Klimt’s Beethoven frieze at the Succession Museum

To complete my heritage journey, we hop on a train to Vienna, a mere 1.30 hrs away from Brno. As a small child, I spent a couple of summer holidays with my Czech grandmother, who rented a small flat somewhere. It was heaven: knedlíky dumplings for breakfast every day, crème fraiche with mandarin slices, visits to the eponymous hotel for Sacher torte with her various cousins, the Prater (the big wheel was a favourite) and to her old boyfriend, Alois Podhajsky, then director of the Spanish riding school! I’m afraid we did none of these things!

I have chosen a centrally-located boutique hotel O(peraring) 11, which is directly opposite the opera and on the Ring. It is a fraction of the price of the Imperial and Bristol nearby, and very comfortable with good breakfast included. We walk everywhere from here and on the first night arrive in time for schnitzel at Gasthaus Pöschl, with its Formica tables and huge schnitzels (Lucian who recommended it says they are called klodeckel or loo lid!).

We only have two days so we cram it in. First stop, the Naschmarkt, a mix of food/veg/delis, with bric a brac and restaurants. It’s never too early in Vienna to have a beer and by 9 am there are some jolly drinkers enjoying the sunshine…

From there to the Succession Museum to see the famous Klimt Beethoven freeze (above), and details below

then a sprint down to the Kunst museum where we have been instructed to take coffee in its sumptuous café, and admire the Breughels – the largest collection in the world.

Exhausted by this we have a quick lunch at the glorious Palm House, before taking in the Albertina with its collection of Schieles (some below) and other favourites from the Blaue Reiter movement.

Back to the hotel for a quick rest, via St Stephens cathedral where there is a service in motion, and outside a demonstration for equal rights for Turkish/Kurdish workers.

Saturday night at the …opera of course! We have manged to get tickets for the rarely preformed Il Trittico, three one act operas by Puccini, Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi. I have seen the first, better directed in all honesty, but Schicchi was a delight – hammed up and beautifully sung. We manage to have open sandwiches in the first interval in the stalls bar, and a glass of wine in the café area. The dress code is more mixed than I had imagined – more jeans and trainers than black tie and evening gowns though there were a few! What an evening. And a quick stroll back to bed!

On Sunday we hopped on a tram to get us to the Belvedere before opening, so we could wander the gardens and beat the crowds at 10 am. We manage to see the Klimts relatively unencumbered although it is the end of Golden week, and there are hordes of Chinese tourists everywhere. We manage to beat them to the famous Salm Braue where Ross samples several types of local beer, while they tuck into enormous hulks of schweinshaxe and ribs!

We fear the glorious sunshine is about to give way to rain so we hot-tail it down to the Leopold to see the definitive Schiele collection. I had no idea he painted so many landscapes, the best based on his mother’s Czech hometown of Krumau (of course – that explains it – another Czech!), and non-nude subjects like his mother and child portraits. We also enjoyed discovering the tragic Richard Gerstl who committed suicide at the age of 24 after an unhappy love affair with Schoenberg’s wife.

In the evening we go for a cocktail at the Bristol hotel; ruined by Russian oligarch Eurotrash (also much in evidence in Vienna), and then for a final Viennese meal at the nearby Plachutte. Ross had venison and dumplings!

And so our sojourn ends; a real cultural overload in all senses – family history, Jewish antecedents, the realisation that so many artistic and talented people came from Moravia/Czechia; and extraordinary art and architecture of the region. But the week cast long shadows on its political past, the numbers of creatives who disappeared, or whose art was stolen, of persecution and intolerance, which we hoped we would never see again. On our return we find that really nothing changes and evil and hatred still hold sway on all sides.