The Art of the U-Bahn

Vienna's underground train (U-Bahn) began to take shape in 1968. That helps to explain why many of the stations look like this.  Minimalist, clean, safe, and efficient, by all means. 

But let's face it, it's not the Paris Metro.

The U-Bahn component of Vienna's public transportation system alone is extensive, more than 75 kilometers in length across and around the city. The keen observer will note five U-Bahn lines: U1, U2, U3, U4….and U6. The lines are colored but the trains are numbered. Adding to the numerical mysteries is the fact that the U3 is the youngest of the lines.

The U3 line is deemed the "Art Line" of the system. (Obviously, the U5 is the Stealth Line.) Taking advantage of an otherwise cold and grey winter day this week I rode the rails of the U3 in search of the art.

At Zippererstrasse, school children across Vienna competed for the 20 winning art spaces that depict "Mobility in the coming Millennium."  The art definitely brightens an otherwise dreary station.

Further west along the U3 is Landstraße, a busy hub connecting to the regional trains and the separate airport line, and with a brand spanking new shopping mall on top (that is, naturally, closed for shopping on Sundays and holidays). For the longest time I assumed this wall was graffiti. Nope. It is intentional "playful and joyful depictions of animals" to contrast with everyday electronic life. 

At Stubentor, parts of the old city wall have been incorporated into the station, but no mention was made of the pink paintings. 

In 1972, while excavating beneath Stephansdom for the U3 and U1 lines, an underground crypt dating to the 13th century was discovered and is presented for visitors. Above ground one can view the outline of the crypt. 

3 million hand-broken pieces of Murano glass went into creating the history of the universe since the Big Bang at the Volkstheater station. By far my favorite station in the entire system.

The terminus of my art tour was Westbahnhof. This station is noteworthy even without the addition of the "55 Steps through Europe" sculpture presentation on the evolution of Europe.

Westbahnhof was originally constructed and named for Empress Elisabeth, and was the connection between the Austrian and Hungarian empires. All that remains is a quiet statue of the Empress tucked in a corridor.

In 1938 the station had a new purpose, the movement of hundreds of (mainly) Jewish children to safe homes in the British countryside as part of the Kindertransport efforts. The woman responsible for moving these children to safety wrote in her journal that the Nazi Official in charge "gave" her 600 children and a short notice for departure, ostensibly assuming she would fail. She did not. Later, the station would also serve as the departure point for Viennese Jews being transported to Dachau. 

The rest of the station's history is somewhat predictable, at least around these parts. The station was nearly destroyed in WWII, and subsequently rebuilt in the 1950s.

I think the Empress would like the new look. 

In Praise of the Döner Kebab

A few days ago I read some rather uncharitable words about one of my favorite Viennese street foods from an ex-pat living here, and I was thus inspired to sing the praises of the lowly Döner Kebab. Or, if you prefer, Shawarma, Gyros, Tacos al Pastor, Sufflaqe, Tarna, or Dyuner.

What is the Döner Kebab? Literally, the Turkish words translate to "Turning Roast." In its most elegant form, the rotating spit of lamb looks something like this. Anna Grace and I savored this treat in Istanbul many times over last summer. And personally, to me a well prepared Döner sandwich is darned close to haute street cuisine.

This combination of roasted meat, vegetables, and flattened bread (a balanced and perfect meal!) has been around forever in the Middle East; its culinary leap to mainstream street food across Europe (and Asia, Australia, South America and the U.S.) is believed to have happened first in Berlin sometime in the 1970s, says the Berlin Association of Turkish Döner Manufacturers. Or in 1966 in the UK. Take your pick.

The finest of finest Turkish restaurants serve lamb kebab, layers of thinly sliced lamb slowly cooked on a rotating spit. Thanks to my friends who lived in Turkey for many years, I know where to find this goodness here in Vienna. When I'm 'on a hurry' or whatnot, though, sometimes the street vendor kebabs, mostly of chicken, turkey or beef, make a decent stand-in. That is, if you know where to find them.

