Some travel notes. The scanty offerings of a scungy traveller.


Vienna (with Karl and Danny):


Todesangst at the Opera.

The Volksgarten and its green chairs.

Egon Schiele.

Hunderwasser Haus and red wine at an angle.

The placenta and New Years Eve revisited at das Haus der Musik.

Second Hand shops.


Around Austria (with Karl)

Salzburg. The bells thundering in our church-hostel. Every hour.
Avoiding men got up as Mozart.

Hallstatt. Swans and a chance to read the paper.





Villach. Scrambling up the alps, overlooking Italy to get to the highest place I’ve ever reached. Familial contentment.

Bratislava: (with Karl)

Glimpsing an eastern bloc chessboard landscape from the feudal castle walls.

Peering in on Porgy and Bess.

Budapest: (with Karl and Jack)

The, ah, fireworks.

Rembrandt’s 400th.

The house of Terror – a building where both Nazis and the Communists had by turns tortured and interrogated. The awful coalescences of history.

Learning to waltz next to the singing fountain on the Danube.

Prague:

The 10% of the old Jewish graveyard visible.

Gorgeous Municipal house with its Gutfreund drawings and Jugendstil exhibition.

Being the most demanding and fiddle-some trio at the museum of mechanical instruments.

Attending a Czech mass. The ‘cult of mariolatry’ imposters.