Vienna - A short visit from Israel

Trip to Vienna began with arrival at Ben Gurion at 5 AM only to discover that our flight was delayed till about 2 PM with arrival in Vienna at about 6 PM....we accepted a re-route via Zurich on El Al and Swiss which got us here at 2 PM... 

Because we are staying in the centre of town, we decided to take public transit everywhere. The Vienna Airport has a transit stop in the airport and so we took the very short and east train into the centre of the city. The City Airport Train takes just 16 minutes to deposit you in the centre of town and from there it was a short ten minute walk (though lugging some wheeled suitcases was a bit difficult) to the apartment we had rented.

The apartment was in a very old building as most buildings in the centre off Vienna and had been recently renovated. We met the owner at the apartment and he was very attentive to ensure that we had everything we needed. 

After we unpacked, we walked for a few hours around the Inner City. 

Our first impression is a very architecturally beautiful and spotlessly clean city; the buildings have a lot of character, with many flourishes in design. But since it was Sunday, almost everything was closed and shuttered. 

We went to a very nice milchig place (Novolino's) for an early dinner and it was right in the middle of a very chassidishe neighbourhood. The food was great! We then walked to where the Great Synagogue is and they also have a very nice meat restaurant there which we will try tomorrow. We walked to the Holocaust Memorial and then we went to mincha and maariv in the Great Synagogue's small beis hamidrash. They had about 15 people there. 

We are having an early night here and will start early tomorrow to try and cover as many of the sights as we can by the time we leave here on Thursday AM. 

So tomorrow, we will really see what the city is like. 

There is defintely a very visible ultra orthodox Jewish community here....with a number of yeshivas, people with chassidic garb and women dressed the same as they would in Williamsburg or in Meah Shearim.

What was very interesting is that before coming here, a cousin who was born and grew up in Vienna, called me and asked me if I would be wearing a kippah or a baseball hat while touring Vienna. I told him that as was my custom, I would be wearing a kippah. He warned me that it was "dangerous" and that I should not be so foolish.

My response, in typical Jewish fashion, was another question: "Are there Chassidim in Vienna?". He said "of course, many". I asked "what do they look like"? He said "like typical Chassidim!". I figured that if they could walk around being totally visible as Jews and as chareidi Jews and be safe, I would also be safe with a relatively unobtrusive black kippah. 

On Monday morning, we left on a full day walking tour/tram tour of the centre of Vienna. Vienna consists of 23 districts, each with its own distinctive character and flavour. The 1st district (Innerstadt) is the very centre of town, very pricey and home to many of Vienna;'s historical attractions. 

The 2nd district is Leopoldstadt and is home to the greatest concentration of shuls, kosher restaurants and Jewish population. 

In the centre of the 1st district is the giant Ringstrasse, which encircles most of the old town, home to numerous monumental buildings, built in the 1860s to 1890s. You can walk it or take the sightseeing tram. 

Notable highlights include the Kunsthistorisches Museum, (one of the world’s greatest museums of art history, packed with various treasures from centuries of Imperial acquisitions; the State Opera House, is one of the world’s leading opera venues and a splendid building in its own right; the Stadtpark, a lovely park with its own Otto Wagner-designed station and the famous golden Strauss statue; the Man, museum of design and contemporary art, with wonderful temporary exhibitions, too; the Rathaus, the town hall, with the square in front a common venue for major events like the film festival; Austria’s national parliament building; the Museumsquartier, modern art quarter with various museums and cultural spaces, including the Leopold Museum and Museum of Modern Art; and the old city walls; what’s left of the great fortifications that protected Vienna in centuries past. 

We decided to begin with a tourist tram ride around the Ringstrasse, which was an excellent idea, because we had no idea at all just how long this circular street was. It measures 5.3 kilometres and so you can literally be exhausted if you decide to walk it all yourself. The tram gave us a great overview of some of these historic buildings. 

If you are lucky enough, you might be able to catch a live concert in the huge squares that dot the downtown central area. What we have below is a photo, not something that we saw live. 

After buying advanced tickets for the Opera House Tour for the afternoon, we toured the Kunsthistorisches Museum and admired not only its amazing collection of art by many of the masters, but as well, the wonderful architecture inside and outside the buildings along the Ringstrasse. 

And while this was truly the most amazing place that we had yet visited in terms of its architecture and preserved riches and while we had to admire the precision in organization and the layout of the city and the pristine condition in which it was kept, we could not help reflecting on the fact that this was the birthplace of Hitler (yemach shemo) and that the vast majority of Austrian citizens supported and endorsed the Nazi occupation of Austria and its systematic annihilation of Austria's Jewish community. Yes this was a precise and organized people, a cultured and aristocratic nation; and yet that sense of precision and organization was what they used to barbarically destroy many of our people. 

More in the next post.....