Vienna... the second half

Once again Vienna, capital of my Austrian Airlines. We fly from Barcelona, leaving on a cool Catalan morning at 6.40; excellent food, coffee, punctuality, great service — Austrian confirms itself as a fine airline. Vienna awaits us with its cool blue sky, its inviting pastries, its fragrant coffee houses, its old and modern buildings, the sound of music that pervades everything and convinces us we are not here by chance. And by chance we are not. Paul has decided to celebrate his birthday in the magical Austrian capital, between wine taverns and exclusive clubs, or perhaps great feasts of schnitzel, beer, sacher torte, bratwurst and much more. And indeed...

we wander around the Ring, venturing into the colossal Stephansdom, its fine square, the Graben, as far as the Hofburg, the royal palace, passing the Café Demel, the Renaissance palaces, the greenish domes, the regal and royal magnificence of an extraordinary empire. Everything recalls Franz Joseph I and Maria Theresa, two ghosts who roam in broad daylight through the streets of Vienna, reminding you that you are in the Paris of the East, the Prague of the South, the Austrian Milan, etc. A bit Turkish, a bit Milanese, a bit Central European, a bit Hungarian, a bit Slavic: a bridge between East and West, a bridge between two cultures and ways of seeing the world, two sides now united by globalisation and hardened capitalism, but which saw in Vienna the gateway or the last bastion of one of the two sides.

Always in the middle, as the Belvedere is in the middle, the palace commissioned by Eugene of Savoy, the great general who saved Vienna from the Ottoman invasion and saved Europe from another History. Another marvel: the Karlskirche, the church dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo, when the plague was raging and the dead in the streets made poor Vienna a ghost town without a future. To him, divine salvation from a black period. Schönbrunn, the marvellous little Versailles-like palace with its fantastic gardens, its fountains, its regal views, the courtyard where little Marie Antoinette left her mother and her ladies-in-waiting to head towards a future without glory and without a head. And then the Prater, with its wheel, the Danube with its slow and inexorable flow, the stories it carries away, along with the doubts... of returning to Vienna always, whenever one feels like it.

Capital of a beautiful country, where you eat wonderfully, drink wonderfully, a country where even your dear mascots are welcomed everywhere as protected deities, unlike in our Latin countries.. ugh... Long live Vienna... and let the music begin again. Andrea