CENTRAL EUROPE: part two... VIENNA

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Vienna was the seat of the remarkable Austro-Hungarian empire, ruled for the longest of any by one line, the Habsburgs... from the late Middle ages until World War One. Its territory encompassed much of east-central Europe. Three of its capitals were the focus of this tour, beginning with Budapest, as I described in part one. Vienna is the only one I had visited before, in fact with Stephen's family on another tour taking us west into Bavaria & up the Rhine River

[I'll need to digitize that travelogue in another post...].

We have followed the Danube this time by taking our Tauck bus through more farm country than originally scheduled because an accident on the major highway sent our driver on a delightful detour. I enjoyed seeing the territory from such closer & slower vantage, even if I I'm afraid that we impacted a group of bicycle tourists rather adversely. In the small towns & villages folk were out watching this invasion of freeway traffic from behind their garden gates.

I mention the river to continue observations begun in Buda & Pest, who take their identity from straddling the Danube. This frieze of Hippocampi brings a favorite visual of inspiration waiting to become a bell, perhaps, of such waters. I began collecting such mythical beasts in my imagination in Italy, but this one lives in Vienna.

Vienna, however, long ago moved her stretch of the river to avoid repeated flooding... so today the Danube is well beyond the city center, with an island levee which functions as a park & recreational area.

Just as last time we were there the tour bus also took us to see that feat & the neighboring United Nations complex... where Stephen worked when he lived in the city for a year in 1983-1984.

A detail of a Bosch[?] painting which I managed to capture seems jokingly apropos of that institution... indeed its form might be imagined held inside the curves of those buildings! It also speaks to the languages of this trip. In Austria I am at least somewhat capable with German, but the Hungarian we'd just left & the Czech we will hear next sometimes seemed a bit Babel-ish.

We began our city tour at the summer place of the Imperial family... Schoenbrunn Palace, which I had not seen on our previous visit. The city has grown to surround it but its acres of formally denuded land, punctuated by monolithic structures & planted to stern gardens seemed 'most curiously anything but cooling.... but this was the Imperial taste at the time.

Cultural inbreeding was perhaps a result of the inbreeding of European Royalty... when four of the reigning heads of Europe at the end of this empire were children of Queen Victoria... All of which might seem more improbable were we 'Mericans not finished quite yet with a second Bush... [dare I say anything Clintonian?]

Here we are... royal in our own right. Why do I suspect we are trying to escape the stuffy staff at that Hofburg place downtown who have been hidebound & habitual there for too many generations?



The wide gravel avenue between garden parterres behind this hideaway was, by prior arrangement, the rendezvous for our nine family members. Smaller groups of us can peel off rather easily, leaving a verbal message with whomever next will be in charge of such information so that anyone within two degrees will know how to answer the question "Where is who?". Our differences in age, in pace... interest... or capability, at any given time of day gives need for such system. I appreciate how well we travel together.



We take our own points for huddling as well...



Saint Stephen's gathers us for one of the rare posed shots like this I will make...



It was tender to watch Mark, with help from his Bro, light a candle for their father...






Brother Mark is a great traveling companion & he loves art museums... we have many fine & funny times together.



He & I share birthdays one day apart. We are of course LEOS. so we growl at each other in easy affection & we share a love of discovering images of our totem. Here he strikes one of his poses in the grand stairway of the Kundsthistorisches Museum, with Stephen as some counterpoint to that scene in the background...



Rich as reality is, there always also blooms fantasy... I baldly dream wondering what would it be like to have this head of hair?



The ceilings of the Kunsthistorishes Museum are ornamented like huge frames for glass ceilings sky lighting the collections & which offer blank space for restful gazing... Helen & Mark demonstrate.
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On my first visit to this museum in 2003 I rediscovered the Cellini Salt Cellar, which I'd studied in college. It is made of chased gold, but is even more valuable for the fact it is the only surviving work of that jeweler. Besides any of that it is stunningly wrought. Several months later it was stolen.

Much to my delight it has been returned, but now that whole wing is closed for renovation... with better security, no doubt! It is not on display, being rumored to be "in a vault 150 feet underground" so I obviously did not make this photo.



My camera was instead seduced by an exhibit of ivory carvings. Rather perfect subjects for my imperfect skill... the gentle strong contrast at an intimate scale let me capture some notions significant to me.