This is where not to order a kebab. The kebab is not layered, and likely contains a mix of meats. There's a good chance the pita is slightly stale, too.

I have two absolute favorite places in Vienna for street kebabs; this is one of them. The chicken is layered, not pressed and shaved (I asked). The spices are mostly sumac and salt, though I can request the "scharf" (spicy) blend of Döner seasonings.

The Fine Snack Factory prepares the kebab as Döner Pilavüstü, with fluffy rice pilaf. Though the meal is tucked into a box that I bring home to enjoy in a more civilized setting, the salad is crisp, the yogurt is minty, and the sumac adds just the right tartness to my lunch.

My research on this topic identified 25 variations of Döner in Europe alone, some of which include pomme frites (Netherlands), corn (Norway) and ketchup (Albania). I've only had German Döner (with crispy red cabbage) and French Döner (with harissa), and of course, Austrian Döner, and I can be excused for passing on the Spanish Döner (with egg) in light of all those tapas we ate. 

Next month I am schlepping across the pond for "home leave" (although I will be staying in an apartment because strangers are living in my house. Ponder that.) I have several outings planned with friends; and now so inspired, perhaps I will add "Sample Washington, DC street kebabs" to our agenda!

Avant-Garde Feminist Art and Moldy Strawberries. My half-day in Krems.

Armed with my Niederösterreich Card yesterday, I took myself to Krems an der Donau, a picturesque village in the Wachau Valley that warrants a return visit in that magical period of good weather and low tourism. I had the low tourism yesterday; I think, in fact, I may have been the village's lone tourist.

My primary mission was to visit the Kunsthalle Krems and the Karikatur Museum, as both had exhibitions of interest. In particular, the Kunsthalle promised Eating in Art (who can not get excited about food, right?), and the Karikatur Museum offered Draw for Peace!, an exhibit of mostly political cartoons featuring the dove of peace.

So in I walked first at Kunsthalle Krems. Currently the museum is showing Yoko Ono's Half-a-Wind: A Retrospective, and that was how my path through the galleries began. Ono's art has been described as avant-garde and feminist, so I set myself up to not understand any of the art.

What I was also not prepared for was just how awful I found the exhibit. At the start there was a telephone in the center of this maze (photo from the Internet). The title of this piece? "Amaze." When the telephone rings, answer it." 

This is a still from "Cut Piece," a film Ono made wherein she invited members of the audience to come on stage and cut her clothing off. This must be the avant-garde?

About that feminist art?  Three panels titled, "Rape" depicted Ono instructing her photographer to chase pretty women walking down a street and snap photos of them until they ran away. Ono also thoughtfully displayed photos of the doctor who had performed several of her abortions. 

In between the avant-garde and the feminist were little instructions from her book Grapefruit on how to create art. I will share a couple of my favorites:

PAINTING TO SHAKE HANDS

Drill a hole in canvas and put your 

hand out from behind.

Receive your guests in that position.

Shake hands and converse with hands.

STONE PIECE

Take the sound of a stone aging.

Fifteen long and miserable galleries later, I unexpectedly found myself at the end of museum. No Eating in Art in sight! I pondered where I had navigated incorrectly as I walked across the street to the Karikatur Museum. The Draw for Peace exhibit was small but well done. (Photos courtesy of the Internet).

After a brief stop for a bite to eat I wandered along the cobblestone streets of Krems. The village is very pretty even on a gray day. There is almost, but not quite, a Tuscan walled-city feel to parts of Krems. We will definitely return.

In the middle of my wanderings I found the Eating in Art exhibit!  The Kunsthalle Krems has three buildings, and the exhibit was in one of them!

Then, disappointment. Some of the art reflected the theme, but too much of it involved molded food (the strawberries, below) or leftover dinner tables secured to the wall.  (Both photos from the Internet.)

