How we are like the Belgians...

Our apartment is without doubt very basic, but it is in an interesting district. I would say it is poor in many ways, but also bustling, international, with fine buildings and a bit of a sizzle to it.  One side we are in the rag district - colourful retail/wholesale boutiques, little fashion houses. The other way there’s the occasional cafe or antique shop, or more likely a family-run ethnic grocery, with marvellous breads, fruits, meats. There are masses of men standing about - Arabic, Egyptian, Turkish - not many women.  This is an immigrant community with all the challenges and marvels of such places. … If I was going to buy a property in Brussels, this is where I would start to look. FYI the street we’re in is called Rue Lambert Crickx

We had a wandering round day. Taking in the amazing architecture, the absolutely different way things are in Belgium (compared to Austria), the street scenes, the food shops, all that….

I have often thought the Brits are more like the Belgians than any other European country. There’s something a bit disorganised about it all here, scruffy, overweight, practical, realistic. Like us, Belgium had a big fat rich period based on colonial plunder and spent the loot on massive buildings and statuary. They are more religious than we are, and old-fashioned in still being enthusiastic smokers. They have much more street/public art than we do, and it’s great. They drop litter like we do, and live on street food like we do… waffles, chips, masses of sweet stuff.  They wear bundly-looking clothes like we do. They have police horses about the place (like we used to do).  Their pubs and cafes are very civilised, not too obsessed with behaviour like French and Italian ones can be.  They let their roads go to pot like we do.  They’re better at foreign languages than the Brits, but they have no choice: I bet they’d each subside into their French or Dutch or whatever if they were allowed to.   Their parks are scruffy and almost natural, like ours are… quite unlike the formalities of the French. They are more obedient as pedestrians than we are, but there are plenty of places where you can just stroll across the streets, which feels really risky after the strict regulation of Austria.  Anyway, to me, it all offers a delightful mix of recognisable culture and foreign-ness. I like it very much.

  

 

We went to the Grand Place, 17th century swank building by the guilds of the day which is still absolutely knockout.  

    

We talked with a crazy Burmese man, schizophrenic I think, who has machines in his head running his life. He wants to go to hospital.      It's Tintin town, too.... The rockets are gorgeous but about £30 for the small ones, and over £100 for the big ones.  Too too expensive.

  

We wandered off through the St Hubert Arcade (with a charming elderly beggar lady outside beseeching the swanky shoppers)…. 

The arcade is amazing, with such glories all along, worth going to see if you’re passing.   We called into the cathedral, with its Romanesque origins and subsequent decorations … a lovely light interior, and fantastic carving… but I was just anti-church today, and looked with a resentful eye at the parade of no less than twelve MEN on the pillars. One actually is supported by two naked legless armless women. It is impossible to say if this was a St Bartholomew or a St Nathaneal. Ugh.  

   

     

We found lunch among the office buildings - delicious trendy rice bowls and steamed buns, in a place called Mile End.   

Then we searched out some ‘modern art’ - not so easy when they are flogging Art Nouveau and Magritte as being modern… Well, you know, things have moved on since then.  Eventually we went to the Musée des Beaux Arts where we had a special deal being old + also passengers on EuroStar…. to go and see the works of Wim Delvoye, bad boy of Belgian art.  This is partly distributed among the Old Masters, and a weird thing that is.   He is the man who invented Cloaca (a machine which replicates human digestion and produces turds at the end of the process, on a sort of conveyor belt). You can see one on the green strip here....

  

He also started tattooing pigs to give Chinese farmers a more interesting life (and the pigs too). He then had the pigs killed and their skins sold as art works.  The pigs were mildly anaesthetised for the procedures…   Later he clothed pigs in velour...

     

He makes Moebius strips out of wheels, and carves into the rubber to make ornate surfaces… rather beautiful and sinister.   He takes classical statues and recasts them in bronze as swirling twisted shapes.  

      

Seeing all these travesties among the well-known religious and landscape studies of the Flemish schools is really odd.  I had no interest WHATSOEVER in looking at the old paintings, and it make me wonder how they can ever survive as revered works… Their time has passed. 

My sexist instincts seem to have been quite high today.... These two classical pieces are upstairs in the museum a few feet apart.  Both have their left foot forward. I can see he was free to play, while she......

  

My main rage was with the gallery itself. Despite the fact they had searched my bag when I went in, and it had nothing but my sketching materials in it, I had to leave it (twice, as it happened) in a locker and not take it round with me. The bag was a risk, too big.  This is a monstrous, sexist injustice. No man had his pockets or jacket searched.  I was really angry.

Outside again we wandered back towards our flat…  I wondered what on earth this statue woman was actually doing apart from being naked and available. I wondered if there were any similar men lounging about and then immediately saw this bloke trying to fix a fountain ... it seemed a good-enough pairing.  

