If you go on a trip and want to come back and share photos, you’d be well advised to check you’ve got the right camera card with you. Well, I hadn’t and so the only photo I can share from my recent trip to Vienna is this photo taken with my iPad. Vienna by night from my hotel room. The domes you see in the background belong to the Natural History Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts.
I was on a course, so I didn’t have as much time to explore as I would have wished but I still saw an amazing amount of great art.
There was a Munch exhibition at the Albertina.
Also at the Albertina, I saw an exhibition dedicated to Alfred Kubin and Lionel Feininger.
At the Winterpalais, I saw this Rembrandt, Tizian and Bellotto exhibition and, of course, the beautiful reception rooms of Prinz Eugen.
The Albertina has a nice collection of Dürer’s watercolours. I really like the little owl.
The Leopoldmuseum owns one of the biggest Schiele collections. I’ve always admired his work but never saw so many of his paintings.
I never appreciated Klimt because I’m not fond of his most famous painting “The Kiss”. The collection at the Leopoldmuseum showed another side of the painter, which I found beautiful and inspiring.
I could write a lot more about the trip but I’ll leave it at that. I truly enjoyed it and was glad to see that most of Vienna hasn’t changed much. There have been some unfortunate renovations in the centre, which make it cleaner, and, in my opinion, a bit sterile, but most of the city still has a shabby elegance, I find appealing. And the people are so warm and welcoming and have such a great sense of humour. If you get a chance, visit Vienna. It has such a lot to offer. I have a feeling, I’ll return soon. Also because I didn’t have enough time to go to the theater. That was unfortunate because they showed many interesting plays.
I discovered a new to me Austrian crime author. I have no idea how good he is, but since he’s been translated into English, I thought the one or the other of you might be interested to pick him up for German Literature Month. His name is Bernhard Aichner and the book is called Woman of the Dead – Totenfrau. It’s the first in a trilogy. Book two is already out in German. Here’s some praise taken from the blurb:
One of the Financial Times‘s top summer books for 2015
One of the Telegraph‘s Best Crime Fiction Books for 2015
‘An ironclad guarantee of sleepless nights’ INDEPENDENT
‘One of the most arresting thrillers I’ve read for years’ LISA GARDNER
‘Fast, edgy and gripping…full of quirks, with a conflicted heroine as killer at its heart. Do not miss it.’ GEOFFREY WANSELL, DAILY MAIL
‘Aichner has a talent for keeping readers hooked – this is a gripping read and the character of Blum lives long in the mind’ TELEGRAPH
‘An inventive, forceful, engrossing revenge thriller’ MARCEL BERLINS, TIMES
‘Blum is a great character and when Aichner’s ghost-train plot ends in the only place it can – a crematorium – you feel like cheering’ GUARDIAN
