| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
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As you enter the palace, you follow the path a visitor would follow. First you see a guard room, then this waiting room, and finally a receiving room where after waiting for hours you might have three minutes with the emperor.
Notable events that happened at Schoenbrunn include Mozart's first Vienna concert when he was a small boy. There is a group painting of everybody at a Hapsburg party about that time. It is not unlike a huge group photo. It includes Mozart as a young boy.
As we were walking, around two Japanese women joined our party to get a free guide. That would not have been bad, but they kept getting in the way when we wanted to see things.
When we finished with the palace we started on the grounds, where there was a triumphal arch and 40,000 flowers, each pretty much like the others. (Can you tell that palaces do not viscerally fascinate me? I have never lived in any house or apartment either as opulent or as uncomfortable as Schoenbrunn Palace. I have indoor plumbing, 16,000 books, nearly 1000 movies, and reliable air conditioning and heating in my house. It is difficult to believe that the Hapsburgs wouldn't prefer my house to theirs for sheer comfort and entertainment value. I sure would. I am hardly going to be impressed that they have gold leaf on the walls! Technology has changed a lot of things.)
We also saw the exterior of Belvedere, the palace of Prince Eugene, who led the country to victory over the Turks. I will let Evelyn describe that. Palaces are just not my thing, I guess.
When the tour was over we were left in the middle of Vienna (or could have elected to return to the hotel--fat chance!). During the city tour, Evelyn and I both noticed a monument that seemed to be to Holocaust victims, though it was not mentioned by the guide. We decided to go back and try to find it again. On the way in the metro we looked at a display bemoaning the negative effect Fascism had on Austria. It showed samples of Nazi propaganda. They have one panel with about forty people Austria lost to emigration or extermination due to Nazi Fascism. Most were Jewish, of course. I guess Austria was occupied like a lot of other countries so what happened cannot be said to be Austria's fault, but somehow you don't hear much about how Austria resisting Nazism and the Holocaust the way countries like France, Denmark, Norway, and (of course) the Netherlands resisted.
We found the monument we were looking for and it apparently was on some Nazi site and commemorates the fall of the 'Thousand-Year Reich.'
After that we went for lunch, buying small pieces of bierkase and mascarpone cheese. There was a strange buttermilk drink with strawberry flavor. We also got a good dark bread.
From there we went looking for a sort of film site. There is a park that Joseph II opened to the public in 1766. It is called the Prater and today it is best known for an amusement park. And the amusement park is best known for its huge ferris wheel, the Riesenrad. And the Riesenrad may be best known for its use in THE THIRD MAN. It is on this wheel that Harry Lime meets Holly Martin (played respectively by Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten) and Lime gives that wonderful rationale for evil. The wheel itself is 197 feet in diameter and the cars are fully enclosed and almost like train compartments. The ride costs about $2.60 and it is just once around, taking about ten minutes. As you start to go up and people in your car move around, the car begins to tip. You hear the wind whipping around the car, and you seem to keep going up a long way. Then it is over the top and you are headed down. It is worth doing.
From there we headed to the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, a military arms museum. It was quite a walk to get to it since public transit only comes to the neighborhood of the museum.
There is something missing from the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum. Somehow it is not a very interesting museum. England has about four museums to cover what this one does in one and each one is more interesting and has more worth seeing. Part of the problem may be in my education and in Hollywood. Huh? How's that again? Neither my education nor filmmakers have done much with Austria's wars. It is pretty tough to name even one war in which Austria was the leading power on one side. Austria participated in the Napoleonic Wars, but that is true of most of Europe.
About the most interesting exhibits on the top floor were from Austria's war with the invading Turks. That memorabilia was at least colorful.
Secondly, most of the museum, three of the four wings, is dedicated to infantry. There is not much to show with infantry. You can show rifles, maps of the battlefield, maybe captured souvenirs, and here and there have a painting, but you don't have fancy equipment given to infantry until after the American Civil War. That was the first war in which science and technology was a major factor. So two of the four halls just do not have that much of interest. Those are on the upper floor. The lower floor gets into wars of this century so you get things of interest from World War I and World War II. Some interesting weapon design, some big equipment, though not that much can be concentrated in the third wing. The fourth wing is navy and flying and there, of course, even the equipment that predated the Civil War was interesting.
The most interesting items, however, were the car and the clothing that Archduke Ferdinand was in when he was killed. That was the spark that set off World War I, of course. The car is there, still with a bullet hole. And the uniform has dried blood. These certainly are curiosities of some interest.
