by Oral O. Miller
(Reprinted with permission from “Dialogue,” Winter 2000.)
The Romans named an existing village, Vindobona, when they built a fortress there while expanding their empire northeastward and down the Danube River. Over the centuries, the town grew larger and became a center of government. In the 13th century, the famous Stephansdom (St. Stephens Cathedral) was erected where its 450-foot-high steeple and massive Stephansplatz (plaza) served as the center of the city, which was still protected by a ring of fortification.
In 1533 the Hapsburg royal family built the Hofburg Palace, which served as its seat of government and one of the most influential political centers in that part of the world for the next 375 years. It was in the Hofburg Palace that the Napoleonic Europe ended when Prince Metternich presided over the Congress that implemented the surrender and final banishment of Napoleon.
Near this city is an area referred to as the Wienerwald, a once heavily forested area which served as the royal hunting grounds. It became famous approximately 200 years ago after the composition of a waltz by a famous and talented resident of the city. It was through this city in the 1680s that the taste for drinking coffee was introduced to the western world when an invading army from the Turkish Ottoman Empire was repulsed. During its retreat, it left behind a supply of dark brown beans from which they had been making a delicious, hot, stimulating beverage.
Approximately 100 years later during the last-attempted invasion by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, it was the sound of the Turkish Army bugles outside the walls of the city that inspired one of its residents, a composer who spent the last 10 and most productive years of his life there, to write his famous “Turkish March.” You know by now that I am referring to Vienna, Austria, and Vienna Woods and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Not until the beginning of 1999 did I have an opportunity to enjoy and savor the beauty, history and culture of this world-famous city.
When I retired from my position as executive director of the American Council of the Blind, my wife and I were presented with a trip to Vienna and Salzburg, Austria, in appreciation for our service to the members of the organization. As we made our plans to visit Vienna and Salzburg during the New Year’s concert season, our friends, Dr. and Mrs. Otis Stephens of Knoxville, Tenn., agreed to join us; we had enjoyed traveling together previously and we knew, for example, that Dr. Stephens is perhaps as much a history buff as I am.
Exciting thoughts of the things we would see, do and consume made the approximately 10-hour flight from Washington, D.C. to Vienna rush by. Within a few hours after our arrival and settlement in a small, traditional Viennese hotel, we were reconnoitering the neighborhood, which was located in the academic quarter near the university. One of our first lucky finds was a nearby traditional Viennese restaurant. During the next week, we enjoyed countless delicious meals featuring such delights as Wiener schnitzel (breaded veal) and irresistible pastries called apfelstrudel and sacher tortes, along with that wonderful Viennese coffee.
Much of the exploring of the inner city of Vienna on comfortably cold days we did on foot, so we could stop to ask questions, read signs and savor the moment. For example, soon after visiting the cathedral while strolling down a narrow, cobblestone street, we unexpectedly saw Figarohaus, in which Mozart’s apartment had been located and which now houses the Mozart Museum. Three steep flights of outdoor steps later, we basked in beautiful Mozart music conveyed to us over the best-sounding wireless headphones I have ever heard.
Another time we took a riding tour of the ancient inner city in a horse-drawn carriage of the type that had been crisscrossing Vienna for 300 years. Another time we visited a museum featuring the development of clocks and other time-keeping devices.
One day was devoted to a tour to the Vienna Woods where we visited, among other things, a former gypsum mine that had been converted by the Germans during World War II to the bomb-proof factory in which the jet airplane was invented and first produced. The narrow, steep tunnel which led several hundred yards down into the mine, which was under a mountain, was scarcely five feet high in some places before going down 84 steps to what had been the large open area housing the factory.
The naturally occurring water which had always accumulated in the open area that had been pumped out during its use as a factory had been allowed to return to form a completely underground lake. Visitors are given lecture tours on electric-powered boats equipped with lights for seeing the walls, ceiling and other features.
