The Iron Curtain

Let's start this post with a question. What do you call a Škoda on top of hill? 

No, I'm not going to give you the response to that right now. We'll come back to the answer in a bit.

In my senior year of college at the University of Michigan, my daily journey to the Art and Architecture Building involved me walking several blocks from my apartment on Hill Street and boarding a bus to take me to the University's North Campus for the hours and hours I spent at my desk in the architecture studio every day. One day in the fall of that year (this would be 1989), I vividly remember sitting on that bus and looking out at the newspaper machines at the bus stop and reading something about the wall coming down. The headline was huge. This seemed like big news.

My first thought here, by the way, was why was the Detroit Free Press putting something about Pink Floyd on page one? Don't mock. At this point in my life, I was a little fixated on Pink Floyd. Of course, the headline wasn't about Pink Floyd's 1979 album. It was about the Berlin Wall. 

The removal of the wall between the west and east sides of Berlin was a seminal moment in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of their almost complete control over most countries in eastern Europe. This sphere of control, which consisted of puppet governments in a series of nations to the west of the U.S.S.R., was referred to as the Iron Curtain, a term coined by Winston Churchill in a speech delivered in 1946 (in Missouri, of all places). The Iron Curtain in mainland Europe was the western border of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

I often equate the fall of the Berlin Wall as the first step in the collapse of the Soviet Union. It wasn't. While I probably didn't realize it at the time, Hungary and Poland had already taken official steps to move towards democracy earlier that same year with the blessing of the Soviets. Two years and a couple of months later, the Soviet Union would officially disband as a nation, leaving Ukraine, Georgia, several Stans and a bunch of other countries to various forms of self-government and freeing the citizens of countries locked behind the Iron Curtain to figure things out for themselves.

Bratislava here we come!!! Train waiting in Vienna.

I've traveled a lot since my four years at Michigan. I've been all around the United States and the world and have hit six of the seven continents. Among other things, I've been on safaris; roamed all over western Europe; walked to Machu Picchu; looked for kiwis at night in New Zealand; and belted out karaoke at the top of my lungs in Tokyo's Shinjuku neighborhood. But until December of last year, I'd never set foot behind the Iron Curtain. That would change when we took a train north from Vienna to Bratislava, Slovakia. Our passage over the Slovakian border technically took us through the old boundary which was very, very real.

Our plan for our visit to Bratislava was pretty simple: (1) get a taste of what life under Soviet rule or influence or whatever you want to call it was like and (2) hit up the city's Christmas market. The second part of that agenda was simple and straightforward. Plus, why would we NOT visit a Christmas market? I mean, 11 in Vienna just wasn't enough, after all. 

To do the first part, though, we'd need a little help. So we called in a professional. When we got off the train in Bratislava, we were met by Peter Chrenka in his 1993 Škoda car. Peter and his brother operate a company called Authentic Slovakia and one of the tours they run is specifically geared around what remains of the Soviet occupation (I don't know what else to call it, really) in Bratislava. Let the fun begin!

As a point of establishing perspective here, Bratislava was as close as you could get to the edge of Soviet control in eastern Europe in a major city during the cold war. It is right on the border between Slovakia and Austria (meaning it was right on the border between Czechoslovakia and Austria between the mid 1940s and the late 1980s). It's so close that you can actually look across to Austria from many, many points within Bratislava. I don't like necessarily equating some societies as totally free and others as totally not free but literally, more freedom could be seen less than a mile away from Bratislava. It must have been an interesting and desperate time.

Our chariot for the day. How awesome is this vintage Škoda????

Our agenda for the day was set by Peter and that was fine with us. There are times on our trips where we like to have a lot of control over where we go and what we do based on a ton of advance research. And there are other times where we can't possibly come up with an agenda for an obscure quest like a visit to Soviet-era sites in city in eastern Europe. Plus on a day trip like this, we really wanted to talk with someone who had actually been there. OK so maybe Peter at 40 years old had limited experience with living behind the Iron Curtain, but he clearly remembered enough based on our few hours in his company that added a ton of value to our day.

First stop? A 1956 concrete panel housing block. I'm not kidding. The first place we stopped and got out of the car was an historic (also not kidding; check it out below) apartment building constructed by the Soviets out of prefabricated concrete panels. Now sure, we drove by a couple of other sights along the way. We also talked some history, including covering the 1968 invasion by the USSR to squash developing connections between what was then Czechoslovakia and the West and Peter being taken by his parents to a celebration of Slovak independence in November of 1989. He had no idea what was going on at seven years old but it's a cool memory to have been a part of that. But, yes, our first stop was at a vintage apartment building.

Speaking of Peter's parents, they were travel agents, which in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s meant that they booked holidays for people in eastern Europe or Yugoslavia (you weren't really allowed to travel anywhere else). Peter knew that sometimes his father would send 40 people on vacation to Yugoslavia only to have 30 come back, with the rest fleeing to the west. But his dad never really talked to him about it, thinking that if Peter said the wrong thing to the wrong kid at school with the wrong dad, it could mean some serious trouble. My parents never thought about stuff like this while I was growing up. Peter's parents had to.

But enough of that family stuff. Let's get back to that housing project!!!

