Time Difference: -8 hours (from Brisbane)
Soundtrack: Beethoven's Piano Concertos
Currently Inspired by: David Helfgott!
Words written: 70,038. All quiet on the western front.
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| Canals in LJ City |
Ljubljana is, in a word, cute. In three words it would be cute but
forgettable. Europe’s smallest capital
city (of Slovenia), it has history, art, architecture and culture, just on a tiny
scale compared to everywhere else I’ve been, and when you consider that their
population is about 280,000 then that is entirely reasonable. If the Slovenian language was different from
Croatian then I was unable to tell. (I
don’t even know if the language spoken in Croatia is called “Croatian”). My ignorance relating to this entire part of
Europe is stunning, especially when you consider that I’ve been there. As I was a selfish young teenager during all
the Yugoslavian drama in the early nineties I only have the vaguest idea of
what went on, and if the people over here I have spoken with so far mention
“the war”, they tend to do so very briefly and then quickly move onto other
topics, so my instinct is to leave the subject alone and do some research on my
own, which I shall at some point.
As I knew nothing about anything, I was keen to have some
kind of a guided tour about the place, and caught a bus into town where I
marched up to town hall to take a guided walking tour. Unfortunately I had just missed one by about
fifteen minutes and the next wasn’t for four hours, so I decided to make do on
my own. Consequently, I ended up walking
around all the main sites of Ljubljana and taking photos of everything I liked
without ever knowing what it was I was looking at or why things were the way
they were.
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| Use of black in the Cathedral |
One of my favourite stops on this trip was inside the
Cathedral. It was happily unlike (the
many, many) others I have seen. Still
ornate and dripping in gold, but with an unusual use of black in its design,
and it really worked a treat. Unfortunately
I still had to go through my usual twitchy church ritual, which consists of
pausing near the holy water at the entrance because I feel weird entering
without blessing myself, reason finally winning out against conditioning,
walking in and sitting in a pew to have a quiet look around, only to have to
pause and fight with myself at the beginning of it about not genuflecting first,
feeling awkward about leaving the pew without kneeling down and saying a Hail
Mary or an Our Father, taking a few photos before feeling super tense and
paranoid and rushing outside to gulp lots of air, only pausing by the holy
water again on the way out. So anyone
who thinks that childhood Catholic conditioning doesn’t keep its hooks in you,
remember that a committed atheist is writing this blog right now, and I always,
always, always, always have a version of this experience inside churches. On rare occasions I will just bless myself
and genuflect and do the stuff to make myself less tense about it, although I’m
always cross with myself afterwards. The
argument in my head goes like this:
“You’d better bless yourself
before you go any further”
“Don’t be ridiculous”
“But you’re supposed to”
“It one of the many arbitrary and arcane religious rituals devised to control the masses. I don’t even believe in all that crap”
“Well in that case it doesn’t matter, it’s just a bit of water on your forehead. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is I don’t want to pander to organised religion and its evil, greedy, intolerant, sex obsessed nonsense”
“It’s a bit of harmless water ffs, not a political statement”
“None of these rituals are harmless when you look at them in the context of all the harm done by organised religion”
“Then why are you going into the church at all?”
“Errr... cause I like the art...”
“*shakes head at own hypocrisy*”
“Don’t be ridiculous”
“But you’re supposed to”
“It one of the many arbitrary and arcane religious rituals devised to control the masses. I don’t even believe in all that crap”
“Well in that case it doesn’t matter, it’s just a bit of water on your forehead. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is I don’t want to pander to organised religion and its evil, greedy, intolerant, sex obsessed nonsense”
“It’s a bit of harmless water ffs, not a political statement”
“None of these rituals are harmless when you look at them in the context of all the harm done by organised religion”
“Then why are you going into the church at all?”
“Errr... cause I like the art...”
“*shakes head at own hypocrisy*”
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| Interesting pose! |
The thing is, I think the art and music that has been inspired and produced by religion is the best part of it. The art doesn't hurt anyone that can see it, the music doesn't exclude anyone that can hear it. Are they evil in and of themselves? I argue with myself about this all. the. time. How can an organisation that refers to itself as charitable, manage to commission and pay for pieces of art from the most famous artists of all time? Why do cathedrals contain so much marble and so much gold, and how many poor people could be fed and could have been fed by the cumulative costs of all of these buildings and their contents throughout the world and throughout time? Wasn't Jesus supposed to be a poor and humble carpenter who eschewed worldly possessions? Why does his spirit need to be housed in these giant palaces, and why do his bishops need to be preside over such splendour? Anyone who wants to get into this with me, feel free! This is a bit of a religion-bashing post.
Craving fresh food and NO bread / pastry / pasta I
went into a Japanese restaurant and had a tasty but hideously expensive late
lunch, and then continued back the hotel feeling like I’d just had a good five
hours’ walking with little to show for it.
The constant icy weather and rain didn’t help matters. I regretted not just sneaking in and tagging
along with the walking tours that I passed, something I considered several
times but never had the balls to do. Being
in a large group may have also saved me from nearly getting run down about a
thousand times by Slovenia’s many fast and crazy cyclists that don’t appear to
follow any discernible road / footpath rules.
