John Edward Cooper’s Notes

[i] I didn’t see the plaque about Joseph Haydn’s dwelling till I edited the photos; otherwise, I’d have paid more attention to it.

Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:46:16
Kohlmarkt, Vienna, with the “Hussar House” at the end


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:46:28
“The Hussar”, Kohlmarkt, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:47:28
Wüstenrot building, facing Graben, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:47:40
Detail of the Wüstenrot building, facing Graben, Vienna

At the end of Kohlmarkt we turned right (south-east) into Graben.


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:49:18
Looking back along Kohlmarkt, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:49:26
Looking ahead along Graben, Vienna

We passed a fountain with a statue of St. Joseph on a plinth in the middle.


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:51:10
St. Joseph Fountain, Graben, Vienna

Next, we came to a “Plague Column” (“Pestsäule”) or “Trinity Column”. It was yesterday when we first encountered such a monument, as we were passing through Linz on the way back to the ship. This one in Vienna was commissioned by Emperor Leopold I following the Great Plague of Vienna of 1679. He himself had cleared off to Prague to escape it; nevertheless, he vowed to erect such a column if the epidemic would end. Initially, a wooden one was erected; but the present one was inaugurated in 1694. This wasn’t the last outbreak of the plague in the city, though: there was another in 1712. The Karlskirche (seen earlier, 09:45:22) was built in gratitude for deliverance from that plague, and was dedicated to Karl Borromeo, a renowned healer of plague sufferers. (His name just happened to be the same as that of the emperor just then, who commissioned it!)


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:52:28
Plague Column, Graben, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:53:30
Plague Column, Graben, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:53:38
Plague Column, Graben, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:53:46
Plague Column, Graben, Vienna

In her talk on the Habsburgs, Viktoria had mentioned their inbreeding, causing mandibular prognathism. It amused Janet and me to see such a prime example depicted in the sculpture on the Vienna Pestsäule!


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:53:56
Leopold I, affording a prime example of the “Habsburg Jaw”

At the far end of Graben, equidistant from the Pestsäule with the St. Joseph Fountain, was the St. Leopold Fountain, of similar design to the St. Joseph. Here’s another example of this being the emperor’s name, who commissioned it!


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:55:40
St. Leopold Fountain, Graben, Vienna

Just round the corner to the left from the end of Graben was the Gothic St. Stephen’s Cathedral, with its roof of multi-coloured glazed tiles and very tall, slender spired southern tower.


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:57:02
20th century postmodernist Haas House (left) and 14th century St. Stephen’s Cathedral (centre), Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:57:46
20th century postmodernist Haas House (left) and 14th century St. Stephen’s Cathedral (centre), Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:58:44
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 10:59:36
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 11:00:00
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna

And that is where, at 11 o’clock, our walking tour ended. There was now free time, with the arrangement to meet the Riviera team outside the Cathedral at 11.45am. So Janet and I went down a side street, and found a café where we had a drink. At last, I had a “native” beer, draught Trumer Pils, brewed in Salzburg! Janet had two Pepsi Max — in all, €12.00. Janet recalled: “There was just enough time then to have a peek in St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Wow! The best example of a Gothic church inside that we’d ever seen. Dark and menacing! We decided we’d return to the city centre in the afternoon to have a good look around inside.” It was quite a big group of people that met the Riviera pair, ca.11.45am, for the procession of some 700 yards, four or five blocks, to where the coach was in Schwedenplatz by the Donaukanal. On the way back to the ship, going again around Praterstern, I got a much better view of the commemorative rostral column.


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 12:12:30
Seen from the coach: Rostral monument to Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff, Leopoldstadt

We got back aboard ship, ca.12.20pm. Janet recalled: “Again, another boat was berthed right next to us and it was like the Black Hole of Calcutta in our cabin. Bastards! Quick ‘wash and brush up’, then lunch.” I had a 0.4ℓ glass of Veltins beer with my lunch and Janet had a Coca Cola Light, served by “Laura”. “Afterwards,” Janet continued, “we went to the lounge and had a coffee.” While we were there, a bit before 1.30pm, I saw a flash of lightning out of the lounge window, then another one, and there were peals of thunder; shortly afterwards, very heavy rain started. We’d intended to get the first shuttle bus from the ship at 14:00 to Schwedenplatz to begin our afternoon exploration, “but,” wrote Janet, “because it was still ‘coming down in rods’ and we have no proper wet gear, we decided to give it a miss. Boo-hoo! We returned to our cabin in the hope that we’d be able to get the next shuttle bus at 3pm. Provided the rain stopped! I know we had a good coach tour and walking tour this morning, but I will be very disappointed if it doesn’t stop raining and we don’t get back to the city centre to have a good look inside St. Stephen’s, at least.” Janet’s account was written piecemeal, mostly retrospectively, but some of it, as here, contemporaneously. “It rained. And it rained. By ca.2.50pm I decided that it wouldn’t stop and I really wanted to go (I did not want to stay on the boat). So we grabbed what ‘wet gear’ we had and left the boat. We were the only ones on the 3pm shuttle bus.”


