One of the tourism high points and cultural gems on a visit to the Austrian capital is the Spanish Riding School (Spanische Hofreitschule) with its history of over 450 years of continuous operation. The white show-horses are bred in Piber (Western Styrian region of Austria). In Vienna they perform in the Winter Riding School at the Hofburg Wien.
The Lipizzaners with a brace of NapoleonsWe didn’t catch the famous horsey show but we managed to spot them in their exercising yard prancing up and down. Whilst we were there the Lipizzaners (as the Spanish horses are known) were taken out for a canter through the cobblestone streets of the plaza. There was a brief moment of excitement when one of the white stallions did a runner, giving its handler the slip and tried to gallop off in pursuit of free range, riderless freedom. Its liberty was short-lived however as it was quickly reined in. The riders in the military outfits must feel a bit like Napoleon, parading about on slick steeds wearing their bicornes (loopy-looking two-cornered hats). Here’s hoping the practice doesn’t lead to a complex!
Another, very different (street) ‘school’ in Vienna, devoid of the glamour of show-horses but with the same ‘professional’ levels of dedication and expertise, is the ignoble art of pick-pocketing. The part of Vienna we stayed at, Westbahnhof, was obviously not the “old moneyed”, elité part of Austria’s capital. Quite the reverse, it was pretty scabrous and untouristy, clearly a migrant area. The entrance to the Westbahnhof train station which was sporting a new modernist facade (somewhat brutalist in taste) was a bit of a magnet for unsavoury types, assorted crazies and dodgy guys milling round it, as well as the standard gypsy beggars. Westbahnhof was also well fixed for grimy lowbrow Turkish eateries.
I was returning to the city centre having already been in earlier in the day and seen Stephansdom (St Stephan’s Cathedral) with its distinctive-patterned mosaic tiled roof; the Stephansplatz, densely populated with Mozart-themed totes flogging tickets to The Marriage of Figaro outside the subway exit, and on the other side of the square, lined up on the street, a row of fiakers (gaily decorated, horse-drawn hire carriages).
I boarded the U-Bahn for the journey to Stephansplatz. Standing up for the short distance (five stops) I suspiciously cast my eyes round the carriage which was sparsely populated. Just the single, odd, scruffy character five metres across the carriage. Just before we reached the Stephansplatz station, the guy darted back past into the heart of the carriage, I thought nothing of it at the time. I exited the train. As I walked along the platform I had a vague sense of passengers following behind me. As I passed a garbage bin I heard the noise of a clanging of metal-on-metal, but again, it didn’t occur to me that there was anything untoward happening.
Wien West U-bahnUp the top of the station stairs I once again sidestepped my way through the strategically placed Mozart hawkers and paused to take a photo of the fiaker horses against a backdrop of Stephansdom. I reached for my Samsung but it wasn’t there! Incredulous that I couldn’t find it, I checked and doubled checked all of my pockets, but to no avail. I proceeded to search my carry bag compartment-by-compartment … same result! I remembered clearly I had it on the train, I had glanced at it on the way to my destination and had returned it in clear sight of all in the carriage to my side pocket (in hindsight, the fateful error!).
I caught the train back to Westbahnhof, retracing the course of the journey in my mind to try to fathom where exactly I parted company with my digital device. All I could be sure of is that it happened somewhere betwixt leaving the train and climbing the escalator – a deft, invisible hand, a blink of an eye and like magic it disappeared from my pocket. I truly didn’t feel a thing!
Back at the hotel I spent a frustrating several hours trying unsuccessfully both online and by phone to contact my mobile data supplier back in Australia. By the time I got through to the hotline they had just closed their service for that day … that meant another seven hours wait till 6am East Coast Australian time to try again.
Although holding zero hope for the recovery of my Samsung, for insurance purposes I decided to report the theft to the local constabulary. The inspector on duty had heard it all before, all too often! He explained how the thieves operate, in teams distracting the mark’s attention, sometimes using attractive young women, etc., universal formula really. I didn’t bother to read the police report of the incident the inspector gave me until I returned home, not realising till that time … it was of course written in German!