  

But really there is a lot of very good public art. We bought an ice-cream for Andrew, some beautiful Arabic pastries in a tiny box to bring back for supper. We found the infamous Mannequin Pis by accident, stopped for a beer in a cafe, chatted to the police-horsemen, bought some  fish for supper, and fruit… and then came back to this weird underlit apartment.  We are both tired.  It’s our last day tomorrow.

  

A thousand kilometres by train

Walking back to Edith's house from Attnang-Puchheim station on Tuesday evening showed us another side of life in Austria... the way the suburbs have spread over the farmland creating secret roads and back-ways, the houses and apartments planted on a grid pattern but without the formality of proper roads. Some planted fields remain between them.  We zigzagged through the night between the buildings, with some conversations along the way (a young woman looking for the old cinema), or greetings: Grosse Gott is how you say hallo, not Guten Tag.

In the morning she took us in her car with our tightly packed suitcases and dropped us off at the station for our train journey back towards the north.

Swift train to Linz - earlier than we needed but that way we had a lift.  A wait for 2 hours with a coffee in the sun, buying a picnic from the Spar in the station. Freight trains went through.  Two passenger trains made purely beautiful musical noises in a perfect rising scale as they slowly moved away from another platform... mechanical squeezing, what might have been a grinding noise or brakes unlocking, or something, but there it was D E F G A B C .... wonderful!

On to the big train to Frankfurt - about six hours... We had a map for Austria and could trace our journey for part of the way.   Across the aisle from us was a black woman, beautiful but confused. She and the conductor had various conversations about where she was to get off.... In the end the police came, interviewed her. She either did not understand them or could not answer for other reasons - no passport, no papers, nothing to say. Her voice was almost silent. The policewoman drew on blue rubber gloves and did a light search of the woman's plastic bag stuffed with - what? things. Eventually they took her off the train at Platting, otherwise spelled Plattling. She had been asking the conductor which stop that was.... but the police thought she wanted to get off at Munich - wrong train.  Who knows? A mule? She seemed ill.  I hope she is ok.   It dragged me back to horrible thoughts: racism, Nazism (let me see your papers).... God knows what was in her mind. We were powerless, could do nothing.

We changed at Frankfurt - quite a different kind of station from its twin at Frankfurt Airport.... heavy and over-structured, it looks like, with tall skyscrapers faintly visible through the great demi-lune windows.

    

Thank goodness the delay on the first train did not make us miss our connection to Brussels. We waited for what seemed like ages on the platform before they let us in, to a near-identical train but this one was missing a couple of coaches so it was extremely tightly filled. The door behind us made a weird oomphetty-crunchetty noise every time it closed. The panel under our window had something metallic rattling inside of it, really loudly.  It was first class, but not....

Outside there was a brief but spectacular sunset, then rain....

Brussels Station seemed to be utterly filled with people even though it was ten at night... Outside, the streets were full, there was a traffic jam. The station is surrounded by huge cobbles so pulling cases over it is awkward (and unnecessary).    Our apartment is in a plain dark building and we wondered how to get in - but the owner's son came at that moment with another man carrying mops and buckets, and let us in.

The flat is hilarious...  The contrast with Edith's immaculate and extremely comfortable house could not be more stark.  They have installed a new kitchen and very shiny floor tiles, but the lighting is (not surprisingly) Mediterranean as they are Turkish. So we get small ornate central ceiling lights with not very bright bulbs. The rooms get darker when you switch these lights on.   There is one bedside light but no plug in sight. Luckily Andrew has an extension cable with him.....

  

The sink in the bathroom is sloping slightly the wrong way so the water does not drain down the plug.  The duvets are thin, and covered in a spectacular gunmetal-grey/red/purple shot silky fabric which catches on any rough skin.  The tv only shows Portuguese programmes.  It turns out that floor is lethally slippery after a shower, and the shower itself is perhaps 60 years old - it falls off the wall and is undirectable.   So, our flat is cheap, and central, and we have it for 3 nights, but it would make a great location for a comic movie/farce.

We are in a foreign district, African shops, spherical beggar ladies outside on the pavement....  These beggars are everywhere - a new European phenomenon.  Only in Linz has the problem been tackled - with emergency housing, help back to work, clothing etc. It's a hard problem all round.. I don't like seeing beggars, but my discomfort is nothing to theirs. I want them gone, for my pampered sake, but much much more for theirs.  We saw no beggars in Linz. But outside the window here, there are two woman sitting....  You can see them.... Maybe they are just bored grannies. I don't know.

   

Linz

A short bulletin today as we are off to the station very soon: Linz > Frankfurt > Brussels.  It seems the weather in Brussels is the same as in Faversham - cold, dark, wet and windy, while here we have had warm and sunny days.

