The Beethoven Monument pictured here was unveiled in 1870 and is the centerpiece of Beethovenplatz. Beethoven was one of several musical geniuses who spent some or most of their lives in Vienna. In fact, a plaque on the wall of the school overlooking the statue informs us that Franz Schubert was a student at this gymnasium. I came upon this tribute to Beethoven by accident while walking from the Stadtpark subway station to the Hofburg and other historical monuments to Vienna’s glory days. Excellent way to start my walk.
The Belvedere is a complex consisting of two principal buildings, the Upper and Lower Belvedere, and an extensive garden designed in the manner of a formal French garden. The Belvedere palaces, minor buildings, and the gardens were commissioned by Prince Eugene of Savoy to serve as his residence in Vienna. The Prince was a renowned field marshal in his day, commanding an army of the Holy Roman Empire, and military forces of Austria’s Hapsburg dynasty. He won a key victory against the Ottoman Turks in 1697, and helped to win important battles for Austria against the French during the Napoleonic wars.
Construction of the palaces began in 1712 and was completed in 1723. Part of modern Vienna today, at the time it was built, the land the Belvedere occupies was empty and undeveloped. The park area is a couple of kilometers distant from the Hofburg, the seat of Hapsburg imperial and political power at the center of 17th and 18th century Vienna.
After the Prince of Savoy died in 1736, the Austrian state assumed control of the Belvedere. Since that time the palaces have served, for the most part, as exhibition centers and museums for a variety of art collections.
Pictured here is the facade of the Upper Belvedere seen from the southern entrance to the park. Though I was interested in the museums , by the time I arrived at the park, it was late afternoon, and since I would get little time to see the exhibits inside, I just walked through the park enjoying a beautiful, sunny autumn day.
A Belle Époque arrangement frames the entrance to 30 Jahngasse in Vienna’s Margareten district. Vienna, an elegant but relaxed city of tremendous charm, steeped in history and visually lush with architectural monuments to its illustrious past everywhere one looks. Great coffee, tasty food, excellent beer; the pastries and cakes require no comment. I could not have chosen a better place to start my journey.
I am just home from three and a half wonderful weeks of travel through central Europe, with a brief diversion to the Adriatic Sea and Venice, which is in its own world, defying geographical categorization. The trip began in Vienna, where I landed at the end of September after a long flight from Saigon, via Doha in Qatar. I posted an image from my first dinner in Vienna on the evening I arrived and had planned to post more as I moved along my itinerary. But finally, I posted nothing, deciding I was better off focusing on the places I visited without giving any thought to social media posts. Be that as it may, I arrived back in Hoi An with lots of photos from the trip – lots – and I am going to share a few of them in the days to come, beginning with several from my first stop in Vienna. There will also, no doubt, be some commentary included with the pictures. Because I like to ramble.
This small restaurant, typical of hundreds of thousands of low end eateries in Saigon and elsewhere in Vietnam, appears to serve up rice with deep fried chicken (about $1.70) and five spices chicken noodles (about $1.90). I would not be surprised to find that these two meals and some beverages are all that is on the menu. Vietnamese fried chicken, by the way, is not dipped in batter before frying. The chicken pieces are simply rubbed in salt and pepper, then deep fried. Yes, the chicken is generally parboiled before frying.
This photo was taken when Minh and I visited Saigon in November, 2022.
A spectacular view across Da Nang Bay opens up as I drive towards the summit of Hai Van Pass. The pass goes over the mountains that divide Da Nang and the coastal plain to the south from Hue and the coastal plain to the north. Looking due east, Da Nang’s downtown area is hidden by low clouds just to the left of center of this image. The city, which now has close to 1.4 million people, has expanded along the south side of the bay, with urban development now extending almost to the base of the pass.
Looking for something else, I happened to run across this image of the huge Russian embassy compound in Beijing. Beyond the fact that China’s relationship with Russia is in the news these days, there is no particular reason for posting this photo. It was taken in February of 2012, several months before I departed from Beijing and China for good.
For more than 200 years the site was home to the Russian Orthodox Ecclesiastical Mission, which acted as a sort of unofficial representative of the Russian government. After the Russian revolution in 2017, people fleeing Russia found refuge at the mission. In the 1950s after the establishment of the PRC, the Mission was closed and the property and buildings were turned over to the USSR. An embassy housing the USSR’s and later Russia’s diplomatic mission to China was built and opened for use in 1959.