I was done. Time to head home.

Catching Up on Austrian News

Winter finally arrived this weekend here in Vienna, so I jumped at the opportunity to cozy up with a pot of tea and catch up on some newspapers and other light reading yesterday afternoon.

If it is not obvious from the photos below, Vienna's Ball Season is in full swing.

These are photos from the protests surrounding the Freedom Party of Austria's Akademikerball. See, the Freedom Party has pretty much been the shelter for (ex?)Nazis since its inception sometime in the 1950s. They get their place on the Viennese ball calendar right along with the ChimneySweeps and Coffee House Owners, and also somehow managed some pretty nice real estate for their party this weekend, the former Hofburg Imperial Palace. How on earth they were able to host their ball at the Imperial Palace I can not speculate upon. After all, my own country has enough issues to keep my head spinning. 

Speaking of U.S. issues. Dear State Department, can you not revoke this woman's passport? Must she continue to embarrass America on the world stage? One of Austria's wealthiest, aging playboy kabillionaires, Richard Lugner, has invited none other than Kim Kardashian, and has completed negotiations for her to be a special guest at the Lugner Opera Ball in Vienna. It's pretty sad when you have to contract out your Ball date. The best part? She has demanded  €250.000 for her visit. I'm willing to guess this is because she probably thinks Austria is that island continent in the South Pacific, so she will need plenty of sunscreen and skimpy beachwear while she is here.

In other news, McDelivery is being tested in a select number of Viennese districts, not including the oh-so-American infiltrated 19th. 

I do not see McDelivery becoming a success here in Vienna, because it appears the Austrians are on a health-kick. According to some recent poll, a full 60% of Austrians would like restaurants to be fully non-smoking. That may be the lowest percentage across the E.U., but hey, it's a start.

Thank goodness the weather looks promising for a day outing tomorrow, or who knows what news I may find myself caught up reading.

(All photos courtesy of heute.at, derstandard.at, and theviennareview.net)

My French-Sushi Fusion Birthday

Another birthday came and went today. My darling husband forgot said birthday. Again. This lapse makes possibly the tenth time he has forgotten my birthday and it started me thinking,  "If I subtract all the birthdays that Tony has forgotten, would that make me a 30-something?"

The children, naturally, greeted me with "Happy Birthday" and "Joyeux Anniversaire!" (the Tween loves French class) upon waking. Unlike their dear Papa, they know how to use their iPhone calendar. Over breakfast we discussed a celebratory dinner. Dining out is way too cliché; for my birthday, and especially for Mother's Day, my favorite gift is to be allowed to thoroughly destroy the kitchen while making some elaborate dinner, then allow the family the pleasure of kitchen duty.

It doesn't take much to destroy my Polly Pocket-sized kitchen here, and with a late afternoon basketball game for the Lady Knights to attend, any dinner destruction needed to be kept to a minimum. The decision: Dragon Rolls, a sushi preparation of tempura shrimp, eel, and avocado. We scratched the eel because, well, I may have turned another year older seeking sushi-grade eel in Vienna and made a couple of other modifications given what ingredients I could and could not procure, but all in all my first attempt at a Dragon Roll was deemed rather respectable in appearance, and overall quite delicious.

Dessert followed with gateau au chocolate and perhaps too many macarons from Paris' Fauchon (I have friends in the right places), and a bit of sadness thinking about Tony who was eating pizza, for a second night, in Bulgaria with his American colleagues who did not want to try Bulgarian food.

That last part was a fib. I did not feel sad for Tony.

The German Nationalist Artist Hitler (Really) Didn't Like

My regular art group met this week for a lesson on Emil Nolde in Radiance and Color at Schloss Belvedere. Photographs were not permitted, of course, and the selection of available postcards was dismal, but my friend The Internet turned up a few pieces to help tell this story. 