Sexy stuff, right? This apartment building was actually one of the two main sites Peter took us to and talked to us about. Sure, we went to a local Soviet-era food market and drove past a couple of very totalitarian-looking pieces of architecture in the form of an inverted pyramid and a bridge that looked like it has a UFO on one side of it (the informal name of the bridge is actually the UFO bridge) but yes, really, we spent more time at the concrete panel apartment building than any of those three other buildings.

So by now, I'm sure you are snickering at us paying some dude in an antique Czech car to drive us around looking at some of the worst manifestations of 20th century building design in the world, right? I mean this tour must have been a total waste of time and money, right?

Wrong! In addition to being able to talk to Peter about what it was like to live in the former Czechoslovakia, there was a ton of value not only in the tour as a whole but also in stopping by some dull, light grey, concrete building in the middle of town. 

I know I mentioned earlier in this post that the apartment building is historic. I was doing that a bit tongue-in-cheek but its historic status is exactly part of the narrative that we experienced this day. Sure, it wasn't the reason that we visited that spot in Bratislava (it was clear we were visiting because it was erected under the auspices of the U.S.S.R.), but its historic status is what's keeping it around and is going to keep it around for a while. Maybe forever.

So look, the building sucks, OK? Yeah, I know there's some vaguely cool bas reliefs (read: propaganda) of dancing Russians above the entrances to the building (both men and women, shown above) but it's just not attractive in any way. But it's here to stay because somehow, somebody thought this was something that needed to be saved and it's old enough to be protected by whatever preservation laws exist in Slovakia. It also, by the way, was not insulated properly when it was built and the building can't be insulated from the outside in because such an intervention would compromise the historic "character" of the thing.

This debate about "is everything old worth saving?" occurs all over the world, including in the United States. Just because something has survived long enough to make it quality for historic preservation doesn't mean it should have such protection. But there's another wrinkle to the debate in Bratislava. This was not built by Slovakians for Slovakians. It was effectively built by an occupying force and it's here to stay. Maybe forever. 

How would you feel about having to keep in place reminders of decades of being controlled by a foreign totalitarian regime when all you wanted to do was move on with your lives and make your society your own? It must be tough, even if, as Peter suggested, about one quarter of Slovaks today would welcome, or at least not object to, a return to a more Soviet way of life. Apparently, some are having a difficult time adjusting to a more capitalist society.

What a creative bunch those Soviets were. Bratislava Castle (dating from the 1400s) is on the lower left.

But if you are going to get upset about an uninsulated apartment building, you really have to wrestle with this issue when you venture to what is probably the highest point in the city of Bratislava and visit the monument to the Soviet soldiers who freed the city from the Nazis in World War II.

This monument is not a statue or a plaque or a reflecting pool or anything small or reasonably scaled like that. No, no. It's the entire top of the hill. There's a giant paved plaza with a mausoleum topped by an enormous spire crowned by a Soviet soldier holding an unfurling flag and crushing a swastika with his boot as its centerpiece. To get to the building itself you have to walk up various flights of steps past bas reliefs of Russian forces and graves of 6,485 fallen Soviets with some of the names of those who died liberating Bratislava from the Germans. 

It's actually pretty impressive. It's well designed and beautifully sited. But the message is confusing as hell. There's one inscription in the monument that proclaims (in Russian of course, so I'm paraphrasing a bit) eternal glory for those who fought for the independence and glory of their homeland. But it's not for those who fought for the homeland where this monument is erected. It's for those who fought for Mother Russia, only it's a building in Slovakia.

So sure, the Soviets did actually liberate Bratislava from the Germans. Peter pointed out that it's probably one of the only places on Earth that had squares named after both Hitler and Stalin at one point. But they liberated the city from the Nazis and then kept it for themselves. And they stuck the residents of Bratislava with a giant piece of propaganda on top of a hill to remind them of it. Heck, they even demolished a steeple on a nearby church so there would be nothing to compete visually with the monument they erected.

This is a bit crazy, right? One of the most impressive monuments in the city of Bratislava has nothing to do with Slovakians. Not really, anyway.

I don't know how many people day trip to Bratislava when on vacation in Vienna. I'm guessing we are not the only ones who have taken the just a bit more than an hour train ride east and north over the Slovakian border. I'm also guessing there are not many who go to see what we go to see and then go straight back to Vienna. We didn't want to follow a standard tourist agenda on our first trip behind the old Iron Curtain. So we didn't.

But this day in Bratislava wouldn't have worked without a guide. I mean, sure, we could have done the research or bought a guidebook and made our way to pretty much everything we saw that day. But without the commentary from our guide Peter, it would have been nowhere near as valuable.

So sure (and I know I already said this), Peter was seven years old when Slovakia freed itself from the yoke of the Soviets, but it's not like things changed immediately or anything in 1989. Change took time. It's also not like he can't remember things from his childhood and he doesn't have the benefit of hearing stories from his family who were far more aware of what life was like under Soviet control. His perspective was so valuable, right down to the Slovakian soft drinks he brought along for us and which we sipped on while we gazed at the concrete panel apartment building. 

