Vienna

Whenever a colleague learned that I was going to Vienna during summer holidays, we went through the same conversation:

"Ah. You're going for the classical music."

"No. We're going for the Klimt."

It's true: our diversion to Vienna was spurned by David's recent interest in Gustav Klimt paintings, followed by a Wikipedia search and learning that the largest collection of Klimt was to be found in Vienna.

So, considering we were going to be in neighboring Switzerland....why not?

We started our first day at the southern edge of the city at the Belvedere chateau. The Belvedere is one of those lovely seasonal palaces that have been converted to an art museum. There we were treated to two full rooms of Klimt, including the eternally famous "The Kiss".

And, as a bonus, we were introduced to other interesting Austrian artists like Carl Moll and Egon Schiele, the latter of which I became an instant fan.

On our way out of the museum we took the unavoidable pass through the gift shop and browsed the post cards as a way to see what we had missed. David held up a postcard of a Klimt we hadn't seen and read the back: The Beethoven Frieze, Belvedere Collection. How had we missed it?

We quizzed the cashiers and learned that this piece was on permanent loan to the Secession, a small museum dedicated to new art.

Apparently the Beethoven Frieze was originally painted by Klimt for an exhibit at the Secession, so they had designed a special display room for it there.

We didn't have anything else on our agenda for the day, so we took the metro and walked our way over to the Secession, which turned out to be closed on Mondays.

The Austrian National Library was nearby, and I'd read that the reading room was beautiful, so we tried to visit that. We took our time walking, admiring the architecture, taking photos, and by the time we arrived to the library it was closed as well.

The weather was so nice, and we'd been hoofing for so long, we decided to just crash in a public garden for a while. We picked a quiet grassy plot in the shade and dozed, waking only when the sinking sun infringed on our spot of lawn.

The towering Rathaus - town hall - was within view of the park, so we figured we could walk over to see it. As we approached we saw a giant movie screen affixed to the front, and a series of bustling food booths below. We'd wandered into a cultural summer film festival.

It wasn't quite dark enough for a film, and we weren't hungry yet, so we sat on a bench at the adjacent park and talked and people watched for a while. I realized that we were sitting facing a large mirabelle tree - one of which I'd never seen before - and prowled around beneath, trying to shake ripe fruit free. Why don't we have mirabelle trees in the States?

Finally we were hungry enough to investigate the food booths, which seemed to span just about every type of regional cuisine in the world. We settled on Greek, finishing the meal with a traditional Austrian dessert of dough balls filled with apricot.

By then the film had started, showing a ballet. We took seats and watched for a short while, then became bored and retired to the hotel for the night.  It seems we're bigger Klimt fans than ballet. 

Location:Drachengasse,Vienna,Austria