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:08:06
Seen from the coach on our afternoon excursion: rain


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:09:24
Seen from the coach on our afternoon excursion: Wiener Riesenrad through the coach’s rain-streaked window

“It took half an hour,” Janet continued. “By the time we reached the drop-off point the rain had abated slightly. We’d borrowed a brolly from the boat so we used that and ours separately and looked for St. Stephen’s. A few less people around than this morning. We soon found our bearings and St. Stephen’s. It was pretty crowded in there. The rain?! An astounding building. The inside looked like the outside, as the walls were very high and very dark. Gloomy!” My opinion is, however, that it wasn’t the darkest and most lowering Gothic building I’ve ever been in. “We didn’t have time to do a grand tour so could not explore the whole of the building. However, we wandered around, and [John] still managed to take enough photos to remind us of what it was like. An incredible building. It was worth coming back and getting wet just for what we did.”


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:38:16
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:39:20
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:41:14
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:41:48
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:42:08
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:42:24
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:42:52
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:43:14
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:43:26
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:44:18
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:44:52
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:45:06
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:47:16
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:47:44
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:49:00
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:49:48
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 15:51:32
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna

“We headed back down to our pick-up point, and I realised I was desperate for a pee. All the cafés around were full. Eventually, [John] suggested I go in the nearest and offer a euro to use the loo. Why didn’t I think of that? I approached a young man behind the counter and proffered a €2 coin (the smallest we had). He opened the till and gave me a ‘toilet token’. A freebie. Bless him! I thanked him profusely… I’d never have made it back to the boat.”
 Truth to tell, I baulked at going in one of the cafés or restaurants on the ground floor of the seven- and eight-storey buildings that lined the south side of Schwedenplatz. Across the road — between there and the tram lines and bus stops and ultimately the river — there were other establishments in small, less permanent-looking single-storey buildings. One sold noodles, with a selection of meats, etc., to go with them, which I might have found tempting if I’d already not eaten lunch; it would have reminded me of being in the Street Food Market in Saigon. But these establishments didn’t appear to have loos.
 Janet’s account continued: “It had stopped raining by this time. It was nearly 4.30pm [the time of departure of the last shuttle bus to the ship] and we encountered Eszter. The coach was only about five minutes late, and again we were the only ones aboard. So, we were back in the cabin around 5pm.”
 I was aware that my shoes had just about worn through at the heels, because back at home if it rained I would find the heels of my socks wet or damp when I took them off. But now, when I took my shoes off, my socks were very wet, not only heels but soles as well. I looked closely, and found that bending the soles revealed small cracks in them.
 ”We dumped our stuff then went to the bar,” Janet wrote. “I’d not had a drink since lunch time! I had a Coke and [John] a beer.[ii] Then we returned to the cabin[iii] to get ready for dinner,” Janet wrote. “I had a shower as usual. At 6.30pm we went to the dining room and had our favourite seats. We were joined by a Scottish couple. Pleasant. We chatted. Another good meal.[iv] Then we went straight up to the bar to find seats for the string quartet concert. We sat at the bar ‘right at the front’.[v] I find bar seats more comfy than any others. I had a coffee to warm myself up (it’s always cold in there) and [John] had two Grappa.[vi] At 9pm we were treated to the Ars Mundi quartet (two violins, a viola and a cello). It lasted until 9.45pm and was marvellous. It was the first time I’d heard ‘The Blue Danube’ waltz and enjoyed it.[vii] It was the perfect end to a perfect day.”

[ii] Janet had a Coca Cola Light and I a 0.4ℓ glass of Veltins draught beer, served by “Bernadet” (17:01 on the invoice slip).
[iii] I logged on to the ship’s internet with the Asus netbook/tablet (browser activity, 17:50–18:01). I looked up “Franz Liszt”, because in Esztergom Basilica I’d seen some sort of memorial plaque with “Liszt Ferencz” inscribed on it; and I wanted to ascertain whether family name then personal name was the standard usage in Hungary. I also checked the word “rostral”, because that was the adjective I’d previously used in connection with memorials with representations of boat-hulls through them.
[iv] Janet had a Coca Cola Light and I a glass of “Spätburgunder”, served by affable waiter George Rizea.
[v] It had become our habit to sit at the semicircular bar, on two of the high stools with low backrests, just to the starboard side of centre — at four or five o’clock (where 12 o’clock was the direction of travel). The lounge was carpeted, but just before the bar there was an area of floorboards for use as a dance floor or as in this case a performance area. All we had to do was swivel our stools around, and we had a “ringside seat”. Only the viola player had her back to us.

[vi] I looked at the drinks menu on the bar and spotted “Grappa” so I asked for one. “Bernadet” looked in the fridge and brought out a bottle with some left in it, and decanted a measure of it in a glass: “Grappa Julia” (20:32 on the invoice slip). The string quartet concert was scheduled for 21:00, when, according to “Your daily programme”, “There is no bar service during the concert”, so I ordered another one before the concert started (20:57 on the invoice slip).
[vii] At the time of writing, I don’t have an audio recording of “An der schönen blauen Donau”, except in a piano-and-vocal version by the Vienna Boys Choir.

Back in the cabin, I took a photo from the window.


Tuesday 10 July 2018 — 22:02:56
View from the cabin across the Danube: the new Donau City district of Vienna

I had a second internet session (or a “continued” one, because I’d left the computer switched on) (22:20–23:06). I looked up “Ars Mundi”, but found a different one, a larger Spanish ensemble. I carried on looking at “Rostral columns”, and I also looked up composer Carl Michael Ziehrer (1843–1922). Janet was already in bed when I stopped (ca.23:10), and got ready for bed myself.

[Wednesday 11 July 2018]