These studies in geometry are familiar to the numerical process of some of my own designs.



One grouping seems to repeat the war theme with which I was dancing at the end of part one...






I'm not certain who this bit of wrathful energy is...



My love of detail was stimulated by an entire room full of such, even as I celebrate that this material is rightfully banned now for the disastrous loss of so many elephants to the process.

An equally gorgeous material is the creamy marble out of which this favorite bit of schmaltz is carved. It is part of a memorial in the Hofburg's Imperial chapel which I remember well form before & which still it holds my appreciation.



Sculptural work extends so commonly out onto the street that I took everyday delight in capturing such architectural details as these examples of the ubiquitous faces, or grotesques.





Or this cat creature, playing corbel to hold up a stack of bay windows on this building ornamented with several varieties more of those heads & faces...



Of course, some such patterns suggest possible new bells...



But these hunky caryatids continue to be my favorites...



Close by were these Nouveau buildings with more painterly decoration. Stephen lived for an interval in the one to the left.



But this bit of more modern plasterwork also caught my fancy...



A bright breezy pegasus was caught grounded on our flight from the bus window...



The outdoor flea market had produce stalls as well... plus a series of eateries where we had lunch with Peter & Gerda, friends of Stephen's time here.





Which can then segue to this municipal incinerator, designed by Hundertwasser, an artist I like for his organic sense. This art burns the garbage from such foods to produce electricity, which seems quite intelligient...



I found this soft shop one evening while S & I were out walking after dinner, when I was caught without my camera, so the next day I took several of the Reimanns with me to see it again. I thought Sarah & Alice would enjoy it because it was obviously about fashion & clothing.




David, came along & here reflects his mother Alice's puzzlement...



Never open... lacking even any sign, the store front wasn't nearly so dramatic as when gently lit in the dark, but I neglected to go back yet again at night to capture that drama, so it remains as these bits of visual mystery.

We left toward Prague the next day...

CENTRAL EUROPE: part one... BUDAPEST

Not wanting to write yet another too typical travelogue, I've been curiously stuck about how to share our two recent trips. The first was a holiday with the Silha-Reimann family to central Europe in mid-June. Then, just a week following our return from Budapest, Vienna & Prague, I completed the process I'd had to begin as part of the month of essential preparations before Europe: packing-up GRB BELLS, stock & show, & flying to Chicago for the annual convention of the American Bell Association. Two rather different kind of travel, yet both taking us to architectural wonderlands.

I wish I could simply & easily share these recent extravagances as well as celebrate more the mundane, but I'm finding so little focus in writing time, in spite that this was supposed to be a bit of a break in a too busy schedule...

Then there are many hundreds of photographs which I still am sorting... I went a little crazy with the camera.

Most of the shots were basically junk, except that they represent all the practical experience I need using my camera on the move. I am more used to composing & lighting static objects in my studio. Still, I enjoyed the fine frustrations of that ongoing education.

I tried for shots in museums to document ideas or to capture details of pieces I found interesting. Light & reflection were frequently difficult, of course, But, to be able to use [digital] cameras inside those treasure-filled walls seems quite a sweet boon!



I also experimented trying for candidly peopled moments in the streets, sometimes shooting from the hip. But mainly it was all the astounding building details which seduced me... perhaps in part because they were easier than moving bodies to capture! Those capitals of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are dripping rich in Nouveau stone & plaster work... plus many older styles as well, of course! Many wonderful metal parts to fascinate my jeweler's eye, as well. I'm collecting a file of images of hinges, latches & odd bits of mechanique.

To then be able to see buildings in Chicago, some done during roughly similar time periods, gave a delicious second viewpoint. Many of those details, often metal grills or elevator doors, suitable to join that file, are now in the Art Institutes's collection there, since so many older buildings have not been so protected as those in Europe. The architectural tour by boat on the Chicago River was a superlative experience. There is still in a boom of building on the cutting edge in that city.

My brother Jon thankfully suggested that excursion to us, because he'd enjoyed it when he was recently there. I made hundreds of shots on that tour alone! Fortunately not all of those survived the editing session on the flight home! How many abstract photographs of reflections in International Style skyscrapers can one slide one's eyes over, searching for some interesting detail? Ultimately it was the viewpoint from the water, slipping under bridges, which most illuminating.