Another tour took us to the magnificent Schonbrunn Palace, the residential palace of the Hapsburg Dynasty which contained 1,500 rooms staffed by more than 1,000 servants.
Because the New Year’s Day concert by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was booked several years in advance, we did not have the opportunity to hear it in person. We did attend a concert in Salzburg a few days later.
A day-long visit to Budapest, Hungary, a three-hour bus ride, down the Danube River, revealed the difficulties that famous city had experienced over almost 60 years combined of Nazi occupation and Russian Communist domination. Our English-speaking guide for the day, a sprightly, 78-year-old widowed government retiree, emphasized the economic necessity for her to work as a guide because of the meager retirement pension she was receiving.
The fact that the Vienna School for the Blind was closed for Christmas and New Year’s holidays did not prevent my long-time friend, Dr. Franz Haslinger, director of the school, from showing us that beautiful, stately institution, which combined both antique beauty with modern convenience. One feature which caught everyone’s attention was the school’s museum, which housed many pre-braille writing devices, tactile maps, braille writing instruments and an authentic Rembrandt painting relating to blindness. We were inspired when we learned that while the school was closed and being used for other purposes by the Germans during World War II, the teachers and staff had, at great personal risk, hidden many of the valuable exhibits and displays at many places throughout the countryside.
The Viennese people to whom we spoke urged us to celebrate the coming of the New Year by observing the fireworks at the Stephansplatz. Traffic for several blocks around the plaza was blocked off to vehicular traffic so the refreshing walk gave us a taste of what was coming —cheering, noisemakers of every type and firecrackers. Yes, firecrackers thrown almost helter-skelter on the ground and in the air by teenagers and other celebrants. As we neared the Stephansplatz, Dr. Stephens and I compared the noise to what Gettysburg must have sounded like during the Civil War battle there.
We pushed our way through the masses congregated on the plaza until we decided that the noise was too deafening and there was an uncomfortable risk of being hit by fragments and heat from the omnipresent firecrackers and “cherry bombs,” so we forced our way out of the plaza down a street to the protection and relative quiet of a café. Yes, all of the fireworks were provided by the celebrants, not fired by professionals, and, indeed, we did feel fine fragments from, see flashes from, feel the heat from, and smelled the burning powder from countless firecrackers before getting to the café.
The three-hour train ride to Salzburg through the beautiful Tyrolean Alps brought back memories of visits I had made to Innsbruck in the 1980s as the leader of the U.S. Disabled Ski Team. A true highlight of the visit to Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart, was an evening concert described as “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik” played on authentic, old instruments of that region. One instrument, the hackbrett, was an instrument whose strings were struck by small hammers to generate a sound somewhere between that of a hammered dulcimer of Appalachian America and a Hungarian cymbalo or cymbalum.
Another of the featured instruments was a large, accordion-like instrument, which I believe was referred to as a harmonium — a term which in the USA usually refers to an old-fashioned parlor organ. Many Mozart pieces were played and the name of Mozart appears in countless places in the Salzburg area, whose natural beauty and Alpine culture have been captured in many famous movies, such as “The Sound of Music.”
Our collective interest in history could not be satisfied without visiting nearby Berchtesgaden, Germany, and the Nazi government facilities that had been relocated to that area for purposes of security and to be near the famous “Adler Horst” or “Eagle’s Nest” mountaintop home of Adolph Hitler.
Near the end of World War II the Allies finally located the hidden offices and other facilities and damaged them very severely with bombs. The “Eagle’s Nest” residence itself was essentially embedded in the side of the mountain and could be reached only by an elevator traveling through a shaft in the rock or by an exceptionally steep, narrow and dangerous road. The Nazi government facilities that were not destroyed by British bombers have been removed by the German government, which keeps the steep, narrow road closed most of the year for safety reasons.
We have not yet made plans to revisit Vienna or Salzburg, but we would obviously enjoy every minute of another visit because we barely scratched the surface in seeing and doing things of interest and enjoyment.