Wienerscape

Many springs ago, while I was posted in Okinawa, my young family and I visited the city of Nago to see the cherry blossom festival. Because the season had been cooler than normal, the blossoms were running behind schedule. In order for the festival to go forward on its appointed weekend, the townspeople taped thousands of tiny pink paper blossoms to the cherry trees, thus correcting Nature's oversight. At first, I thought the paper blossoms real. When I did notice the difference, I was all the more delighted, not so much at the spectacle but at the very idea of making such a fix--and the intensity of effort and civic devotion that had gone into it.

Something of the same feeling came over me when I first saw the Votive Church in Vienna, not realizing at that time that I was looking at compensation for a social and architectural oversight, or misdeed, rather than a natural one. Although built in the mid-19th century to mark the emperor's surviving an assassination attempt, the beautiful Gothic structure initially appears to be from 800 years earlier. Vienna is rich in such buildings--neo-Gothic as well as Roman and Greek revival--as well as having a sprinkling of truly old structures. The medieval walls of the city were destroyed more than 100 years ago, replaced by a "ring road" in the city center. The abundance of retro architecture leads me to suspect that the 18th- and 19th-century Viennese needed to engage in re-creation to recoup the loss of history that once was manifest in its stone landscape. The result is a mix of styles, usually interesting if not always pleasing--something that, for me, provides a satisfying texture to the city.

The green spaces of the city bear a natural parallel to the stone structures. Being a retired person, I am driven at times to sit on a bench in a park, as well as to stop and smell the roses. The rose-filled Volksgarten is partially lined with trees subjected to pollarding, or topping, annually performed, with the greenery chopped into rectangles, an 18th-century, Neoclassical imposition of order on unruly Nature. These trees, however, have not been so carefully tended as those that line the streets of Paris; here they are a bit raggedy, with their geometric lines somewhat violated by Nature's own efforts to renew itself. They border the meticulously tended geometric lines and shapes of the rose garden. Like the stonescape, the green and floral portions of the city have a texture of their own, a mix of the new and of an earlier age.

The Votive Church

This Gothic structure with its high spires, ornate stonework, and flying buttresses is an island of sturdiness, a display of the generosity of stonecarvers and this society's love for anachronisms of religion, set in a river of urban noise and motion. A small, slightly unruly and overgrown park, covering a parking garage, stands in front of the Votive Church; along its sides run busy streets, and just beyond it run tram tracks and, overhead, the trams' supporting webwork of electric lines. A large portion of the front of the church is masked by a screen perhaps five stories high with an advertisement featuring a woman's face; the screen, I presume, conceals scaffolding for cleaning and repair work; against its Gothic backdrop, the screen is visually jarring. On the broad stone sidewalk and stone steps leading up to the church are four or five teenagers on skateboards; enjoying their own thrills of speed, abrupt turns, and flips, they are oblivious to the thrills of near collision I am feeling.

Inside it feels solid, dark, and hard, permanent, and timeless though of another time. The stained glass windows are bright and stunning, especially the plentiful, beautiful crimson panels. The rest of the church is dark, shadowy; the stone ornamentation feels cold, and the crofted dark gray ceiling and abundant pointed arches make this church feel like anything but a refuge, and being inside it leaves me feeling threatened by hardness and darkness, in spite of the glorious windows. When I exit, there is noise, chaos, sunshine, life. I will always appreciate this magnificent building from the outside rather than the inside.

Sightings

Black socks, red shorts, green shirt
Black socks, khaki shorts, gray shirt
Black socks, yellow shorts, white shirt
Black socks, black shorts, brown shirt

An Italian family at the Schottentur tram terminal--father yelling at 10-year-old, who is upending a bag of newly purchased games and toys, all about to spill on the sidewalk, while he stands on the danger side of the yellow-lined zone where the trams stop; his 6-year-old brother is shouting angrily at him; the mother shakes her head and mutters. Che bella.....

Behind them an old gypsy woman--the first I have seen in Vienna--emerges, face deeply wrinkled by sun and wind, dressed like the ones in Rome, long skirt of bright red and orange vertical stripes, paisley blouse hanging loosely over the skirt, brightly colored kerchief. In her hand is a paper cup, and from her barely opened mouth the familiar sing-song moan of need and of blessings on any donors. My heart hardened by having visited the Votive Church, I pretend to ignore her petition. Inside, I smile.