Januwiener

Concerts abound. Happy to have opportunities to find amusement indoors, we have been taking advantage of them and of the art galleries. Outdoors it is cold and usually gray. As an Eskimo peers through an ice hole watching for the shadow of a fish to spear, I sometimes look at the afternoon sky hoping to see the blur of the sun behind the crust of clouds. Although this period will make springtime all the more exhilarating--the frequent snowfalls are mesmerizing to watch, and their white coat is clean and appealing--I'd just as soon do without too prolonged or too severe a contrast.

Recently we had a fine break from the cold and cloudiness, and it fell on a Sunday, sunny and in the low 50s, so we took advantage of it for a car trip and headed west along the Danube. A stretch of about 30 miles from Krems to Melk took us past Duernstein and its crumbling castle, which sits high on a hill above the river. It is where Richard Lionheart was held for ransom after being captured on his way home to England from the Crusades. (If Robin Hood had had any idea of the view here, he might not have gone to so much trouble to help raise funds to free the king. Among other things, we read, the ransom money went for Vienna's city defenses, including the huge wall that ringed it in the Middle Ages.) Smooth and wide, the Danube winds gently at this point, with the highway and towns built surprisingly close to the water's edge. The hillsides are nearly all groomed with vineyards, which at this time of year look like cornrows of wildly unmanageable brown hair, tangled and bundled along wires stretching from the highway to the hilltops. This area, called the Wachau, is said to produce the best white wine in Austria; given what I have sampled of this country's wines, however, that may be like the boast that Philadelphia produces the best scrapple in Pennsylvania. From Krems to Melk, the little towns look more medieval than modern.

We stopped at Melk, planning to tour a huge 11th-century monastery that rests high above the city. Rebuilt in the 18th century, the structure on two occasions served as Napoleon's headquarters. Although the monastery is closed until April, we wandered its grounds and arcades and walks, thinking how beautiful this setting is, with its elaborate gardens and fountains and view of the Danube. We promised ourselves to return when it re-opens. We made our way to the bottom of the hill and into the old part of Melk. Much from previous centuries shows through, not just in the thick stone walls of some structures, with projecting stone blocks to prevent damage by carriage wheels, but also in the swirled and arched brickwork of the pavement. We walked across a highway and went onto an old iron bridge spanning a canal that parallels the river. Like monks in prayer, a dozen or so brown ducks sat in a line on a fallen tree suspended from the shore out to the middle of the water, catching the rays of the January sun and softly quacking their orisons. With eyes unfocused, we watched the water, with the not unpleasant feeling of being a speck in history.

Our walk back through Old Melk took us up centuries-old stone steps and back through the monastery grounds to the hill top, an ascent from the 21st century to the 11th. The Benedictines knew how to pick a place where earth meets heaven.

This Sunday, weather permitting, we'll drive back to Melk and then to Mauthausen, further up the Valley, following Rick Steves' advice: "After touring the glorious Melk Abbey, douse your warm, fairy-tale glow with a bucket of Hitler at the Mauthausen concentration camp memorial."

Filler

-- Although the noon sun is still low in the sky, the days are getting noticeably longer, and once again we have nearly 9 hours of daylight. Even though the temperatures may just be in the high 20s, the humidity remains high, usually around 90 percent, a catalyst for the cold to penetrate knit caps, leather gloves, and leather shoes, and when there is an assist from the wind, my coat as well. I think of my kids when they were toddlers, and how we used to bundle them up for the Blacksburg winters until they looked like quilted beach balls and could hardly move. I must plan time when going out and coming in for the donning and removal of a similar number of layers. When I come in from outdoors, I must leave my shoes at the door, and not just because of the slush that has accumulated on the edges of heels and soles. Most walks are liberally strewn with gravel, and dozens of bits of it lodge in shoe treads; I have to pry out the largest so that they do not scar the wood parquet floors in the apartment.

-- Sunday night we had 4" of snow. When we got up at 6 a.m. Monday, the sidewalks and roads had already been cleared. The tram cars have special containers of grit and gravel under selected seats, for use by the driver when the tracks get icy. Sometimes, when the tram is stopped at a light, the driver will get off with a small spade and work on the tracks immediately in front of the train. Drivers also get up from their seats to help the elderly, and they allow passengers extra time to get on and off when conditions are slippery.

-- In addition to goulash, soup menus at this time of year commonly offer beef broth with a choice of liver dumplings or lung dumplings. There is no indication as to which beast these parts come from, cloven-hoofed, round-hoofed, or amphibian.

-- The city museum exhibits many items from the Turkish siege of 1683. Among the swords and muskets and armor and banners are standards festooned with horse tails. A description next to one of the standards states that the number of horse tails displayed was an indication of the rank of the officer. I strained to understand how such a meaning could have originated. Were these tails from random unlucky horses, or perhaps from captured horses, evidence of a custom like the taking of scalps? I remembered reading years ago of the officers in the egalitarian Chinese People's Liberation Army, whose rank was denoted only by the number of ballpoint pens in their breast pockets. Maybe a certain amount of whimsy helps keep death and destruction in perspective.

Recycling.

--The gravel that is liberally strewn on sidewalks here when they become icy is to be swept up and deposited in special boxes for re-use, not brushed into lawns or drains.

-- On the sidewalk in front of me downtown, an elderly woman stopped suddenly and stooped to pick up a crumpled kleenex. She blew her nose in it and put the treasured find in her pocket.

God Is on Our Side

At the Military Museum

Just as the sturdy churches in England sometimes remind me of military fortresses, with prominent tombs and memorial tablets for fallen soldiers, so did the Austrian Military Museum have several features that reminded me of a church. Located on a rise just above downtown, the museum sits in the center of several army barracks built after the popular uprising of 1848, positioned so as to give the military proximity to the inner city and easy access to bashing demonstrators. The Military Museum in German is called simply and melodically Der Heeresgeschichtliches Museum. Inside, room by room, the history of Austria from the 15th century to the present opens like blossoms in the springtime.