All four cities developed from the rivers which first helped to site them & thus are currently [ahem] fascinating to me. Part, I suppose, of the flotilla of boat energies I live alongside now... Another posting I anticipate one day will collect photos of the variety of boats we see from Soundcliff.

Ah then, the requisite bridges, for surface transportation to interface the water's flow... can often be seen as a sort of jewelry for these riverine metropolises. Over the Danube, between the cities of Buda & Pest, there is indeed a "Chain Bridge" which reputably replicates a much older version by the same name. I had naively imagined it would be some enlarged version of typical oppositional chain links, but I got to discover its strength was more in the sense of a bicycle chain... with links of multiple parallel 2+inch-thick steel bars vaguely dog-biscuit-bone-shaped... more than 10 feet long!... hinged together on huge bolts. Becoming very smooth jewelry suitably scaled to a huge task... some chain indeed!



The building behind is a fine Nouveau facade now housing the Gresham Hotel. It has a very soft feel to its stonework edged with gilded subtlety.

Stephen & I first stayed for several nights on the Pest side of the Danube, finding our legs for these cities in a curious lodging hosted by a small novel of a character who saw visions in the apartments he rented bed & breakfast style, in several buildings which we could only view a bit differently. We enjoyed our situation just a block from the city's market & soon felt competent with tram, bus & underground, plus walking the streets & bridges to be able to share the city with Stephen's family when they arrived several days later.

Inside this courtyard...



Was our room in Pest with its heavy decor.



We moved several days later, when the rest of the family arrived, to the Buda Hilton, built to incorporate ruins up on the hill with the Royal Palace next to the coronation church, St Mathias. Our windows looked out toward the Danube river & Pest beyond, through the turrets of the Fisherman's Bastion, a perfectly amazing bit of architecture built around 1900 & named to commemorate medieval fishermen who defended the walls. I called it Fisherman's Folly because its function is to be only decorative, which it does to perfection! Here the facade of those windows reflects it...



Several of its seven spires dominated the view from our room...



In this setting the contemporary ceramic mural in the lobby seemed thus fantastically right.



From another viewpoint the the Parliament Building echoes London.



This is a city sill repairing itself after several generations living under Communist rule. , she emerges ever more sparkling, from under the grime of neglect. One remnant of that was this window which Stephen explained was much more how he remembered it from a previous visit.

We reflected on that seeing these dusty books...



While most of the architectural bloom is focused on restoration & repair of extant treasures, there are some new projects, even in the inner core. They seem sometimes a bit jarring... perhaps because they are so rare. Our Hilton was one such example. Others such as this arts center, seen from the river boat on which we had our first group dinner, are farther away from the historic district & feel quite positive for the city's modern growth. This new ghost will no doubt evolve into place along the Danube parade.



Here the family listens to our guide in the market tell how different it was when she was growing up in the Communist era. Nephew Johnny, Stephen & his brother Mark stand to the left. His sister Alice, her son David, celebrating recent High School graduation, & daughter Sarah, newly graduated as well, from University of Wisconsin, John is their father & Helen is our thoughtful matriarch, widow of Stephen's father Otto, who gifted this trip to us.



I am always interested to see how any city's produce, meat & fish compare to Seattle's own famous Pike Place Market. This functionally lovely old building displayed beautiful goods, from the coarser & staple foodstuffs on the lower level... sauerkraut & pickles, sausages & cured meats... to the fresh meat & seafood, spices, produce & cheese on the main floor. the mezzanines above offered clothing stalls & restaurants.

We brought the country's signature paprika home for experimenting with our own goulash.



While this photo does not capture much of the poignancy of the event it commemorates, here is the memorial for the Jews who were thrown into the river of the mid twentieth century's cataclysm, leaving as symbols their empty shoes on the river's bank...



Stephen & I chose attend a concert because it featured a men's chorus, which we enjoyed even as it evolved that they were actually more of a background group for a jazz quartet with a wildly hefty violinist. That venue seemed to have been originally some sort of factory now surrounded by a contemporary youth park, with a new media center & gardens with ponds.

We are off the beaten path, having taken the subway only then to walk some blocks into a neighborhood. We happily appreciated we were not so local as most in the audience seemed to be. Following our noses takes us to such places...