The privatised trains in Austria offer what is to me an astonishing deal - tickets substantially cheaper than the nationalised service (though with some restrictions on service, ie before or after rush hours).  We were promised this in the UK but it never happened because each region or line is still a monopoly so we pay high prices knowing we are basically shovelling our cash towards a bunch of shareholders.

Our trip into Linz yesterday for sightseeing was swift, clean attractively designed and managed.

    

Linz is much more a workaday town than Salzburg, we enjoyed our walk through the park with its pro-gay benches, brilliant flowerbeds, courtyard coffee shops, and trams.   We whizzed over the Danube up to Postlingberg on Europe's steepest adhesion tram.... through the university of Bruckner, the district where doctors live, and up to the top. The church is very large.  We strolled around in the brilliant sun, had lunch on the terrace..... I was attracted by a little road curving up the hill.

Down again we went, visited the parish church where Bruckner was the organist. Eventually we reached Lentos, the stunning mirrored art gallery by the river, built like a huge bridge along the embankment and with a fine collection of 19th-21st century work. Most of the artists I have never heard of (apart from the obligatory Schiele and Klimpt).  The building is lovely and practical, the works uplifting - and it was free entry for old people on a Tuesday, so that was a bonus.  We sat in the sun and looked at the river where the colossal cruise boats were moored up, and we could see Postlingberg on the horizon where we had just been, the twin spires of the church twinkling in the light.

In incidentally, the name Lentos is said to be another of those Celtic words meaning ‘curve’, describing the river. And it’s thought to be the origin of the name Linz itself.

With an hour or so to spare before we met up with Edith, we went to the so-called New Cathedral (1886?-1924) which is pure gothic and looks medieval. It is truly vast. The transepts are bigger than Faversham Parish Church which is rated to be cathedral size in some books. The interior is dark, the whole thing rather weird.... how the Victorians were caught in the grip of medievalism.  People come to see the windows but after the art gallery the glass had little power for me. But there is a lot of it.   

The Old Cathedral had shut (earlier than advertised) so we could not see it, and instead we found a lovely quiet terrace at Cafe Traxlmayr, had water and wine, and waited for Edith.  The sunlight filtered through the trees. A sparrow chirped around our feet. It was warm, calm. I  was making yet another study of chairs in a cafe, which I never intended to be a theme of my art work but is becoming a trade mark. The cafe age. 

  

This was our last evening in Austria....  Home on the privatised Westbahn train, a light supper, and bed.  Off north today. 

Salt town

We start with a photo of the pond in Edith's garden. It is deep, and has lots of newts in it. Her ex-husband wants to remove the huge pine trees behind it... which I think is a shame but this photo may just hold some of their beauty.

Today we did a grand tour through the land of lakes up to Hallstadt, a lakeside town which has been replicated in full detail in China because the Chinese love it.  Hal = ‘salt’ in Celtic, apparently. I feel the need to buy a Celtic/English dictionary and look forward with interest to finding out whether ‘Celtic’ really is a unified language. When I think of the differences we encounter driving first through Wales for the ferry, and then on to Ireland, and the utter incomprehensibility of both native languages, I can only speculate what ‘a dictionary’ would make of Celtic in what is now Salzkammergut in Austria.  

We had a lovely day...

Our journey took us through the most exhilarating and ecstatic landscapes - rich rolling farmlands, plump farmhouses, spotless villages, and towering mountains with the remnants of the winter’s snow all around. We stopped and strolled around in Wolfgangsee where long ago they filmed ‘The White Horse Inn’.  That was a silent movie made in 1926, then there were some German remakes in 1930, 1952 and 1960.  The original inn is there, right on the edge of the lake, adorned with a couple of white horse statues (and facing the defiantly-named Schwartz Rössal/Horse Inn), and with the famous tune written out in staves on the front. 

  

The films have been the source of the town’s fortunes, as through the decades, the world and his wife have been to see the inn … bringing with them much good fortune.   This seems to be a winning formula in Austria, as they’ve been so successful in marketing Mozart, Haydn, The Sound of Music, etc.

We couldn’t get coffee at the White Horse Inn as it was surrounded by civic maintenance works, so we went instead to Peter’s Hotel, which offers Vitamin D on the terrace… (sunshine).  We had blueberry strudel and huge macchiato coffees, and I dashed off a painting of the view. Very pleasant place indeed.