Kofola, a type of spiced or herbed (I got cinnamon out of drinking it) cola made in Czechia and Vinea, a grape based soda invented in Bratislava in 1973, if you must know, by the way. We got the red version of the Vinea. I'd drink that again. I'd pass on the Kofola.

The last stop we made with Peter was at an overlook of sorts with a view to the south and west of Bratislava across the Danube River and into Austria. The bridge that crosses the Danube today providing easy access between the two countries wasn't there when the Iron Curtain was up. It was consequently deliberately difficult to get from Slovakia over the Danube to a society that was fundamentally different than life experienced by the citizens of Bratislava. 

One of the perks of being so close to Austria in the 1980s was that you could receive television signal from across the border, and while it was forbidden to watch Austrian TV, Peter did anyway (I mean, of course he would; why wouldn't he). It made quite an impression on the young kid, one which manifests itself today in Peter owning a Trans Am (he was a huge Knight Rider fan). Back then he used to watch whatever he could get over the illicit signal received from over the river and based on his time in fronf of the TV, he longed for some Milka, a Swiss chocolate, which was advertised all the time but was completely unavailable in Bratislava in the 1980s.

The first place Peter and his family visited after the fall of communism in Slovakia was Austria. And of course, he got some Milka. That was all he wanted.

Looking south and west into Austria.

Finally, a word or two about our transport.

We went everywhere that day with Peter in Bratislava in his 1993 Škoda. He and his brother (through his grandfather) actually own one made in the 1970s but it doesn't really run too well in the winter and Peter hinted that he may have actually done a little (or maybe a lot of) damage to that car recently so we got the later model. If you've traveled much in Europe you may have seen Škodas around. Heck, you might have even rented and driven one yourself. If you have, odds are that they are pretty modern and reliable vehicles. They are, after all, made by Volkwagen these days.

Peter's version is pre-VW. At one time, 50% of the cars on the roads in Czechoslovakia were Škodas and they were maybe not quite as reliable as today's versions before Volkwagen got involved. But the 1993 version of the car got us around the city just fine, including to the top of the tallest hill in the city. Which brings me back to my opening question: what do you call a Škoda on top of a hill? 

A miracle.

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How We Did It

Getting a train from Vienna to Bratislava is pretty easy. Trains from Vienna's Hauptbahnhof run frequently and cheaply. We booked our tickets at the ÖBB site, although there may be other options. 

We arranged to have Peter pick us up at the train station after we booked our tour through the Authentic Slovakia website. Their website is simple and payment was safe and secure. The day before our tour we were emailed details of the meet along with a picture of the car we'd be touring around in. It all worked. We found the car easily and got right to the tour. I thought these guys were great. I'd totally recommend them for anyone wanting someone to show them around Slovakia for a day. Nothing but good things to say here.

I'm sure Peter is not the only one at Authentic Slovakia who runs this tour (there are a lot more people than just Peter pictured on their website) but if you do get Peter driving you around, hope that he brings some of his homemade plum brandy. You might need something to warm you up a little before stepping out into the cold in a Slovakian December.

If you decide to go it alone and want to do all or part of this itinerary, I'm not sure I could tell you where the apartment building we visited is, but the Soviet memorial on top of the hill is called Slavin. Good luck, comrade!

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The Sachertorte

If you are remotely fanatical about dessert at all and happen to travel to Europe more than once every five years, I would think that at some point you would make your way to Vienna. The array of sweet treats there is truly astounding, from juicy and crispy apple strudel to the slightly less famous topfenstrudel (made with cheese) to nutty, fruity Linzertorte to nockerl to the horseshoe-shaped cookies called vanillekipferl and much more. Way more, in fact, than we could reasonably go through in a week in the city.

Look, sometimes life comes at you fast. All those delicious pastries named in the previous paragraph? We didn't eat any in our week in Austria. Does that sound astounding? Actually I'm pretty shocked, too, and I planned the whole thing. But we did eat the one cake or pie or pastry that was on the top of our list before we landed in Vienna: the Sachertorte. If there was just one we planned to eat while in country, it had to be this one. It is truly a Vienna original. Skipping this would be like going to the Florida Keys and not trying at least a couple of pieces of Key lime pie. Couldn't visit Vienna without eating some Sachertorte. 

Now, there are two places in Vienna which claim to sell the "original" Sachertorte. And by "original", I guess there's an implication of authenticity, ownership and best in the city or country or world. 

These two places are the Hotel Sacher and a cafe named Demel. Both are located right in the heart of Vienna and there's no other business out there that's claiming to have ownership over this cake in any way, so we decided we'd do our authentic Sachertorte tasting at those two establishments and these two alone. After all, there is only so much Sachertorte we can eat in one week. We did have a lot of other dishes on our food agenda, even if we never got to the full array of desserts.

This would be our Pat's or Geno's test of the trip. And in case you are wondering, it's Pat's hands down, no question, any day!

The line outside Demel. We waited here.

If it seems to defy logic that a place other than the Hotel Sacher would have invented the Sachertorte, consider this: the dish was not created in either the hotel of the same name nor was it created at Demel. In fact, neither place even existed when the first Sachertorte was baked. Neither place, by the way, is claiming original authorship.

