I have to confess that for inveterate miserabilists, moaners and pessimists we sometimes 'have all the luck'!
Our Austrian publisher is pleased with the results of our course book, and appreciative of the extra promotional dates we have done, so they offered that our annual meeting this year would be in Vienna, rather than the usual airport hotel in Munich.
But, being rather nice, unlike some of the bigger publishers we work with, they offered us a long weekend in a nice hotel, all meals paid for as well, for the terrible sufferance of a late afternoon one hour meeting and a fancy meal on the Monday night.
Well what could we say? Yes, please? We had never been to Vienna.
We had such a fab fab time. The OH has always adored Schiele so it was a real pilgramage for him - so our first day was devoted to Schiele - wonderful - probably helped me understand him as I was sufering from my usual travel day migraine!
And on Tuesday I burst into tears in the Breughel room. I don't know... I didn't expect to be moved by Breughel. I haven't ever really though that much about him, but I have seen his paintings a lot over the years as I love art.
In the Kunsthistorisches museum (we have to confess to giving this a rather vulgar nickname!) there is whole room of Brueghels. All the most famous ones, all together. He was a genius. Wonderful colours, amazing physical movement, brilliant composition, wonderful interpretation of stories and themes. Such humanity in the most humble people, a true humanist! And so I found myself welling up!P1040212P1040322P1040388P1040457P1040503P1040555
We had good food too on our own, but on the meeting day we were taken to a wonderful fancy Viennese restaurant, situated in a famous grocery store along the lines of Harrods, overlooking an important Vienna street.
We loved the coffee houses, and I had some retail therapy in the clothes shops (sales!) and the museum shops. As usual we came back laden with art books!
We also saw a lot of Klimt. I liked him much better than I expected. Because he died suddenly there were some unfinished paintings. He painted the women nude under all that gold decoration!
Vienna is full of brilliantly up to date gallery life. We ate great lunches in the galleries. You could spend all day in them.
On the Sunday it was 35 degrees centrigrade - we suffered in the gardens of the Belvedere Palace - which are beautiful. It's one thing wishing for hot weather after a British summer, it's another suddenly plunging into a heat wave! There were teenage boys stripped to their underpants bathing in the fountains (very nice!). We were surprised when some headscarfed Muslim women jumped in as well! It really undermined our expectations!
Hope to write more detail in next blog.