The day before, we hiked and explored the feywild, or at least the part of the feywild in Bad Urach, Germany. Today, we luxuriated in our adventure, soaking in the warmth and health of the primal hot springs of Friedrichsbad.
To get to the hot-springs, we went through the town of Baden-Baden – a tourist town by any definition, full of neat shops and lovely cafes.
The restaurants I sorted under the “Exploring Stuttgart” post, to keep things simple, so here I’ll just include the views of Baden-Baden. It was lovely, relaxing, and simple – two trains and a bus brought us here, and a bus followed by two trains brought us home to Stuttgart. We wandered, we snacked, and we enjoyed the pattering of rain – never quite enough to be a problem, but just enough to be noticeable and a slight worry. Thankfully, the Black Forest cake went a long ways to assuaging the concerns, and the beautiful flowers and views did a good job of assisting with the rest.
Similar to the feeling of familial memory in the Art History Museum cafe was Cafe Central.
I’d first heard about it from a friend of mine, who was adamant that I needed to check it out while I was in town – After looking it up, I absolutely had to agree with her. It looked amazing; an exceptionally fancy and classy breakfast spot right in the heart of the old city of Vienna, dating back to 1876 and boasting patrons as storied as Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky, and many others.
I mentioned this cafe back in my “Exploring Vienna” post, but I’ll risk repetition by doubling down – More importantly to me, aside from hosting conventionally famous thinkers, Cafe Central had very likely hosted my own family, back when my Grandfather was a young boy living in Vienna… Prior to their escape to the United States some time after Kristallnacht. A chain of events which, in recent years, has led to my own repatriation to Austria.
Getting back to the focal point of the post – Cafe Central – I walked in with a bit of trepidation… though thankfully it was mostly attenuated by the long line I’d had to brave in order to get in. Once I was greeted by the Matre’d, though, I was simply swept up in the glamor of the place. Immediately upon entering, I was stuck – The ambiance was amazing, with desserts beautifully displayed right at the front, and the sense of history and “why yes, I am exceptionally fancy, thank you” was incredible. The Matre’d himself was dressed in a full suit (possibly a tux), and treated me like I was visiting royalty.
It was… really fun. I sipped coffee, nibbled at the fancy “Viennese breakfast”, and enjoyed myself immensely.
Immensely enough, I’d like to note, that I came back for lunch.
By the time I came back, I’d finished my walkthrough of the Vienna Museum, which… well, I’ll get to that in a follow-on post, but suffice it to say that the museum was challenging and rough, if informative and enlightening.
I needed something to lift my spirits, though, and so ordered a double-portion of dessert. It didn’t fix everything, of course, but it did go a long way to buoying my spirits.
After adventure and excitement, I finished my quest for the Art History museum in Vienna.
I’m going to be using the term “opulent” a lot in my blog posts about Vienna, I can tell. But really, there’s no better term to use to describe this museum… it was, simply put, opulent. In every sense of the word. I mean, Vienna is already full of beautiful architecture and art everywhere I looked and walked – how could the museum of art history not step that up a few levels?
I walked in, gawked at my surroundings for a few minutes, then tracked down the cafe – it was the early afternoon, after all, and I’d been exploring around the city in the heat of the day for a few hours at that point. I needed some food, quite a bit of water, and a coffee. Thankfully, I found all three without any difficulty, and a short wait in line later I was sitting and staring at the glorious paintings and marble surrounding me.
It was interesting – I mentioned in my “Exploring Vienna” post that I felt a connection to my Grandfather in Cafe Central, since he’d likely gone there at least once with his parents… Well, the Art History museum had a similar feeling for me. It had been founded in 1891, and although I doubt the cafe was quite that old I still felt confident that, at one point or another, my Grandfather had been roughly where I was now. Knowing his own love for the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, probably multiple times.
Seeing the room around me, it helped me understand where he had been coming from in his life. He’d grown up in Vienna, likely seeing the absolute opulence and majesty as the norm. Then, to see Vienna devolve into Nazism and hate so quickly, only to have to flee to England and the United States… It was interesting, trying to set myself into that mindset and to see how that would have affected me.
I kept those thoughts in mind as I finished my meal and traversed the museum.
From Egypt to Rome, into the treasures of the Hapsburgs and onward into stunning paintings and relics from throughout the city’s history. There was one exhibit on The Fugger’s family that I didn’t quite understand, but aside from that the museum was absolutely glorious – a lesson in beauty and regality. I even found a whole segment hidden on the top floor on Cartoons! Though… not cartoons that you or I would recognize as such, instead being massive tapestries depicting specific events and battles of the Hapsburg Dynasty.
I wandered, perused, and enjoyed the grandeur surrounding me. I appreciated the air conditioning, finished my explorations, and braced myself for the heat of the early evening on my walk home.