So how did it get created in the first place? Well, according to legend or family folklore (because this origin story is likely closer to one of those two than to actual fact), the original Sachertorte was created in 1832 at the request of the Chancellor of the Austrian Empire. The Chancellor sent a request to the kitchen for a special dessert for an upcoming dinner. His request happened to be issued on a night when the chef was unavailable due to illness. Not wanting to disappoint the dinner host, the task of answering the challenge here fell to 16 year-old Franz Sacher, who whipped up a chocolate cake in two layers with apricot jam between the top and bottom and a dark chocolate icing covering the entire creation. Boom! The Sachertorte was born!

That story, by the way, is based on the telling by Fritz Sacher's son, Eduard. Choosing to believe it, I guess, is your choice. But there's no other story out there.

The line outside Cafe Sacher. We did not wait here. Reservations, baby!

In 1876, Eduard Sacher decided to open a hotel, which naturally was (and still is) called the Hotel Sacher. Of course, they had a kitchen which started making Sachertortes for the hotel to sell to guests and to whomever else wanted to buy one. 20 years earlier than that, a cafe called Demel opened in Vienna and they too had decided to sell the Sachertorte as created by Eduard Sacher (and made slightly differently than his father had made) who had spent some time working there before he opened his namesake hotel. Demel called their version of the Sachertorte the "original". The Hotel Sacher didn't seem to dispute this label.

Things operated this way with both Demel and the Hotel Sacher selling Sachertorte and only Demel calling it "original" until 1938, when possession of the Hotel Sacher transitioned out of the hands of the Sacher family and into new ownership. When it did, the new owners decided to start selling their Sachertortes with an "original" label on them just like Demel, setting up a situation where two spots in the same city are claiming ownership of the exact same cake. Trouble was brewing.

Demel's Eduard Sacher Torte.

But a full-blown dispute would have to wait for the Second World War to pass. As soon as it did, Hotel Sacher sued Demel for use of the term "original" in the selling of their Sachertortes. Just to be clear here, what we have is a hotel founded by a baker's son suing a cafe where the same baker's son used to work over the rights to call their cake the "original" when clearly the thing wasn't invented by either business. Lawsuits make so much sense, don't they?

Hotel Sacher won. After nine years of legal dispute, the two parties agreed that the Hotel Sacher could call their Sachertorte the "original" and Demel could decorate their version with a triangular seal with the words "Eduard Sacher Torte". Personally, it seems to me that Demel got hosed a bit here. They were using the "original" moniker first and they didn't start the dispute in any way. Life's not fair, I guess.

Enough history for this post, I think. Honestly, that part of this post was way longer than I thought it would be.

The interior of Demel.

We hit the Hotel Sacher (actually the Cafe Sacher inside the hotel) on a Wednesday for lunch. Two days later, we did the same thing at Demel. When we got to both places, there was a line of people standing in line to get inside maybe 12-20 people deep. We made a reservation at Cafe Sacher and passed by everyone in the line and sat down immediately (actually, 15 minutes before our reservation because we were early). Demel doesn't accept reservations so we waited. Point one to Cafe Sacher.

There's a definite difference in attitude in the two establishments. Cafe Sacher is posh, posh, posh all the way. It's brightly lit; there are white tablecloths placed on the tables when you order food (real food, not just cake); the menus hang on a special stand on the tables; and the waitstaff is formal and to the point. Demel feels more like an informal, neighborhood spot that has grown over time. It is cluttered; you can see the various pastries and cakes being made; and there is variety in the types of tables and seating available. In spots, Demel is cozy, although that totally depends on where you get seated. Point two to Cafe Sacher. 

I know, that last point may be a shocker after what I have written but we were not seated in the best spot at Demel. It almost felt like we placed at a tiny table that had been hurriedly added between two real and comfortable tables. That may, in fact, be exactly what happened. Cafe Sacher spoiled us. There's no bad spot in the place (we actually got a corner couch table which may be the best in the place), and the staff makes you feel like the center of attention. To reiterate, point two to Cafe Sacher.

But it's all about the cake, right? Waiting or not waiting and great table or not doesn't matter if the food isn't exceptional. Honestly, Cafe Sacher wins here too. It's a clean sweep.

Our plates at both places ultimately ended up like this.

Here's the deal: both Sachertortes feature a double layer of chocolate sponge separated by a shmear of apricot jam (I graciously waived my no stone fruit in any form rule to eat these cakes...) covered by a coating of chocolate icing that envelops both the top and sides. I thought both were chocolatey and both were sweet cakes. Like sweeter than I usually find cakes to be in Europe (i.e. not American sweet). I also thought the apricot jam came through loud and clear and the unsweetened whipped cream on the side cut the sweetness to a perfect balance.

But the cake at Demel was dry and at Cafe Sacher it was perfectly moist. And that, as simple as that is, was the difference. Nothing more and nothing less. Cafe Sacher gets point three, which is really the only point that mattered. Maybe we got an old or a bad piece of Sachertorte at Demel, but their cake was dry. Nothing more to it than that. Cafe Sacher wins! Hands down!