  

Then we set off for Hallstadt - and I am almost lost for words to describe it.  The lake and mountains are glorious. The complicated wooden houses are built almost on top of each other, on the steep slopes. The tourism is nicely managed (esp in April as we are now). The funicular railway is astonishing - we have never seen such a tall one, but it costs €9 per person per journey, too expensive for 3 of us just to go up and down.  The street leading along near the waterside to the Zentrum was only built by demolishing several houses on the beach, and against the adamant wishes of the then-residents of the town (voting in the early '60s).   Presumably those protesters eventually died out, and tourism won.  Incidentally, a sign tells you there were two ways to die in Hallstadt: drowning or having a rock fall on your head.  The whole place is really very very pretty, and filled with Chinese tourists wherever you look.  I can only guess how this happened, but it would make a great film script.

  

We have had a lovely day out, with Edith entertaining us all along the way, and we are home now for supper and unwinding. Tomorrow we go to Linz, by train.  The mountains are really just breathtaking....

Inland seas

Before we handed our apartment key back, we went for an early morning walk along the river, where the plane trees are pollarded into marvellous shapes and people stroll, run, walk and cycle to take the air. 

We trundled our cases over the cobbles, stopped for a coffee at Ledererengasse, and then up to the station.  We checked train times with Edith, and found our train. The guard was super-efficient and highly critical that we had not filled in our EuroRailPass paperwork in advance. He was Indian. 

Our hugs at Attnang-Puchheim were so tight and warm! How lovely to see Edith again! She was our au pair over 30 years ago, and moved with us from London to Faversham. 

These two tiny ancient villages now conjoined are famous for being a railway junction, and their very name makes Austrians snigger… but for us this is a pleasant little community in rolling farmland, and with distant mountain views. It was smashed to smithereens with bombs at the end of the war so does not have as much antiquity as other towns.

Edith and her husband have divorced, a messy arrangement regarding ownership, rights and responsibilities for their business and property. She was so ill when it happened she signed papers which no-one in their right mind would agree to, and he is absolutely unwilling to go back and renegotiate, so she is stuck with half a house, half a garden, his office downstairs, his new woman’s car in her garage, all very difficult.  She is coping brilliantly, inspired by Jesus, making a new life, and we have had a wonderful time reminiscing and teaching each other English and German.  She comes originally from Burgenland (one dialect), lives here in Salzkammergut (another dialect), speaks ordinary Austrian (dialect of German), and of course normal German as taught in schools… Her demonstration of how these all vary is hilarious.

She had made us a fantastic meal of Wienerschnitzel - perfection! so we ate till bursting and then went on a tour - to the lakes, the inland seas of Austria.

First we went to Attersee - a huge shining expanse of the clearest pure water - with delightful walks and groves of trees. It's nearly 50 square kilometres, disappears round the edges of the mountains.

Families were playing, everyone out taking the air on such a warm sunny afternoon, and the swans showing off their beauty. The water is really remarkable - drinkable, clear down to the bottom. It’s unusual for us to see the swans’ feet doing their own exquisite underwater dances.  We walked round the edge, past a beautiful reconstruction of a neolithic pile village… (straight out of my After the Ice book!) and on to the rich people’s summer houses - right on the water’s edge. 

    

This is where Gustav Klimpt came to stay - there are photos showing him with family and friends on the jetties (still there), wearing a ludicrous artist’s smock, showing off his considerable shoulder-bits, posing (a lot), as ‘the artist’.    Funny.

Then we retraced our steps, queued for ages for delicious ice-cream (aaaggh! far too much!!) but found a table to sit and talk and eat….. Then back to the car.

Edith then took us on to Traunsee - round the edge of this huge inland sea, the roads blessedly free because this was a Sunday in March….. she says it’s utterly choked in summertime.  We went past the huge mountains shining in the late afternoon sun, their massive grey cliffs and faces looking down on us like vast wise old uncles, home no doubt to sprites and ice-goblins, masters of metal smithery, full of ancient secrets, a remnant of the Ice Age unphased by modern life or talk of global warming… It’s cold up there!

Traunsee has a slightly different character, though the water is just as shiningly clear and drinkable.  The towns have an aristocratic feel to them - castles, hotels, grand squares… One we had been to long ago, with the carillon on the front of the Rathaus….   We heard music - live! - from the Swan Hotel at Gmunden and despite the waiter saying it was closed we went in, and there was a band, oh such fun! Called www.krauhoelzl-musi.at with Styrian diatonic button accordion, tuba, various flugelhorns, cornets, trumpets, and a vivid boisterous bumping joy about them, interspersed with singing and a really astonishing clapping accompaniment - one clap against the other - really exciting. Later I saw they are quite famous, play huge gigs as well as weddings, and Edith says they play the typical local music.  I drew them (to their astonishment) and gave them the drawing (to my own astonishment).  

  

Back home for talk, looking through a wonderful photo album from when Edith was our au pair (the childen will wriggle when they see some of the photos), and eventually to bed… filled with good food, old memories and pleasures of being in such a lovely place.