The story begins wherein a troubled artist is "discovered." In Nolde's case, Die Brücke, a group of German Expressionists invited him in 1905 to join their art group, which they believed to be "a bridge to the art of the future." Nolde wasn't outgoing enough, though, and was eventually uninvited. 

Then In 1910 he was expelled from the German Secession art group for criticizing the (Jewish) leader's rejection of German Expressionism.

In 1913, it seemed as if things were beginning to look up. Nolde was somehow invited along on a South Sea expedition by the German Colonial Office to conduct artistic research on the racial characteristics of the population. He, his wife, and the team traveled through Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong to get to German New Zealand. The art from his travels was heavily influenced by other artists, but his works did not sit well with Hitler's favored painter, Adolf Ziegler.  Upon reaching Java in 1914 the team learned that WWI had begun, so Nolde, his wife, and most likely, a bunch of Japanese paper made their way back to Germany. (Remember this factoid.)  

The 1920's found Nolde "expressing" himself much like Monet and Chagall. Nolde was still not making friends with Ziegler, though; his art was considered, "degenerate."

In 1921 Nolde channeled his inner Gauguin to paint Lost Paradise.

Despite his German Nationalism and membership in the Danish Nazi party, dozens of Nolde's pieces, along with works by Kandinsky and Chagall, were confiscated by Nazis and displayed as examples of art that "insults German feeling" or had "Jewish Bolshevist" undertones at the 1937 Munich Degenerate Art Exhibition. A few more of these exhibitions were held throughout Bavaria, where many of the pieces were sold for "pennies per kilo." Some 300 works from the exhibitions were also stolen by Hildebrand Gurlitt, a German art dealer who declared the pieces to have been burned during WWII bombardment. Many of these pieces, however, were confiscated recently in Gurlitt's son's Munich apartment. 

Following the exhibition Nolde was treated especially harsh by German officials. Prohibited from purchasing art supplies and banned from painting after 1941, he managed to create dozens of small watercolors (on Japanese paper) that he hid in his home between 1941 and 1945. Nolde feared using acrylics or oils in the event the odor alerted authorities.

This month's art group was especially interesting to me because of the context within which the art was created.  The watercolors were my favorite part of the tour, because the pieces seemed genuinely Nolde, and not Nolde  a la Gauguin's post-impressionism or Chagall's modernism. But to see them you'll have to drop in at Schloss Belvedere. Hurry, though, for the exhibit closes early next month.

All photos are with due credit to the Internet.

The House of Artists

Last week and this being mock IB exams period at the American School, I have been able to share a few conversations with The Teenager that went beyond "I am hungry. What's there to eat?" and "I need money" as his schedule has him in my face home more than usual. This morning, with said Teenager having the entire day free of exams he offered to hang with me, so long as I was doing something interesting. 

So. I unwrapped my 2014 Neiderösterreich Card (a museum card of sorts for the Lower Austria, the state adjacent to Vienna, though it also includes a few attractions in the city and the state of Burgenland) and the handy guide book and map for us to review. Our decision: to check out the art of the patients residing at the Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic, about 20 km north of Vienna.

Long story short.  In the 1950's a psychiatrist at the Gugging Clinic had his patients create art as part of their therapy. By and by the art made its way to a Vienna gallery, and the "Gugging Artists" were born. 

Our drive up to the museum was grey and misty. But the gallery and exhibits? Honestly? The art was so enjoyable, perhaps even more so than what we have seen touted at the MoMA or the National Gallery. There were too many delightful objects to photograph. We even had the privilege of meeting one of the artists!

Some of the art was complex, like this drawing of spring botanics.

Other art leaned more whimsical, as with the WC doors and the little painted wind-up mice throughout the galleries.

By the end of our visit the sun had come out, though this is but a photo of the House of Artists in its brilliant glory. Do visit if you can. You will not be disappointed.

How did The Teenager rate the outing with Mom?  So impressionable that he asked me to purchase a book on the art for him (as well as lunch afterward).