Before we set foot in either restaurant, I have to say I would have been predisposed to Demel in every way except the no reservations thing. They were the first to sell an "original" Sachertorte; they seem less pompous (or even un-pompous); and the dim atmosphere (dim is positive for me in restaurants and bars) is just my kind of place. But ultimately their cake wasn't as good. If I ever go back to Vienna, I'd consider a return trip to Cafe Sacher, but not to Demel. And particularly not for Sachertorte. I'm a Cafe Sacher guy. What else can I say?

I will say one more thing. One more tipping point for Cafe Sacher: Vienna sausages with mustard and grated horseradish. Four for four. Cafe Sacher cleans up in this battle.

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How We Did It

Nothing complicated here: show up at either Cafe Sacher or Demel and wait to get a table. Or, you know, if it's Cafe Sacher you can always make a reservation. I have to tell you that walking to the front of the line and sitting down at a table while everyone in the line watched was pretty satisfying.

Both places are open daily. Cafe Sacher is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Demel opens a couple of hours later and closes an hour earlier. We visited each at about noon, which I think is on the early side for lunch in Europe, and we found lines that were about a dozen or maybe 20 people deep. I assume the people queuing up are all tourists clamoring to get into one of Vienna's most famous coffee houses and I'm suggesting here that the lines might be longer if you go later in the day, although I'm basing this solely on supposition after seeing the giant lines at Cafe Central every time we passed by that restaurant (we didn't visit Cafe Central).

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Jugendstil

In 1994, I took my first trip to Paris and fell in love with something I never would have thought I would have fallen for: Art Nouveau architecture. This flowery, individualistic, nature-based, romantic style (I really dislike using that word...) of design and creation of buildings seemed completely at odds with everything I considered to be sacred and truthful about architecture. That is, rational, ornament-free, minimalist design. Modernism with a capital M. And maybe what came right before it.

That 1994 Paris trip emphasized to me something I already suspected, that in the history of architecture, the period that I am most fascinated with is the late 19th and early 20th century, a time when architects were trying to figure out what new materials and new methods of production (in addition to the re-discovery of reinforced concrete) meant to their expression in the building arts. Art Nouveau didn't fit into my definition of that struggle to come to terms with change brought about by the Industrial Revolution even though it really is in every way, from the timeline to the materials to the unique-ness in breaking from historical precedent. Paris corrected my definition. And Paris of course was right. Paris is always right.

Since 1994, I have tried to cover all the bases Art Nouveau-wise by visiting the cities that I considered to be the hotbeds of this movement. Paris in 1994 was followed by Glasgow in 1997 (and 2007) and Brussels in 2000 and Helsinki in 2002 and Barcelona in 2014. The last place I had on my list was Vienna. After a mis-fire in 2021, 2022 turned out to be the year I made it to Vienna. So Vienna wasn't JUST about the Christmas markets. It was also about Art Nouveau.

One of Otto Wagner's U stations on the Karlsplatz.

In Vienna, Art Nouveau was not called Art Nouveau. In Vienna, Art Nouveau falls under the umbrella of what was regionally (along with artists and architects working in Germany) called Jugendstil. More specifically, in Vienna, it was called the Vienna Secession movement. Is it really that fundamentally different from Art Nouveau in other places? Well...yes and no. Fundamentally different? Not so much. There are shades of grey that make Jugendstil different at least stylistically (there's that word again...) from its Art Nouveau cousins in other places, but at its core Jugendstil places value on nature-based (or perhaps arts and crafts influence) design that bucks traditional stylistic norms while also focusing on the design of not just the building but most of the contents of the building as well. In some cases, right down to the silverware on the dining table (which is probably also designed by the architect or designer). 

This wholistic design approach, while used in other countries and cities where Art Nouveau flourished, was probably taken to a new level of obsessiveness under Jugendstil. In Germany and Vienna, the architect or designer (or designers) were striving to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total work of art". Others around the world may have been doing something close to the same thing, but they didn't have a special name for it. Jugendstil (which means "young style") did.

So what are these shades of grey I mentioned a couple of paragraphs back? Well, look, I'm no art or architectural historian, but it seems to me that while all forms of Art Nouveau draw inspiration from nature, Jugendstil draws decidedly more from human forms than any other manifestation of the movement. Go to Glasgow and you'll find flowers as decorative elements in the works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Visit Paris or Brussels and you'll find columns or handrails designed by Hector Guimard or Victor Horta that look decidedly like lilies or the stems of some other elegant plant. And stand on the roof of the Casa Batllo in Barcelona and you'll swear Antoni Gaudí clad the roof in dragon scales. But you won't find any people to speak of.

The Ankeruhr Clock, on Bauernmarkt near Hoher Markt, Vienna. Franz Matsch, designer.

Take a look at the roof of the Post Office Savings Bank in Vienna and you'll find a couple of what can only really be described as some sort of mythological gods or goddesses. You'll find something similar in the murals on the outside of the Vienna Secession Building or in the center of the Ankeruhr Clock. I'm not sure if these are manifestations of deities or sprites or just regular everyday humans but there is (for me at least) a fantastical quality to the way these people are represented. They seem otherworldly, like something out of a Tolkien novel.

