Vienna Austria

Rod instinctively knew when the train crossed over into Austria because there in a field he saw it: a doe, a deer, a female deer! Then a ray, a drop of golden Sun came out.

Vienna is a very clean, tidy, polished and ordered city, a very ‘Western Europe’ place (except for smokers in restaurants) as opposed to the slight scruffiness of the Eastern European cities that we have visited. About the only untidy thing about Vienna is the graffiti, and some of that is actually quite good quality street art. There are some wonderful old and elaborate structures spread about the city.

We spent time absorbing huge amounts of very fine classical and modern art works, including Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Rodin, Degas, Toulous le Trec, Klimt, Schiele, etc, etc, etc. The list went on and on, all those famous names were there right in front of us. Pretty amazing stuff. The art galleries in Vienna are very fine indeed with large and impressive collections.

Being the home of so much classical music we engaged in an utterly splendid concert in a magnificent hall, listening to Strauss and Mozart, which really set the whole Vienna scene in a proper way. After the concert we walked back through the park late at night, thoroughly elated from the wonderful music, and despite the dark we felt very safe. Young lovers were snuggling on park benches, groups of people were sitting and chatting on the grass, it was all very peaceful and civilised.

We did find a jazz club for dinner, but sadly it was not quite up to scratch and we retired back to our hotel after the first set.