Our coach took the M3 expressway from Budapest to Bratislava. Most of the roadway between the two Central European capitals was a vista of seemingly endless fields of Van Gogh-like sunflowers. When we got to the Slovakian border we were able to seamlessly cross over thanks to both countries being EU signees of the Schengen Agreement … no vehicle stops, no passport checks, etc. Fast-forward just six months, there would no such easy passage for Syrian asylum seekers trying to make it to refugee-friendly Germany.
We parked up the hill near the tramlines and walked down the ancient looking steps to the Town. Old Bratislava was composed of a “rabbit warren” of roughly cobbled lanes and narrow streets leading directly or less directly to the town square. The first thing that caught my eye (near the under-road tunnel) was a smoking salon, decked out with comfy chairs much like a cafe (actually it might be characterised as a “smoking cafe with coffee optional”). I was bit surprised to find this establishment here, only because I’d heard from a Slovak acquaintance in Australia that smoking parlour shops had been outlawed in Slovakian cities, but here it was, couples happily chugging away at the weed in relaxing surroundings. Mind you, they were lots of other public places anyway that you could freely smoke anywhere in the town (so a shop specialising in smoking seemed a bit superfluous to this outsider!).
Street upon street packed with outdoor beer taverns
It was very hot on the day we visited (about 35-36 degrees), so most of the locals were content to sit round drinking their pivo of choice in the numerous bars (vyčapy) all over the old town. One of the cobblestone street in particular was a kind of “booze bingers’ alley”, wall-to-wall liquor swilling outlets strung out along a dark, dingy bar strip.
One especially popular bar (called, what else? … “the Dubliner”) had the right idea in the heat, it had affixed a sprinkler system of sorts to the underside of the shop awning allowing the sweltering patrons the relief of jets of soft droplets of water whilst they were imbibing. Budapest had a similar thing … a number of Váci utca restaurants were equipped with fans blowing gentle mists of cold vapour (perfumed?) on to diners.
Cultural pointer: Beer drinking du jour is the norm in Bratislava – and cheaper than H2o I found out! … when finally we were driven inside one of the bars by the unrelenting heat, the spring water I ordered cost me €1.80 whereas the half-litre of beer my companions both had cost them a mere €1.20 each!?!
From Bratislava’s central square, tourists can explore the town on a dinky toy train (in keeping with the ‘Lilliputian’ scale of the Slovakian capital). Many of Bratislava’s public buildings seemed a little tired, in need of a facelift or a paint job – or both.
Among the locals, especially the younger women, I noticed a high percentage of blonds (very much in line with what I observed in the Czech Republic). Amusingly one stopped me in the street to ask me, in animated Slovakian, for directions! I am getting used to being mistook for a local but it still bemuses me why.
Bratislavsky Hrad from Staré Mêsto
On the north side of the Danube (about 15 minutes walk from the Old Town) is what is probably the city’s most impressive historic structure, the formidable Bratislava Castle (Bratislavsky hrad). The original castle dates from the early 10th century and has passed through the hands of Moravian, Hungarian, Czech and Slovakian rulers. Its historical strategic importance lies in its elevated location on the fringe of the vast Carpathian Mountains.
Footnote: Tiny Slovakia cf. Even Tinier Slovenia
We visitors to Europe from the other side of the world get these two small Central/Southern European republics mixed up so often (no excuses though once you have actually visited each one!). I can only imagine how frustrating this must be to the Slovaks and Slovenes themselves … especially as both peoples long existed as subordinate ethnic identities in their respective, larger former states before finally freeing themselves from the shadow of numerically larger ethnic groups.
“Czechy Crumbly”, well not exactly, but that’s what I thought the name of this place sounded like when I first heard it was on the itinerary of our trip to the Czech Republic. This small town 170km south of the Czech capital isn’t exactly crumbling but it is very old … and exceedingly picturesque. The combination of its beauty, charm and size has led many visitors to describe it as a miniature version of Prague.
CK: Zámek KrummauThe 13th century Gothic castle (Zámek), on the left bank of the Vltava River, is the magnet for most visitors to Český Krumlov (or Krumlaw). The castle is a long complex of buildings (40+), courtyards (5!) & 10ha of Baroque gardens, its entirety stretches from a lower point near an old part of the city (Latran) through the Red Gate up to the upper castle. As you would imagine with a grand structure so historically significant, the castle has the customary UNESCO accreditation.
