where even in winter ...
and despite the grandeur of their surroundings ...
people gather to take a seat and read ...
or chat (even the rose bushes in the Volksgarten tenderly wrapped against the freezing air) ...
while Goethe broods darkly ...
Franz Joseph ponders ...
and even the dogs look well-dressed and aristocratic ...
Vienna's favourite son is everywhere in evidence - whether posing grandly in the Burggarten ...
or nipping round the city in in a Renault Scenic ...
In St Stephen's cathedral, at the heart of the circle that is Vienna's Innere Stadt, we happened to walk in on an evening mass with full choir and organ and these incredible illuminations of the cathedral's interior ...
We were also lucky enough to see the fantastic Magritte exhibition currently on at the Albertina Museum ...
Mais ceci n'est pas une pipe, non, it is Monet's The Water Lily Pond painted quite magnificently onto the stairs leading to the Albertina ...
While at 19 Berggasse, over in the 9th district, Freud's ghost rattles around ...
Photographic portrait of Freud; view from a window of his apartment; quote on wall of the staircase; his waiting room. All photos taken at 19 Berggasse, where Freud lived and worked for nearly five decades.
The original couch is in Hampstead, where he decamped for the last year of his life, but I liked this striking modern version in the Vienna house.
My love affair with Vienna goes on hold now until another trip becomes possible some day. Meanwhile I've been consoling myself by watching Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (watch the trailer here, which opens with the start of the best scene in the movie, in Café Sperl).
And thank you Bella Bheag for this link, for a quick nostalgia fix when I'm pining for a Wiener kaffeehaus!