The Food in the Shadows

Some mornings I visit the Kunsthistorisches Museum (national gallery) and sit on a small sofa opposite a Van Dyke or a Caravaggio, waiting to appreciate the art in the sharp contrasts of dark background and brightly lit foreground. The longer I look at the picture and look away from the lit central figures, it is as if my eyes get accustomed to the dark paint, and then details I could not see before begin to emerge: subtle veins on a hand or a forehead, deep green leaves of a schefflera near the ground, folds in brown cloth robes, a dirty gray stone, a brown crumpled leaf, the fine-grained dust on the feet of kneeling pilgrims....

After nearly a month here, the well-lit foreground of daily life has mostly been the basics of survival (e.g., will I make it across the street before the streetcar hits me) and the logistical system needed to do so, with tourism moments that have been much about discovering what's out there, and little about taking time to appreciate it. In the background has been an accumulation of objects and impressions seemingly in shades of black. The longer I am among them and my mind's eye grows accustomed to the dark, the more I distinguish; the browns and deep greens are emerging slowly, growing, I hope, into a scene that will before long appear in bright colors.

I hope a good restaurant will emerge soon. On Saturday evening we went to search out a meal at another of the local beer gardens. The first one we stopped in had no menu, though there was a buffet line. We sat at an outdoor table under the trees--maybe it's a good thing that we've seen almost no birds since we got here--and ordered our drinks, and then we repaired to the indoor food line. Three or four staff (servers?) stood behind a counter looking at their feet and chatting softly with each other, in a contest, it seemed, as to which could be the most unhelpful. Before us was a two-panel enclosed case of thick, fogged-up glass (Teutonic sneeze-guard), which probably shielded cooked meat; two adjacent, unprotected trays contained a pleasing array of the evening's vegetable: potatoes--boiled, with butter; boiled, with parsley; creamed, in lumps; roasted, in wedges. We returned to the table, paid for our drinks, and left to try another place, one with a menu, so we wouldn't have to deal with the culture shock presented by an Austrian cafeteria line--with nothing we particularly wanted to eat.

We walked up the lane to another beer garden and this time got menus. Literally translating the menu names for the meat--which often contain the word fleisch (flesh)--makes me think in terms of pork flesh, calf flesh, and chicken flesh. (Thinking of having a meal of flesh makes my tongue run over my incisors, which seem to grow a bit longer and sharper for the moment.) While Linda has been opting for more ladylike selections, salads and such, I went with the very manly beef slab covered in brown gravy--all a bit too well done, to the point of being crumbly, but tasty nonetheless. I also chose that item because it was to be accompanied by dumplings, not potatoes. The dumplings, to my regret, did not match the goodness of the cow flesh. They were three thick medallions of chewy starchiness, which looked as if they had been cut from a cookie-dough tube, celebrated for its resemblance to a sausage in shape and to a boiled potato in taste and consistency. Other than the meat entrees, much of what we are served here seems to be prepared off-premises: the rare few tablespoons of vegetables we have seen--I refer to non-tubers such as peas, corn, and string beans--seem to have been from packages out of the freezer. Still, the beer was good, the outdoor setting and temperatures were pleasant, the accordion and violin players were delightful, and the most wonderful and loving of persons was my dining companion.

I am most happy to have had a fresh produce stand emerge from the background. Tonight our dinner of chicken flesh will be accompanied by fresh zucchini, red and yellow sweet peppers, and pasta. I'll plunge anew into the dark background of Wiener World come the dawn.