Most visitors pay to clamber up the 162 steps of the Castle Tower staircase to glimpse the commanding, 360 degree-views of CK. Gazing east across the river you can see the orangey-yellow terracotta roofs of the Inner Town (Centrum). The Inner Town sits on a curved nub of land which follows the contours of the winding river and offers a smorgasbord of quaint medieval buildings.
Below the walkway and the Castle Tower (Zámez Čnít), between the first and second courtyards, there is a bear moat with a few remaining brown bears prowling solemnly around its confines. Bears have been kept here since the days in which the city was ruled by the House of Rožmberk (Rosenberg)(Rožmberk Castle itself is some 25km south of CK).
Cloak BridgeOne of the most distinctive architectural features which connects the Upper Castle with the Castle Theatre is the Cloak Bridge which has apartments and a viewing platform resting on huge, stone arched foundations resembling viaducts.
Centrum has lots of cobblestoned back lanes full of cafés and bars, but something also worth visiting is the museum dedicated to the Austrian Expressionist artist Egon Schiele whose edgy, controversial figurative works earned him the ire of the socially conservative burghers of Český Krumlov during the two years he lived in the city (just before WWI).
CK – the rivers runs through it!CK is a pleasant, picture postcard sort of place, stocked to the rafters with tourist trade wares. The Vltava which looked more like a stream than a river where we were, apparently has rafting listed among its visitor activities. Judging by how still and tranquil the water was, unless its about “slo-mo” rafting, the serious stuff must be a long way downstream from the city weir.
I wanted to do a follow up walk to an earlier exploration of the Olympic Precinct and the Millennium Parklands, extending it into the Newington and Silverwater hinterland on the other side of the Armory. Taking the ferry wharf at Sydney Olympic Park as our starting point this time, we embark on the 3km riverfront walk to Wilson Park (near the Silverwater Bridge), our first stop.
On the left side of the path we get glimpses through the fence of the Newington Nature Reserve. This huge area (48ha), marshy with mudflats and mangroves, and long neglected before the Olympics, underwent extensive remediation in the 1990s as part of the plan to create a ‘green’ Olympics in 2000. Its native vegetation was regenerated and the land was transformed into an estuarine wetland system and a woodland rich in turpentines and ironbarks. The public is not permitted access as it is a wildlife sanctuary for eagles and frogs and sundry other fauna. An additional prohibitive factor is that the wetland area is still believed to contain an unexploded ordnance[1].
As we come towards the old Armory site a curious feature is the retention of several old disused navy buildings on the waterfront. This detritus was scattered along the water’s edge, pieces of abandoned wooden and brick buildings tagged with faded building numbers. Some had been fenced up in a valiant but doomed attempt at vandal-proofing, and others near the Naval Depot simply boarded up as best they can be.
Near the always popular Armory Cafe, reborn out of the ashes of the burnt down original building, is the Blaxland Riverside Park, set on a sloping terrain, a treat for children with its flying fox and playground. The park contains several more of those earth mounds, a feature throughout the Bay (I can only surmise that these too are hiding nasty toxic surprises like the other mounds closer to the Olympic Precinct).
“http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/image-1.jpg”> Wilson Park: walkers & cyclists[/captioWe stop at the park just before Silverwater Bridge – Wilson Park, there’s a history of toxic contamination here too. The site was occupied in the 1950s by PACCAL (Petroleum and Chemical Corporation of Australia Ltd) which refined gas from petroleum, a process which produced three tonnes of tar sludge a day. The park was where the unwanted waste products ended up! Similarly some of PACCAL’s stockpile of dioxins eventually seeped into Duck River on the other side of the Bridge[2].
We cut through the once highly contaminated Wilson Park with its athletics and soccer fields which stand where the gas processing plant used to be, and come out on to Newington Road. Halfway up the street we come to the high, ugly scarred wall of Silverwater Correction Centre. The very large prison, both minimum and maximum (remand) security inmates. The women’s prison, previously known as Mulawa (Aboriginal: in the shadow of trees), these days has mostly minimum security prisoners (in the main for crimes like fraud) but in the past it had ‘celebrity’ inmates such as Lindy Chamberlain (who unwillingly took the rap presumably for an unnamed Australian dingo for the murder of her baby daughter and was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated).