I used that orientation the evening we were taking the family to a restaurant we'd found several nights before, while we were staying in Pest. The pair of taxis we hailed at the hotel would not accept my being the fifth passenger, so I took off on foot for a bus to the subway & then walked again to the outdoor tables where they had only begun to order drinks & first courses. It had all happened so quickly some in the family were a bit concerned, but I liked exhibiting my independent capability.

We'd been fortunate to see a deeper Budapest... like the Ethnographic Museum in a gorgeous old building once housing the Palace of Justice. It has classically polished stone balustrades, but now exhibits the more basic history behind this city's life. Display after display showed the costumes & tools, the essential fibre & sinew of folk aeconomie which most overlays of modernity continue to ignore at their peril.

Here also was a travelling exhibit based on the primary types of musical instruments from all parts of the wold, old & new, grouped in type by nomenclature denoting how the sound was generated: strings, horns, percussion. While it might annoy some kinds of sophistication, wire cages substituted for more usual protective glass cases supported by barrels which were obviously also their packing cases. A simple & rare coup in functional design, allowing the exhibit to be fielded in more primitive venues....

I was disappointed to be still searching for the Scythian gold shown in the guidebook, which I had written about at university, then finally discovered in the National Museum... sadly late on a Sunday. We would depart before the possibility of a more generous viewing of those rich collections. Such vicissitudes are the meat of travel stories, I guess..

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No visit to Budapest could be quite complete without a bath... the Romans who made an early city here no doubt made use of the thermals. A number of hotels have spas & there are several traditionally domed bath houses which were built by the Turks when they pushed this far into Europe four centuries ago. I was reticent at first but I relaxed to love the fantastical light bouncing around inside the stone dome, reflecting off the water, softened by steam. I could imagine all those centuries unchanged around this basic utility.

I will post this much & return with more chapters of the travel to Vienna, Cesky Krumlov & Prague later. Chicago waits as well...

One last image of Budapest becomes a beautiful puzzle... part of a larger sculptural commemoration of the city's millennium called Heroes Square. High above a colonnade rides this prancing dude who is "War". Yes, there is a nearly matching "Peace" but she is a rather staid figure, energetically weighted by her over sized palm frond. Some depth is telling a story here inside my curious reactions... he's had me musing ever since.

MOOD: CHIPY-CHIPY

I take stimulation for this post from a long contemplation in the garden on my way to the studio's keyboard...

Tonight the air sparkles with moisture in a particularly Northwestern coastal way... subtle fireworks tactile on face & arms, exploding any notion of that other element better known also in atmospheric form, yet nothing if wet. This not really rain... yet with obvious constant patter delicately approximating the accumulation of bigger drops which that word more usually defines.

"Chipy-chipy" is a term I learned out of his vernacular from a man hailing from Oaxaca, some years ago at my Mother Garden in northern Califas. I'm spelling his Mexican term phonetically, but it is the very sound of it which has always simply conveyed a quality that I want to describe as a gentle rain which one can accustom oneself being within. Becoming comfortably one with gently dense moisture... quite a natural state, of course.

It is a rain finding little reason for much admonishment to come in out from. A rain which even this sun-loving gardener can easily love. A rain nourishing dry spaces... quenching dry patches of soul... especially during these moods of deep summer when the fireworks are more usually of the opposite element.

Water & fire. Cancer cusping my Leo. Sizzle & boil... sop & sear. Such cooking terms, however, anticipate several steps further along in the progression toward food.

Now the garden is the place of gentle growth & development... strengthening the herbal meatus toward some eventual steaming or saute. A series of looping stages seeding toward consumption... active digestion, then becoming again the compost now supporting this garden. One way first, then always the other. Life creates & destroys to recreate itself.

Today I got up early to join Stephen going to a special yoga session. That savvy group of Island friends & fellow spirits set us up for further adventures wending our way home. A stop for coffee beans at what was the original SBC roasterie, now housing a new coffee company & also selling organic produce, so we bought some yellow beets toward our dinner. The place was hopping with locals finding their caffeine fixes.

Stephen wanted to see a show of photographs at Cafe Luna, the central coffee house on the island. We ordered lattes & enjoyed looking at the images of his first partner, our friend Bob & son Ben, who was born in China. Bob & Ben dialog playfully in these three shots by alternately, seemingly surreptitiously, sticking out tongues at each other during an assumed meditation pose. The triptych of them was a humorous tag to a show of unusually yang & muscular yoga poses, punctuated by a one of a woman posing a leg lift to display sassy red high heels!

