As if their litte-red-riding-hood outfits aren’t torture enough, the flight attendants at Austrian Airlines have to listen constantly to Johann Strauss waltzes piped through the speaker system supposedly to prepare passengers for Vienna, the city of music.

You might roll your eyes on the plane, as I did, but once here the history of musicians living, working and dying in Vienna certainly grabs you, somewhat overwhelming in all its riches.  They are revered and remembered, as seen when walking through the city, the outlying villages that often housed summering aristocracy with their attendant composers or performers, and in the central cemetery where a whole section of honor graves is devoted to famous artists.

Let’s start with the latter: Vienna’s Zentral Friedhof can be reached by a comfortable 40 minute streetcar ride. It is the second largest cemetery in Europe, a peaceful place that is in alternation well tended and totally dilapidated, the latter particularly in the old Jewish section which is covered at times in knee-high fields of stinging nettles.. No wonder, given that there are no families left of those buried here in the 1800s.

The cemetery offers sections for all religions, all kinds of wildlife,

and houses famous musicians. Mozart’s remains were transferred here from a pauper’s grave;

Beethoven,

Brahms,

Schoenberg and Schubert are buried here;

so are Franz von Suppe and of course Johann Strauss.

For those of us devoted to some of their music paying respect tugs at some heart strings.

It doesn’t hurt either that the cemetery cafe offers by far superior fare than most other tourist trap cafes in the center city – and yes, I have tried a few…

Today I took the bus to the village of Kahlenberg, a small hamlet amongst endless vineyards, which has its own musical history. Schubert’s premiere performance of his Lied: Leise flehen meine Lieder took place at a birthday party here 190 years ago to the day, August 7, 1828.

There is a Linden tree dedicated to him across from the house (which later on housed the very first Austrian asylum for orphaned children.)

A long, hot hike through the vineyards with Vienna visible in the distance led to the village of Nussbaum, which celebrates several musical inhabitants of yore, among them Richard Tauber and Karl Millöcker.

And finally nearby there is the cloister of Klosterneuburg, dripping in wealth, but sharing it tastefully, both in its museal configurations and in its performance of live chamber music and operas throughout the summer in some sort of amphitheater.

For once I did not think about the catholic church’s means of acquisition of wealth (in this case the very first vineyards on Austrian soil) or its oppressive use thereof, but simply enjoyed a hot summer day under the beauty of enormous gothic steeples.

Did I mention it’s hot? Dinner at a traditional inn had me almost choke on my Knödel when these melted candles appeared in my line of sight.

Dear vicarious travelers:

As promised, here are some observations from the next leg of my trip, a stay in Vienna.

(Internet is infernally slow and spotty, so image sizes had to be scaled down.)

I had never been here before and find the contrast between the beauty of this city and the political (re)emergence of  right-wing forces with nationalist appeal somewhat hard to digest. On the surface, the world around me is suffused with light, art, culture, stunning architecture and seemingly innocent history which makes it a tourist’s paradise. Yet it’s brown   underneath.

I took the subway from the airport to my neighborhood in the 2nd district  – the public transportation system is remarkable and remarkably easy to use – and was greeted at the station with holocaust commemoration. The neighborhood is home to orthodox Jews, sights and smells reminding of years back in Brooklyn.

First meal was at a small, delicious Jewish cafe, then a a walk through the neighborhood. Markers of losses and persecution, as well as memorials to those who helped, can be found at various street corners.

Commemoration of war and fascism is visible in many places in the city, looming large, which makes you wonder why that dark history seems to be forgotten.

One of the most famous Viennese who had to flee in the 1930s was, of course, Sigmund Freud. The Berggasse house where he lived, practiced and wrote is now a museum, albeit not for long.

The house is up for renovation and they have to find an alternative place, one that is large enough to accommodate all those international pilgrims to the birthplace of psychoanalysis.

The museum displays some of his original writings, some furniture, lots of pictures, copies of letters etc – well done in the sense that it seems to preserve the atmosphere of those rooms. A display guide offered lots of text by Freud, from letters to those depicted on the available photographs. (Letters that confirmed, in my humble opinion, some of his misogynistic tendencies at least when it came to members of his family or patients who were not among the rich and famous.) The couch and chair were only there as models – they have found a permanent home in London since he took much of his household with him, seemingly without problems.

Contemporary art is displayed at the entrance of the house,

contemporary wit across the street. (Not a single Freudian joke to be had in the museum giftshop, by the way, it’s all very serious business….)

At the street corner is an old drugstore that seems to be frozen in time. The chatty proprietor, approaching his eighties and spright in his red sneakers, showed us a stool that Freud had sat on when he came to visit for chats with the owner’s father. He also smilingly pointed to the drawers that contained cannabis, apparently a frequent purchase in the 1920s. I now own a pack of bandaids that sat on the counter once touched by the master – perhaps I’ll use it as a gift to someone who is psychoanalytically inclined,which I am most assuredly not. The bandaids might not last long, though, given my swollen feet.

The heat is sweltering. People walk their dogs in fountains, the pigeons dare to lose their balance to get a sip, and the sculptures keep drink nearby.

Fire hydrants seem to be behind lock and key….and A/C is non-existent.  I am in heaven, regardless. The amount of visual stimulation has me buzzing!  To be continued.