I'm sure that is dumbing down the difference between Jugendstil and what was going on in France, Belgium, Spain, Scotland and elsewhere throughout the continent to an almost offensive level but that's how I see it. I also see decoration that is far more geometrical in a very German way. In case labeling something "German" doesn't adequately convey an immediate and specific reaction, I see motifs that are rigid, regular, repeated, formal and imperial.

Otto Wagner designed apartment block on the Linke Wienzeile (top) and the Wagner Villa II (bottom).

Most architectural or art movements or styles (it's the last time I'll do that, I promise) have some key or defining figures that dominate or guide or define the movement. Jugendstil in Vienna is no exception. Architects Joseph Maria Olbrich was hugely important as a founding father and Josef Hoffman contributed as much (if not more) as a product designer than a designer of buildings and guiding light of the movement.

But from the architecture side of things, Otto Wagner was clearly the most important figure in the Vienna Secession. He may not have played as important a role as Olbrich or Hoffmann in getting things off the ground, but he was the most embraced by the city and empire (like literally in terms of commissions) and clearly was the most prolific designer who contributed lasting works that are still around today a century or more later.

If there is one other notable difference between the Vienna Secession and other similar movements in Europe, it's that at least one of the founders is an artist and one of the leading tourist draws to Vienna today. Gustav Klimt's works (including his most famous painting The Kiss) are some of the star attractions in Vienna's Belvedere Museum. I don't think you will find any other artist that is as aligned with an Art Nouveau movement that has the standing and stature of Klimt. Lalique doesn't count for me there.

Klimt's The Kiss at the Belvedere (top), with adoring throngs, and the Beethoven Frieze (bottom) at the Secession Building.

There are no shortage of Jugendstil works to visit in Vienna, including a number which you can actually walk into and around and linger a while. The Vienna Secession building is still in use as it was originally intended as an art display space 124 years (!!!) after it was completed and first opened. There are also a number of Otto Wagner buildings open to the public, although not all are in use as originally intended including the first house he built for himself and a number of the original U stations that he designed, some of which are now museums or exhibition spaces.

There are also a number of works in and around the city center of Vienna, including the Altmann and Kuehne chocolatier (facade designed by Josef Hoffmann), a few Wagner apartment buildings and the magnificent Ankeruhr Clock designed by Franz Matsch. I don't know how we missed Hoffmann's chocolate store. I had it on my list and we must have walked by it at least twice (and maybe more). Distracted, I guess. It happens. Too much Christmas.

Picture of a VW on the street with Otto Wagner's Kirche am Steinhof in the background.

Speaking of Christmas...maybe not the best time to go to see as much Jugendstil as you can handle. Otto Wagner's U Pavillion on the Karlsplatz is now a museum celebrating Wagner's life and work. But not in December. Or November, January, February or the first half of March. You'll find something similar (meaning a museum which is closed in late fall and winter) at the emperor's personal railway station, the Hofpavillion, at the Schönbrunn Palace. I assume that the deal here is that these structures are not insulated and therefore not suitable for use in cold weather, but that's pure speculation on my part.

Good luck getting to one of Wagner's masterpieces, the Kirche am Steinhof, in December also. You can get there and get inside, but only if you arrange a visit in advance, pony up more than 100 Euros as a flat fee and pay a per person fee on top of that. If you do decide to do that, plan your trip out there carefully and make sure you end up at the door of the church, not within sight of the church on the other side of the hospital grounds that the church sits on. 

Despite not being willing to pay the fee to visit the inside of the Kirche, I figured we should go out there anyway since it's one of Wagner's major works. We Ubered and got dropped off right in front of the main entrance to the hospital to the south of the church. Accessing the exterior of the building would be just a quick walk through the hospital property. Easy, right?

Not so easy, we were informed. Not at that entrance. You have to walk further down to the west, we were told. Next hospital entrance...same story. And at the next. And the next. Eventually we gave up. We were into the walk less than a mile probably with another couple to go on snowy sidewalks in the cold. We never made it to the Kirche. We Ubered out of there onto other things. 

Majolikahaus, Linke Wienzeile 40 (top) and the Wagner Villa I (bottom).

So after all that whining and complaining, I'll say that I actually did get a really good Jugendstil experience out of our week in Vienna. It ended up being shaped mostly by the Secession Building; Otto Wagner's first residence; the Post Office Savings Bank; and the MAK Vienna (or in English, the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts).

If there's a classic, must-see Jugendstil building in Vienna, it's the Secession Building. It was literally the first place in Vienna we visited on our arrival after checking in at the hotel and getting some lunch at the nearby Nachsmarkt. Yes, this trip was about the Christmas markets but you can't see those in all their glory in the middle of the day. The Secession Building was the starting point of this trip.

When the artists who made up the membership of the Viennese Secession movement first got together as an organized bunch, the first thing they did was design and pay for their own building to be built. Must be nice, right? Nothing like announcing your presence as a group of artists by erecting a building just outside the historic center of Vienna. A poor group of starving artists, they were not, apparently.

I've been waiting decades to lay eyes on the Secession Building, with its stark white walls with cryptic messages in Latin and its "dome" made out of gold covered leaves. I expected it would be enormous to hold all the exhibit spaces that were the goal of the building and I imagined the famous Beethoven Frieze, one of Gustav Klimt's masterworks, ringing the rotunda at the top of the building formed by the gold leaf dome. 