I was a little paranoid there because there are a few countries that I
didn’t decide on going to until recently and as such they are not included in
my travel insurance. Knowing my luck,
something will happen in one of these places.
To see the nonetheless cute Ljubljana, click here.
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| I'd love to come here in summer! |
Lake Bled is gorgeous, or at least I saw enough of it to
imagine that it would be gorgeous, stunning in fact, in nice weather. As it was, cold, grey, and for the most part
thundering down with rain, it had limited impact, for which I was sorry. It was the largest lake I’ve ever seen in
person, and had a castle at one end of it that I was absolutely certain had a
beautiful princess locked in its tower, awaiting her prince, and some green
hills with a windy path and a few stone houses with chimneys where I’m sure a
woodcutter and his wife lived next door to a witch in a gingerbread house. I’ve never seen a place that more evoked an
air of fairytale wonder. Certainly most
fairytales were set here, or somewhere like it?
It’s too picturesque. Click here
to see the few photos I was able to get at Lake Bled. It is actually the colour of emeralds up
close, but unfortunately the sky reflected in it made it grey.
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| Himself |
I. LOVE. VIENNA. I mean, I REALLY love it. I embarked on my
journey in a jacket, long sleeves and long pants, and arrived about four hours
later into a 27 degree, cloudless Spring day, much to my sweaty delight. Vienna is almost too beautiful, if that is
possible. You find yourself taking
photos of chemists and post offices, because they look like museums. The museums in turn look like palaces, so you
can imagine what the actual palaces look like!
In the suburbs (where I am staying), you could easily be in Brisbane. Generic streets and roads, BP service
stations, supermarkets et al give the impression of being Anywhere, The World. However the centre of the city is where it is
at, and by IT I mean a ridiculous number of the most gorgeous buildings I’ve
ever seen, a glut of world class concert halls, universities, opera houses, Roman
ruins and some of the best museums and libraries in the world. It also houses a veritable treasure trove of
monuments, not dedicated to a pack of generic warmongers like in most capital cities
(although there are a couple), but instead to people who with their
contributions have made the world a better place. People like Mozart, Brahms, Strauss, Mahler, Goethe,
Freud, and of course the Immortal Beloved Beethoven. All either from Vienna or worked there at one
point in their lives. No wonder they
call it the City of Music, and sometimes (because of Freud) the City of Dreams.
I have managed to avoid the rich Austrian pastries thus far, not through
any act of willpower but because I am so goddamn sick of bread in all its
incarnations. Bread: The Traveller’s
Staple. Hungry? You buy a sandwich if you can find one. Order a soup or salad? Comes with bread. Want something quickly while you’re out? You have a wide choice of either sweet or
savoury pastries and cakes. My kingdom for a plate
of veggies. Just veggies. I am definitely not eating to maximum
nutritional benefit. When I arrived in
Vienna, I was almost immediately assailed with a temperature and a nasty head
cold that kept me inside, aching and feverish for my first two days here. Considering I only had four days in the city
and I have been wearing a jacket pretty much every day since November, you can
imagine I wasn’t overly thrilled to be stuck inside while the sunny world went
on its merry way outside my window. I
was too sick to write or even sit up for long, and spent my days crabbily
watching episodes of the West Wing online and picking at my split ends. When it let up, it was like the end of a jail
term and I bounced out of doors, marching around the place trying to stuff
everything in as expediently as I could, quickly tiring my not-fully-recovered
self.
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| David and the SSO |
That first night, after coming back for a quick nap and a
shower, I went to see David Helfgott playing piano with the Stuttgart
Symphonica in the most famous of Vienna’s concert halls, the Golden Hall in the
Musikverein. If you don’t know who David
Helfgott is and would like to, click here.
Of course it was utterly brilliant, and my enjoyment was only slightly dampened by the strong compulsion to stab the Japanese man next to me who insisted on breathing
through his partially obstructed nose the entire time. It started as an annoying little rasp and as my rage
levels rocketed and my ears zeroed in on him, he turned into a fucking human
kazoo. On several occasions I was so
close to nudging him with my elbow and going “Oi, One Man Band, can you open
your mouth please?” that I actually began to bend my arm, but I always
chickened out. Do the Viennese crowds
know how to do applause! David (I should
say ‘and the orchestra’, but it was him, really) received easily close to a ten
minute standing ovation after the performance, and then did three encores, each
of which were followed with several minutes more of standing ovations. My arms were actually tired, which I think
speaks to the need to do some pushups more than anything else.
My irritability when I was ill was compounded by the fact
that I tried to book tickets to see the Vienna Boys’ Choir in concert one night
while here and discovered that they were sold out. Of course this was entirely my fault for not
checking ahead, but I was being such a spoilt brat that I literally kicked the
desk when I found that out and hurt my toe a bit. Further investigation revealed a Sunday
morning mass at the most famous of the inner city chapels with music provided
by the VBC. I went onto the website and
it was in German only which was fine. I
got it translated and found that tickets couldn’t be booked online which was
fine. I emailed them instead, and it
bounced back. Things were still fine, as
there was a phone number. I rang and
rang it at various intervals for the two days, got the receptionist at the hotel to
try for me also, and nobody ever answered.
