vienna’s significance in Europe & as inheritor, during the C18^th & early C19th of Rome’s role as ‘Imperial Capital’.

Reflective memories on personal experiences float to the mind’s surface. Speculations arise. Living events & comparatively ‘near’ past-history are drawn into the mix

Together they all create shadows that travel along side us.

The ‘Story of the No Kerosene Tour’ begins to take shape

Summary: What do we know at this point?

Vienna is romantically set by the Blue Danube
There are waltzes & somewhere… trained horses

Tomorrow:
before taking the Night Train, we will accept the romanticism and stroll its banks.

An evening stroll to nowhere in particular

The excessive confection of the Karlskirche
“Rektoratskirche St. Karl Borromäus”,

Reasons why I’ve never bothered coming to Vienna – but nonetheless ‘astonishing’ as an ultimate in baroque fantasy.

The decor of our hotel underscores the image of Vienna that I’ve always held – and tried to ignore. The image is used in the bedrooms as well as public areas.

Thursday 24th March

Where is the Danube?

We took a tram – to the end of the line

Eventually we found it

At least it’s mildly blue, though unlikely to inspire any form of dancing.

We wondered if many of the tourist that pour into the city ever even ‘see’ the Danube – and presumably, apart from those on the river boats, most never walk its concrete banks

strolled along its romantic concrete banks… and walked back to the hotel.

‘the wild My Unique Home’

Our walk had us considering the manner in which people live – and adjust to differing contexts…. but also amused by the ‘dreams’ being promoted to aid sales….. though near the Danube this area of concrete is hardly ‘wild’.

Dancing along the banks of the Danube….
Maybe some form of imitative waltzing ‘cakewalk’ might work.

But provides (along with associated parkland) ‘space’

Vienna continues to be Number 1 in the world on the The Economist ‘Liveability’ scale

The value of Inconsequential Wanderings

As we dragged ourselves along the long road back from the famous river suddenly there was a view that could only mean that we were at…..

Prater & in the presence of invented ghostly characters: Harry Lime

“The Third Man” was shot in Vienna in 1948. Today, visitors can retrace the footsteps of Harry Lime on the Third Man Tour sewer tour, at the Riesenrad (the Giant Ferris Wheel) and in the Third Man Museum.
Wien.info

Combined with the iconic theme music by zither player Anton Karas, seedy locations and acclaimed performances from the cast, the style evokes the atmosphere of an exhausted, cynical post-war Vienna at the start of the Cold War.

…The Third Man is considered one of the greatest films of all time, celebrated for its acting, musical score and atmospheric cinematography.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man

Thanks to the unwarranted invasion of Ukraine, many of the issues occurring in the film & which may have been considered ‘of the past’, have become, once again, ‘issues of the present’.

Learning Vienna's 'story' can become a meditative  exercise.... a means of reflecting on the history of Europe. Vienna, for someone from the west, is a point of change

From here the far western lands of the Continent. UK, Ireland, Portugal seem very distant. Spain would also seem so but for the Hapsburg link. France managed to look & link in several directions.

Maybe the Donaukanal satisfies those wishing for a Viennese Danubian Experience?… altogether now

la, la, la…la-la, la-la, la-la.

Field Marshal The Most Excellent Count Joseph Radetzky von Radetz (1766 – 1858)

Tokfo, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/at/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons

Radetsky’s origin exemplifies the varied nature of the Hapsburg-Austrian kingdom. He was born in Kingdom of Bohemia (now in Czechia, then a state within the Holy Roman Empire).

He continues to be held in high esteem despite fairly limited military success. Maybe his position has depended on the musical composition of Johann Strauss who dedicated the work to Radetsky (1848). As Viceroy of Lombardy – Venetia (1848 – 1859) he was particularly brutal – and presumably thus increased the determination of the local Italian population to liberate themselves which they did soon after his death.