Neither of those things are true. It is an efficiently compact building (I mean, it's in Europe; what did I really expect?) in the middle of a very old and historic city with its main gallery space in the rear of the building hidden from the front entrance side and precious little other gallery space elsewhere. And there is no gallery or rotunda in the leaf dome. Of course there isn't; you can actually see through the leaves to the sky above and beyond. It's a crown on the building, not the crowning space inside the building.

The Beethoven Frieze is in the basement. Really didn't expect that.

It is clear from visiting the Secession Building that the focus of the design inside was to display the art, and not the building. I guess that's smart. The building was not the point. The point was the gallery space and the forum for artists. Olbrich allowed his expression on the exterior of the building, from the various types of leaves of gold coated ornament, lines drawn on the building and actual trees planted in pots at the front door to a mural by Koloman Moser to a couple of trios of perched owls on the south facade. For a starting point to visit buildings executed by the Vienna Secession, the eponymous building is a great place to start in a number of ways.

I don't get Klimt, by the way. Just can't figure out the appeal. Maybe I'm not smart enough to understand. Other than The Kiss and maybe one or two other pieces, I find his works to be strange. His renderings of almost lifelike women on flat canvasses which look like they are being consumed by gold reminds me of the graphics in Tron (the original 1980s version), although I guess Tron should really remind me of Klimt. And I really don't get the Beethoven Frieze. Yes, I read the accompanying brochure in the building but I really can't see how naked women, gold-clad knights, starving and grotesque references to mythology and a giant ape have anything to do with Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

The Secession Building from the northwest. Not the greatest pic but it was raining and I didn't get a good front view.

The Secession Building main exhibition space. 

A trio of owls on the south facade of the building.

For all its importance to the movement, the Secession Building is a public work for displaying art and it's restrained, if you can really use that term to describe anything Art Nouveau (I believe you can). To find Jugendstil in all its excess, we'd need to get a lot more private. Like private house type of private. Like one built for Otto Wagner BY Otto Wagner. His first house, or villa, is now a museum. Although it's not a museum to Wagner.

Wagner built his first self-designed house sometime in the 1880s. When he sold it and moved next door to his second self-designed house, the house ran through a series of owners (including the Nazis in World War II) until it was purchased by Ernst Fuchs, an artist who in my very limited experience seems to be fixated on the Bible, mythological creatures and the exaggerated female body in most all his works. If I don't understand Klimt much, I really don't understand the point of Fuchs at all. His works are completely in your face offensive to me. Maybe that's the point.

Most of Wagner's first Villa looks nothing like it did when Otto Wagner was in residence. It has definitely been very Fuchs-ified from my point of view, although he apparently likely saved it from complete ruin when he purchased it in the 1970s. But there is one room, the Adolf Böhm parlor, which is full-on Jugendstil as Wagner left it. And it's spectacular.

This room used to be Wagner's studio and it is the space where he produced some of his masterworks, including the very inaccessible-in-winter Kirche am Steinhof. Everything about the room drips with Jugendstil, from snakes on the floor to the art glass windows to the gold stucco piping on the walls and ceiling (the Secession definitely had a thing about gold). It's a true mix between nods to nature of images of pure fantasy. It's absolutely gorgeous in the most decadent way. It's nothing like Art Nouveau in Paris or Brussels but it's still amazing.

It's also a complete collaboration. The art glass was the work of the room's namesake, Adolf Böhm, and the stucco work was executed by Joseph Maria Olbrich (of the Secession Building fame). I can't recall other Art Nouveau works being executed in such a partnership fashion.

The Adolf Böhm parlor, Otto Wagner Villa I, Vienna.

We saved the best until last.

When I said the first place we went to when we got to Vienna was the Secession Building, I wasn't kidding. It perfectly kicked off our Jugendstil experience in the city. The last place we visited in the city closed it; Otto Wagner's masterwork, the Post Office Savings Bank. If there is one true mature public work of architecture in Vienna executed by a Jugendstil designer, it's the Post Office Savings Bank over on the east side of the city just inside the Ringstrasse.

Art Nouveau and Jugendstil are great. I love experiencing these works of architecture and imagining the struggles that their creators went through trying to reconcile new methods of artistic expression using new materials made available by the industrial revolution that swept Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. When it gets resolved by a great architect, the result is sublime.

Everything that we saw about the Post Office Savings Bank was worth waiting for but (and in the interest of making what is already a very long post just a little bit shorter than it absolutely could be) there were a few things that stood out. Starting with the way the exterior of the building fronts onto the Georg-Coch-Platz, a small square of space off the Ringstrasse on top of (of all things) an underground parking garage entrance. It's a simple thing, here, but the main entrance of the Bank perfectly stops the space off Vienna's most important road while also displaying Wagner's opus in an ideal frame.

Most of this building was designed to hold the offices of the staff that made the bank work every day so there are precious few spaces or details that excite. The exterior of the building, with its patterned facade and god or goddess or angelic forms heralding the arrival of something seemingly really worth heralding is restrained and well-conceived while also clearly still rooted in classicism. The interior is better.