Most of an hour was spent with our coffee, visiting with old friends & meeting new. Which could lead me to wonder how Vashon works... so many folk were out in these coffee houses starting their weekend early!

There is a weekly street booth at our town's main intersection,only a four way stop, which brings good produce from a truck farm east of the Cascade Mountains. That was our next stop to find more toward our dinner...

I could not pass up what is a sweet rarity: tender baby okra. I remembered the method I'd learned in my 20s from an early partner whose Oklahoma grandmother breaded & sauteed these seed pods before finishing them with tomatoes to make a sauce. I took it veering toward India by using besam [chickpea flour] & spices... having made tsiziki with cucumber from the same vendor, yogurt from a farm up the road & lots of mint from our garden. Those dishes complemented nicely the lamb Stephen grilled with rosemary, making our meal for two visiting friends, each of whom have gone to culinary school. Both cleaned up their plates, relieving me of any anxiety about cooking such a curious dish for them.

My cooking often has legs in such history... I generally don't do recipes, but cook rather experimentally in the moment with whatever is at hand & impulse. It was fun to pull an old preparation forward again after so many years.

I'd picked a bouquet just before beginning to cook, displaying what our rather sodden garden offered best. Soon a robust kale leaf, garnished with blossoms, began to accumulate a first course to accompany our cocktails: toasts with melted white cheddar topped with slices of yellow striped beets... with ground black pepper, coriander chutney or pesto.

Now, not having taken any photographs, I must rely on my words to bring a bit of culinary "chipy-chipy" to the imagination of your mouth.

BLIND SIGHT...

My friend Jane came to visit this week. Her book has been recently published & I can brag about having written a blurb used on it's back cover!

[Click on the photos to see larger versions...]




She & her twin sister were born premature & spent time in hospital incubators before it was known that the pure oxygen once used could cause severe damage to the cornea of babies' eyes... they were both blinded in the process.

She is an extraordinary spirit who has raised a family & now collects bells, which is how we came to meet. She came tothe N.W. to visit her sister & brother as well, but Stephen met her at the airport & she came first to Soundcliff for what was actually her second visit to the studio.

We visited at Christmastime in Minneapolis, where she lives with her husband Tom. We will see each other again soon at the American Bell Association Convention in Chicago the end of June, so we are happily deepening our friendship. She travels with her service dog, Gayla, with or without Tom, who must often stay home with the hunting dogs they also train.



I took her to the foundry to see where the bells are cast... & to learn more about those processes. James met her curiosity with demonstrative explanations.

She touches with highly educated fingertips, bringing some objects to her cheeks for exploratory caresses... she sniffs & tastes all manner of things to see them.



Soon they were down on the floor learning about silicon gaskets at the vacuum table... Gayla liked that!



She enjoyed the breeze created by the vertically spinning centrifuge of the platinum casting machine, seen here behind a horizontal one, which is used for silver & gold.



Her visit was too short but because we were also busy with the project of having a retaining wall built, Soundcliff was often too noisy for easy conversation, so our trip into the city gave us other environments to explore together. Tinzing Momo, the shop in Pike Place Market where I buy the amber resin I wear as scent, which she appreciates, was unusually crowded for some reason & became an overly intense experience for her, but not before she had put her nose into many jars for sampling sniffs!

We found lots of fragrant herbs in the farmer's stalls... she is planning an herb garden for their new house. She listened rather critically to some buskers singing nearby while we had coffee. She continued teaching me how to walk comfortably with her fingers touching my elbow, sensing curbs or stairs from my pace & gait, while shushing me to learn not to waste verbiage warning her about such changes in terrain or of the turns we are about to make... she is so confident & sometimes seemingly fearless, that I sense in my own clumsy way how much more she knows than do my own senses! The bigger lesson in confidence is mine to learn...



She loves to sing & laugh, as you can tell from this shot I made while we were having coffee that morning. I learn so much from her about the riches of engaging all the variety life holds.

I'll close with this bumper sticker all three of us enjoyed on a Vashon vehicle's tailgate parked next to us on the ferry...