Before we had even fairly started our march through the exhibits, we saw on a set of glass doors "Panzergarten Geschlossen." The "Tank Garden" was closed to visitors. As happened when the dentist said "Enjoy the cleaning," I was uncertain whether "tank garden" was a translation issue or a frightening cultural difference. Beyond the glass doors in the wind and frost, in a grass cloister, there were dozens of World War II era tanks and other armored vehicles, all of which lacked color, delicacy, and pleasing fragrance. The gardeners who parked them took advantage of every square inch of a large courtyard: the vehicles were crammed together in disorderly lines--like cars at an intersection in Rome--poised to invade but waiting decades for the light to turn green. A sign on the glass doors indicated that the garden will reopen in April, and I am certain that it will be much lovelier when the turrets are in bloom. My thoughts drifted to Mel Brooks' "Springtime for Hitler and Germany" and the lead tenor stormtrooper belting out "We're marching to a faster pace / Look out here comes the master race!"

Although several of the exhibits were engrossing, Linda and I found two rooms of particular interest, the one depicting events leading up to World War I, and the other devoted to World War II.

Prominently displayed is the car in which Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914, the event that ignited World War I. A bullet hole is visible in one of the rear doors; adjacent to the car, a glass-enclosed pall displays the prince's uniform, complete with blood stains and a small sign with an arrow helpfully noting the hole in his collar where a bullet entered his neck. Nearby was the sofa on which he expired. Seeing the blood-spattered garments of Franz Ferdinand, I have to say, was awesome, more affecting even than the often grisly relics in the churches of Rome. His death, and World War I, took on a depth of reality that I could never gain access to merely by reading about those events. Definitely worth the pilgrimage.

Mines, bunkers, and guns of every type, and helmets, uniforms, and pistols taken from American and Russian soldiers...some displays from the past hundred years reminded me of the Maltese crosses designating fallen military from the 1940s in the Grinzing cemetery--the feeling of historically experiencing war from the other side. A poster announces the city's food ration: 1 kilo of turnips and 3 kilos of potatoes per person per week. Other posters call for donations for troops. The exhibits own the past--the suffering and deprivation, and Hitler's rule--with simplicity but also with what feels like colossal understatement. Vienna has no plaques to designate where Hitler lived, where he studied art, or where he made speeches or held rallies. The military museum, at least, displays a few posters with his visage, as well as swastikas and a yellow star of cloth with "Jude" on it. Perhaps the room has as much balance as is possible. To wholly repress a figure such as Hitler, a form of "dehumanizing," carries its own risk of creating mystery and interest and possibly even attraction. To be wholly open about him, on the other hand, might create a risk of revival and draw pilgrims to his vision of a religion of the state.

Since my time in Rome 10 years ago, my thoughts have often run to the similarities in secular and religious saints, and the propensity to idealize and conflate in creating such figures. In Rome, statuary and pictorial presentations of the Virgin are nearly always with the baby Jesus: the qualities of fertility and maternal nurturing celebrated in the Virgin are, in the view of some, conflated with the qualities of the Egyptian deity Isis--goddess of motherhood and fertility, who also had powers to resurrect. Isis's temples were numerous throughout the Mediterranean region long before the appearance of Christianity. In the churches of Rome, representations of Mary and Jesus frequently resemble poses of Jupiter and other Roman gods--for example, the hand holding a globe or scroll, or even, as in the equestrian statue of Marcus Aureleas on the Capitoline Hill, the extended hand with the "clemencia" gesture. With religious figures, many pilgrims welcome the chance to visit not just their bones but their clothing, whether it be the coarse robe of St Francis or the Shroud of Turin. How good of the local authorities here to display the vestments of Franz Ferdinand. Der Heeresgeschichtliches Museum is a holy place, taking account of good values and evil ones, and thus promoting its theme posted throughout: "War belongs in museums." Much better than "God is on our side."

A Mighty Fortress. The religious and the military sometimes blend in curious ways. A cannonball is lodged in the stone of the south wall of St Stephen's, with the year 1683 inscribed just below it. It is an artifact of the Turkish siege of Vienna in that year. The church was struck by hundreds of cannonballs, and damage to the walls and Gothic decoration is still evident. On the side of the church is a statue of San Juan Capistrano, who stands atop a conquered Turk who is snarling at onlookers. Both, I think, are waiting for the swallows to return in the springtime, perhaps to nest in the Tank Garden.

Filler

-- For New Year's Eve dinner I chose a typical Austrian dish: Tafelspitz (boiled beef). It was served with three kinds of potatoes: cold boiled, hot boiled, and fried.

-- The week after Christmas, stands abounded around the city selling goodluck charms for the new year--mostly in the form of little pigs, clovers, and ladybugs...none in the shape of potatoes.

-- A teenage girl with a little boy, about 4, sitting opposite me on the tram. She took off her mittens and his, and, as both smiled, she helped him practice counting and addition on his fingers. As they arrived at their stop, she bundled him up again; they got off and, holding hands, ran together laughing up the sidewalk.

-- On a daytrip to Neusiedlersee, a shallow lake on the Austrian-Hungarian border, through frozen slitted eyelids we watched the wind sweep skaters and ice sailboats, and loft and bounce two huge, colorful kites, one shaped like a fish and one an octopus. The horizon was not a line but a blur of white-gray ice and white-gray sky. In a small cove, skating school was underway: parents strapped little skates on children, some of whom had probably learned to walk only months before.