Big, symmetrical, impressive and inexplicable.
Went out for a walk when we arrived, 30 minutes to the center if we didn’t stop to be gobsmacked all the time. It feels like an illustrated guide to Greek mythology, with meaningful, perhaps beautiful statues all over every building, possibly depicting critical moments in the great tales. Other monuments no doubt celebrate great people from recent history, but given my appalling lack of knowledge about that they were just monuments to me. Classics are wasted on the youth and me alike.
Bloody impressive though, once I got used to the scale of it all. And everything was anally symmetrical.
Spent the next day biking about 40k around town, out to some big palace, around the whole perimeter, over to the gas silos (highly rated but disappointing), Hunterwasser village (highly rated and worth it), posh coffee and strudel because you have to in Vienna and home to replace brakes and chain via, accidentally and fortuitously the Judenplatz with it’s tremendously moving massive concrete sculpture by Rachel Whitread. There’s another sculpture in the middle of town of an old Jew scrubbing the pavement which had to have barbed wire added to stop jerks sitting on him.
I won’t be visiting any concentration camps.
