We started out with a fairly short visit to the modern and contemporary art space known as the Museumsquartier (Museum Quarter), just to look around for a bit–some of the outdoor exhibits and the ground level of one museum, the MUMOK (Museum für Moderne Kunst) were free to look at.
It was already hot (at 10 in the morning), and we sat for a bit in a café while Andrea and Peter picked out the Kunsthalle as the museum where they wanted to spend part of the day to learn about the contemporary Vienna art scene, while Mark and I ventured out of town. We went to visit old friends of mine from our year at Bowling Green State University (1989-1990) who live on the outskirts of Vienna in the Wienerwald (Vienna Forest). Monika and Walter have lived there for many years, but this is my first time to visit them, and another friend, Michl, who lives an hour and half further East in the Salzkammergut region, also came by train to meet us. We did all see each other in 2018 when there was a Bowling Green Salzburg exchange reunion. We took the commuter train from Vienna’s Westbahnhof about 30 minutes out through glorious countryside, and Walter picked us up from Eichgraben-Altlengbach (where the name of the train station seemed bigger than the station). Their house is at the edge of the small town and has its own little bit of Vienna Forest, and they have a POOL. It was again in the 90s, brutally hot, and Monika had told me to bring my swimsuit. It was such bliss to jump into the pool! Even Mark borrowed a pair of swimming trunks (long discussion of shorts vs. speedos ensued–only the older men in Europe are still doing speedos; the young ones refuse and wear the American-style shorts). Monika, who has been retired from teaching German as a foreign language at an International Baccalaureate school for four years, calls their lovely home and garden her “oasis.” Walter still has one more year until retirement (he is a law and criminology lecturer and researcher under the auspices of the University of Innbruck), and Michl, who is a German teacher at an Austrian high school and just got his students through the big exams (German Matura / German Abitur), will also retire at the end of the school year. It’s a powerful reminder how long it’s been since we were all grad students!
After the refreshing plunge and lots of talking, we had a WONDERFUL late lunch on their deck, with roast veggies, barbecued meats, (I learned that an Austrian “Lungenbraten” which sounds like it should be a “lung roast” to Germans is actually a pork loin!), and a fantastic layered salad for which I got the recipe. Monika is a fantastic cook and a passionate gardener and canner of home-grown goods, so we also got to sample various chutneys and spreads, including a fig mustard, a quince mustard, and a walnut-fig chutney. Amazing. Later on (more talking intervened) we also tasted some wine and home made nut “bitters” and had a crumble with pears and red currants (which are just getting ripe, so I also tasted some right from their bushes) for dessert. It was amazing, the catching up was wonderful, and to Mark’s delight, everyone spoke good English (Monika’s being impeccable–even though she switched from teaching English to teaching German as a foreign language early on in her long teaching career). We stayed from about 1 pm to after 7, surrounded by lavender bushes buzzing with hundreds of bees, and then Walter took us and Michl back to the train station. Poor Michl had multiple trains cancelled on him and eventually had to go back via Vienna to catch the last train to Wels in the Salzkammergut from there, which was a major detour for him.
Mark and I, on the other hand, had a smooth trip back and since it was not that late, we decided to join Andrea and Peter at the “Otto Wagner Areal,” which is only about a 10-minute bus ride (plus a 5-minute walk) from our apartment. This is an entire vast complex of buildings designed by Otto Wagner–a former psychiatric clinic that had many dormitory and administrative building, but also a central kitchen (once connected by narrow-gauge trains to all the buildings for meal delivery), a theater, and a glorious and very famous church on top of the hill on which the complex is located. Behind it is a park from which you can see Vienna from above on the one side, and the Vienna Forest area that we visited on the other. We just took a quick walk through the area (we got there just before 9 pm and the gated portion closes at 10 pm), but it was both beautiful and haunting, especially the memorial for the children murdered by the nazis in the children’s hospital that was also part of this complex from 1940 to 1945.
After our visit to the Areal, we took the bus back, and Mark and I went back to the apartment directly while Andrea and Peter went in search of a Döner shop with late hours and came home with their very late take-out dinner. We were not done with our day until after 11! But at least we managed to cool down the apartment with a bit of cross-breeze.