As I walked through this museum I had the feeling that it was a museum to a dying practice. I guess it was the founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses who first wrote a book claiming the world would come to an end about 1916 and then after the date wrote another book explaining that it really had and we just hadn't noticed! Well, my feeling is that the people who used to claim that nuclear weapons would end war were right; we just have not noticed. Military wars actually are ending. It may be taking a while to put out all the flames, but military war seems to me to be dying and being replaced by economic war. The Middle East, where the powers are least mechanized, is where it is taking the longest. The Iran-Iraq war had weapons and tactics much like World War I.
In recent years the Soviet Union did not have the economic power to play the 'Star Wars' game and so turned over all their cards. That nullified the Vietnam conflict. Vietnam is now asking the United States to help them become an economic power. They aren't spreading Communism because they are fresh out themselves. After the Vietnam War there was some question if we really were the masters of technological warfare. Saddam Hussein thought he'd call us on that boast and discovered it was not a bluff. That was the kind of conflict that Britain used to have and would be embroiled in for a long time. For us it was over pretty quickly because it was little more than a matching of technology.
Right now we have the acknowledged best team and there is nobody around to play us or who even wants to. I think we will to turn out to have been the last masters of military war when that game stopped being played. From now on it's going to be economic warfare with the possible exception of the Middle East and that will take a while. I think George Bush has gotten a lot of cynical flak about his so-called 'New World Order.' I think he didn't do that much to bring it about, but I think his observation that there is a new world order may be right on the money. And I think it is very much the legacy of weapons too powerful to use--nuclear weapons. Not that economic war won't be serious warfare, but far fewer will be killed.
Getting back to the subject at hand, I was somewhat surprised to see what they claimed was a portable rocket launcher dating from 1865. It was very nearly what we now call a bazooka. There was the usual assortment of gas masks.
The fourth hall had models of Austrian ships and submarines. They had the badly corroded conning tower of a sub, but our German was not good enough to tell us why. They had one complete biplane out on the floor.
One thing that struck me as odd was that while the major victory celebrated was to keep out the Turks and Islam, the front of the museum was decorated in Islamic geometric style. Our metrocard took us back via bus, tram, metro, and trolley. We didn't plan it that way; it was just how it worked out.
For dinner we went outside the city to a somewhat more rural area where the new wine was available. That doesn't do me much good, of course, since I really have an aversion to the taste of alcohol. In Austria, if you have new wine you hang pine branches and boughs outside the restaurant.
They ushered us to a room where there were Austrian musicians playing. It would have been nice, but they kept playing American or international songs. Evelyn and I decided to tip them twenty schillings and then dock them one schilling for each non-Austrian song they played. They did not play all the time so they ended with a fifteen-schilling tip. The meal opened with dark bread and cold cuts. The main course was chicken, beef, pork, and ham served on a central platter. You took what you wanted. It is a sign of changing American tastes that the chicken was by far in the highest demand. I don't think the ham was touched at all. Dessert was apfel strudel.
The troubadours who had earlier given up on getting us to listen to music instead of talking politics came back to give it another shot. First they tried to get us all sentimental with 'Auld Lang Syne.' Of course, that works only on New Year's Eve.
On the way back, Mojca pointed out the red light district of Vienna. It really was just the street our hotel was on. Some of us thought it might be interesting to walk back through the district. Mojca picked a place that was just three blocks from the hotel, and Sam and Susan, Jack and Trude Levy, and Evelyn and I got off the bus. After about a block it started to rain. Hard. Well, to make a long story short we saw three or maybe four of the ladies. They were in short skirts with garter belts on the outside. And they had these sexy umbrellas that really looked inviting. Particularly since the three blocks was closer to twelve. That was bad enough but some of the group had crises of faith and thought we'd lost our way, which only meant more running around in the rain. I told them I'd seen the street when we drove in the day before and I was seeing the same shop signs. We were going the right way; I just was not sure how far it was. But whatever it was, we had to walk it. We got back a bit drenched and at Sam's insistence paid a little visit on Mojca, just so she could see us dripping on the hall carpeting.
I stayed up late writing in my log. I just am not allowing myself sufficient writing time and I am perpetually either two or three days behind. It is maddening. Part of the problem is that I say I will write on the bus and then between interruptions and the bouncing on the bus, I make no progress. I put on the television and there in German translation was the Hammer Films horror movie PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES. I watched it out of the corner of my eye while I wrote. When it was over, I did some channel flipping and the 1960s DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS was on in English so back I went to writing with that on. I was up until about 1:30 AM. Some day I'll learn how to relax rather than pushing myself constantly. I guess I commit myself too much. A trip log is expected from this trip.
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| Today we drive to Budapest. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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