In film making, the 180-degree rule is a basic guideline regarding the on-screen spatial relationship between a character and another character or object within a scene. By keeping the camera on one side of an imaginary axis between two characters, the first character is always frame right of the second character. Moving the camera over the axis is called jumping the line or crossing the line; breaking the 180-degree rule by shooting on all sides is known as shooting in the round. The 180-degree rule enables the audience to visually connect with unseen movement happening around and behind the immediate subject and is important in the narration of battle scenes.

Ok, I won’t narrate battle scenes (I hope) but I will relate tales between a character and the happenings around that character while on the road, starting next week.

Here is the character, that younger self of mine, to whose past I’m still tied, on the right side of the imaginary axis.

In other words, curtains up for Europe next week. I am signing off, and will report, however haphazardly, from my travels for the next month.

Hope you’ll enjoy the vicarious adventures as well as the perfect symphony for travel – Sibelius himself wrote it while traveling in Italy, and the joy and levity is just the ticket!

(Blest be) the Tie that Binds is a hymn written in 1782 by theologian John Fawcett. It was a celebration of ties to faith, family and community, devised when he made a decision to stay in a poorly paying job as pastor, instead of accepting a more highly compensated and prestigious posting somewhere else.

The phrase is ubiquitous these days, just check the list of TV episodes, regardless from which series, that make use of it, annotated by our friend Wikipedia. It was also a famous 1980 Bruce Springsteen song which you might or might not remember.

Memories are for many the ties that bind. Good or bad, cherished or unwanted, they provide the link to the past, even if they are at times a wobbly suspension bridge missing multiple rungs more than anything else. My memories of Holland are occasionally refreshed by treks back to the old haunts, when meeting my sister. It feels like a home coming of sorts, not so much tied to that particular place, but to particular preferences that were instilled there early. A preference for flatness over mountains, nature over urban living, travel and ultimately water.

That fondness drew me yesterday, as every year, to the river at the Portland waterfront, where the fleet of ships was arriving for the annual Rose Festival. What caught my eye this year were the ropes tying those big ships to land.

The ropes seemed beautiful representations of the ties of remembrance: at times colorful and sturdy, at others frayed and spliced.  Safely knotted, carefully folded, coiled or stretched, they secure the past whether you want it or not. Memorial lariats might act at times as destructive constraints, but those cords can also keep you anchored, when remembering who you are and how you came to be that way provides some grounding in these challenging times.

I am signing off today for a week or so, since I am having surgery next week to remove a decidedly unfriendly gallbladder and won’t be having the clear head needed for writing. I’ll be back pestering you with politics in no time. And do watch the video so you can see I haven’t gone soft, still clinging to my idiosyncratic sense of humor.

In Judaism the number 18 is synonymous with the word chai, life, formed by the eighth and tenth letter of the alphabet, chet and yud, adding up to 18. The number is considered fortuitous. So I take next year’s date as pointing to life, promising us all something precious.

I have been thinking a lot about how precious life actually is, and how people cling to it, fight for it, refuse to give up in the face of threats to it; I spent the last week in the former heartland of slavery, the city which fired the first shot in the civil war and a region that unfortunately up to this day often claims a “way of life” more important that the inalienable right to a safe, free and equal life for us all. Much food for thought.

Yes, I visited Charleston, South Carolina, one of the biggest harbors of the slave trade, located in a region whose economy depended on the cultivation and trade of rice, cotton and other southern crops, impossible without slave labor.

Behind the beauty of a historic southern city, a landscape filled with water, tropical plants, majestic palm trees and swampland rich with wildlife, lies a dark past. Yet, like so often, there are quite a few contradictory factors merging into a complex pattern.

Charleston is nicknamed the Holy City; it has more than 400 churches ( for a population of slightly over 100 000 people) with more denominations represented since the 16oo’s than you can possibly name. Who would have thought that, in addition to being a stronghold for the principles of slavery, the city was incredibly progressive in allowing diversity among faiths, embracing every possible form of worship, including the integration of the persecuted Huguenots fleeing from France and Jews – the second oldest synagogue in the US is located here –  and eventually Catholicism in the 1800s. The churches incidentally were built with high enough towers that they allowed safe navigation for the ships coming in from the Atlantic.

Ships that brought chained and famished humans who were seen as property, sold, exploited, raped and killed at their masters’ whim. Who subsisted in freezing cold and infernally hot summers, exposed to the elements and the masses of insects and dangerous animals around here, for one reason only: economic enrichment (talked up by some version of “we’re saving those subhumans’ souls.)

Charleston today celebrates its beauty, acknowledges its history (to some degree) when you visit the national park monuments, hints at clinging to old traditions, but generally is a predominantly white city filled with friendly people and an incredible food scene. You only get glimpses of the dark past if you stumble into some museum or happen to stop behind this or that bumper sticker..

I hope you’ll take the vicarious tour of what I experienced, share the joy that the week provided as well as the inability to understand why racism in its many forms simply refuses to die. Photographs today are architecture from the city center,

and the neighborhood (below) where I rented a lovely apartment in walking distance to town, 

surrounded by what’s poor

and what’s scooped up by the burgeoning IT business folks.

May 2018 see us all healthy and strong so we can dedicate parts of ourselves to a fight for more equality and  justice. Happy New Year!

And, of course, travel…..