The front of the Post Office Savings Bank (top). Looking up into a stairwell (bottom).

If the prior paragraph seems to contradict itself, I'll agree with that. Inside the building there is a small museum in the rear of the main banking hall detailing the history of the competition for the building's design. The exhibit is organized around a reconstruction of one of the small banking halls which appears to be faithfully recreated but otherwise not spectacular. I found the competition part of the exhibit interesting in two respects: (1) Wagner technically broke the rules of the competition brief by combining spaces which were previously thought of as separate and distinct; and (2) I have never heard of any of the other entrants. 

I'm not sure if we were supposed to wander around the building on our own after we finished in the museum but we did a bit anyway in search of details and other nuggets of interest. The stairs are pretty cool. The detailing on the railings is awesome. These days of great architects custom designing and fabricating railings must have been amazing. There were several railing designs that I thought were cool in Vienna (including those at Karl Ehn's Karl Marx Hof).

But the room that made me weak in the knees was the main banking hall. This was the main public space in the building and was clearly (unless we didn't discover something amazing elsewhere) the most important and carefully designed space in the whole place. It is grand, it is well organized, it is functional and it is full of diffuse light due to the laylight and skylights above the room itself. For the early 20th century in a society used to dark, poorly lit workspaces, it must have been a revelation. It must have blown away the employees and the customers with its quality. And I say this because it blew me away in 2022.

Today, the main banking hall is a cafe. Or it was when we were there, although I get the impression it's probably some kind of multipurpose space when they are not serving drinks and snacks in the middle of the day. The cafe is a great idea by the way. I don't know how many works of modern architecture that I've been to where I've stared at nothing going on in the spaces that were once buildings for people to BE in but which are now museums. Being able to sit for a while with a beer and take everything in was super valuable.

I know earlier in this post I complained about the number of buildings in Vienna that were closed when we visited last month. I've also complained in this blog a lot about how many trips COVID forced us to re-schedule over the last couple of years. But honestly, if COVID hadn't hit Vienna last fall, we wouldn't have been able to visit the Post Office Savings Bank because until a couple of months ago, it was closed for renovations for over a year. Sometimes, bad luck works out.

The small banking hall (top) and view of the main banking hall (bottom).

It seemed to me when I returned from Vienna that our Jugendstil journey there was full of closed buildings and failed attempts at making it to landmarks big and small for a variety of reasons. Looking back at the length of this post and the number of pictures posted here, I'm not sure that's true. It may have been not what I would have done when I was in my late 20s or early 30s and obsessed with architecture trips, but I think we got a pretty comprehensive look at what was going on Art Nouveau-wise in Vienna at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

I am positive we missed a lot. I'm also positive I really have no regrets about our overall experience here. I think our Jugendstil quest was really pretty solid.

One final note: there is one place we managed to visit to fill in some gaps, including what must have at one time filled the offices and public spaces at the Post Office Savings Bank. That would be the furniture, of course. Just a short walk around the Ringstrasse you will find the MAK, Vienna's (and indeed, Austria's) museum dedicated the applied arts, including furniture making. At one time, architects managed to find the time to design furniture to fill the buildings they designed as well as the actual buildings. If you are interested in that sort of stuff, the MAK has an incredible collection of furniture designed by Josef Hoffman, the Thonets and a lot of stuff that Otto Wagner created, including desks, wardrobes, chairs and tables for the Post Office Savings Bank. I thought it was worth a visit to complete our Post Office Saving Bank experience. 

Wow that was a long post! That's all I got on this one!

Otto Wagner: Furniture from the Post Office Savings Bank. At the MAK, Vienna.

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How We Did It

There's a lot I could write about here. I'll try to be brief and concentrate on the four main buildings we actually visited on our trip in addition to some other resources I used when planning our time seeking out architecture in Vienna.

The Vienna Secession Building is open Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Like a lot of museums in Europe they are closed on Mondays but their late opening hours every other day of the week make up for it somewhat. I know I've plugged the Vienna City Card on my snow globe post but that card gets you a free audio guide tour of the building here. There are some holidays when the building is closed.

The Ernst Fuchs Museum is also open Tuesday through Sunday but 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Like the Secession Building they are also closed on certain holidays and like the Secession Building there is a benefit to flashing your Vienna City Card (3 Euro discount per person, here). Getting to the Ernst Fuchs Museum is not easy or convenient. We Ubered there (although we were asked by our driver if the museum was open...) and took the 52A or 52B (can't remember which; both run the same route) back to the U4 at the Hütteldorf station. The bus stop is right across the street from the Wagner Villa II, which is right next to the Fuchs Museum.

The Post Office Savings Bank Museum is open Monday through Friday 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. On Thursdays, they stay open an extra couple of hours until 8. The cafe in the main banking hall is on a similar schedule except they close at 6 on Thursdays and stay open until 8 on Fridays.

The MAK is open Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with late opening (until 9) on Tuesday.

Finally, I found two websites essential to my research in getting to all these buildings: Vienna Unwrapped and Visiting Vienna. There are a number of posts on both websites related to architecture in general and Jugendstil in particular. I found both sites' articles particularly helpful in getting me to websites with opening hours.

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