Things were becoming distinctly not fine. Finally I tried again in a desperate attempt yesterday
and they answered, and advised me that most of the tickets were gone but if I
arrived early on the Sunday morning they may have some “cheap seat” tickets
still available. I rocked up early this
morning, with a hopeful face and a pocket full of dreams (and euros, they won’t
take dreams apparently, the stingy bastards), and managed to score myself one
of the last tickets!
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| VBC in their last song after the mass |
After all that, it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. I’ve seen the VBC before, many years ago when
I was in school and they did an Australian tour, and they were impeccably
groomed, disciplined, angelic and goosebump inducing. This new crop were sullen and fidgety. Some of them just stood there looking around
wherever they felt like it, idly playing with their robes, not opening their
mouths when they sang. Some of them
looked like they weren’t even singing, scratching their faces and adjusting
their untidy hair or uniforms. Also it
was a small group of them, maybe 20 or so.
I get the feeling that these Sunday masses are simply a money making
activity (like most Sunday masses – ba-boom tish!) and they get whatever dregs
they can to perform and don’t really treat it like a proper performance. They did sound alright, but not any better
than a decent choir, and that is not the way it should be. I think it is dangerous of them to mess with
their brand like that, because how many people might go to that who have not
seen them before, and leave thinking that’s the best they can do? Hmmm.
Anyway, I’m glad I went and it was a nice start to the
day. Except for the mass part obviously, but it
was all in German so I managed to tune most of it out. The priest was obviously a higher ranking
kind of priest, I don’t know what, but you can always tell because at least in
the Catholic Church they denote rank by giving them more big and ridiculous
hats the higher up they get, til you get to the Pope, whose hat is half the
size of him again and that weird building shape. This priest had a strange hot pink kind of
fez thing with a big fuschia bobble on top that looked like something Aunt Mildred
wore to the races last Spring Carnival, so I think he must’ve been pretty
important. The day only improved from
there. A walk in the sun, a visit to the
Mozart memorial, a sit on the softest grass among tiny white flowers, a trip to
the Danube and the northern part of the city and the genuinely friendly
sunshine conspired in the most pleasant fashion to give me a feeling of utter
contentment. It was one of those “perfect days” and I treasured it. Vienna will
always be coloured golden in my memories.
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| Can you SEE them? |
The Schonbrunn Palace (how do you get little dots and dashes
above your letters? I’ve never known how
to do that) had the most beautiful grounds.
I didn’t go inside the palace, but I strolled around the gardens for
ages, enjoying the sun on my face, the fact that I was wearing short sleeves, the
cute little squirrels, and imagining I could hear the tinkling strains of a very
young Mozart playing the piano inside for the Queen, something he did when he
was six years old, along with his sister, who, it mustn’t be forgotten, was also
an incredibly talented musician but who unfortunately possessed a vagina in the
wrong era. As I tripped around the long
alleyways of fresh spring green trees and blossoming tulips, I could almost
visualise like a delicate overlay sitting over reality, a bunch of famous
composers of the day in their stockings and breeches, strolling alongside me, composing
and conducting the floating dandelions like notes through the air and I
remember thinking “This is the real Vienna.”
If you come here, you must go to Schonbrunn Palace.
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| Said fanged deer. Fake or Real?? |
Unfortunately due to time restrictions I didn’t have time to
do at least half the things I wanted to do, and the toughest choice came today –
choosing between the Fine Arts museum and the Natural History Museum. Both world famous. I know Natural History can be a bit boring
(and nothing in history changes!) so I was tempted to go to the Fine Arts
Museum but when I realised a. I’ve seen pretty much nothing but art museums on
this trip thus far b. The Art Museum was having a Gustav Klimt exhibition
(whose work I don’t care for) and c. The line to get in was thirty metres long,
I decided to opt for Natural History, and didn’t regret it. It deserves its reputation. Not only is the interior of the building unsurpassed
in beauty, the collection was the most comprehensive I’ve ever seen. I spent an hour looking at rocks, for heavens’
sake. ROCKS. I’m fairly convinced, although I’m sure even
the tiniest bit of research will prove me wrong, that this museum has one of
everything. One of everything in the
world. One of every snake, spider,
elephant, bear, (these are all stuffed obviously), bird, fish, mineral, stone,
fabric, and so on. They even had this deer
looking thing in the exhibit that held all the deer family, and it had
fangs. I’m sure that a museum worker put them
in there as a practical joke years ago waiting for someone to notice and forgot
about it, and no one’s ever said anything.
You know, a bit of taxidermist humour, such as it is.
Bambi ain't got fangs in my world.
I’ve just noticed how huge this blog is, so I’ll sign out
with this interesting fact: Vienna is 51%
green space. There are 120 metres of
green space for every resident, and something like 2,800 parks in total (1.7
million inhabitants). No small wonder it
is so beautiful! Click here to see my Vienna photos.
Til Next We Speak
*LOVE*
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