The men’s prison at Silverwater has also been the scene of one of the most daring jail escapes ever in Australia. In 1999 the Russian girlfriend of an inmate in Silverwater hijacked a helicopter at gunpoint and landed inside the prison, enabling her convict lover to get away by air. Six weeks later they were both cornered and caught and the girlfriend (dubbed “Red Lucy” by the Australian media) ended up behind bars in Mulawa as well (Note: no third person ever materialised to bust them both out of gaol!)
The history of the land the Silverwater prison occupies is a varied one and some traces of of its historic existence can still to be seen … only though if you are a prisoner or a staffer at Silverwater. Within the facility grounds are several old colonial homes, most notably ‘Newington’ built by early landowner John Blaxland§. The Newington Estate, some 520ha of land, was named after the Blaxland family home in Kent.
Newington House has been variously used over the last 180 years. Initially Blaxland’s principal home, after his death it became the hub of Newington College (established by the Methodist Church in 1863) before the preppy college was relocated to Stanmore in inner city Sydney. The Newington Estate was acquired by land-owner John Wetherill who subdivided it for residential settlement (Homebush Village) but the public didn’t clamour to take the lots on offer (even the majority of the workers at the nearby Abattoir and Brickworks were not interested in living there!).
The government purchased a part of the Newington Estate, turning it into a hospital for the mentally ill – an aged women’s asylum. Buildings named in honour of notable early colonial women (Catchpole, Chisholm, Reiby) were added to Newington House as hospital wards. Later the asylum was extended to male patients and was categorised as a “state asylum for dependent adults with infirmity or illness of “incurable character”[3].
By 1960 the hospital had closed and was handed over to the Department of Prisons. Ten years later Silverwater Gaol opened in a very large block fronting on to Holker Street and incorporating the grounds of the hospital. Newington House itself is still used as the administration wing of the corrective centre.
The entrepreneurial flair of John Blaxland led to the estate use’s in the 19th century for numerous commercial enterprises including salt production, lime kiln, flour mill, tweed mill and coal mining (this last venture proved unsuccessful)[4].
We turn off Holker Street and into Jamieson Street and walk past the newer part of the prison, these days called the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre (the gaol entrance point for visitors). On the right we get a fuller view of the vast expanse of the Armory’s restricted area. About halfway up Jamieson Street we come across a fenced-off section of the Armory with a series of old military-style huts set on green pastures. This is the Sydney Olympic Park Lodge, an urban holiday camp run by the YMCA and offering school kids a mix of outdoor and educational activities drawing on the resources of the Armory. Although part of the Olympic Park accommodation portfolio these rather spartan looking dormitories are certainly not likely to be mistaken for luxury five-star accommodation for Olympics or other sports-related VIPs.
The Lodge is buffeted from Blaxland Reserve by a large nature reserve. As we come back to the Parramatta a River trail we spot some more of the artificially created earth mounds, so characteristic of the Bay area. From the impressive gatehouse of the Armory it’s only about one-and-three-quarters kilometres back to our SOP ferry wharf starting point.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° § in the earlier posts Homebush Bay Perambulations I and Homebush Bay Perambulations III I referred to the Wentworth family’s role in the early development of Homebush Bay, being the beneficiaries of the grant of a large swathe of land in the area. Blaxland’s early land acquisitions led to him and his family having a similar imprint on the western part of Homebush Bay. At around the same time, Blaxland’s younger brother, Gregory (of Blue Mountains explorer fame), purchased the Brush Farm Estate in Eastwood from the father of his exploration companion, WC Wentworth – another interaction between the two great colonial families.
≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡
[1] ‘Management Plan for Newington Nature Reserve’, (SOPA, 2003), www.environment.nsw.gov.au
[2] ‘Industrial History’, Sydney Olympic Park Authority, www.sopa.nsw.gov.au
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.
I was returning to the city centre having already been in earlier in the day and seen Stephansdom (St Stephan’s Cathedral) with its distinctive-patterned mosaic tiled roof; the Stephansplatz, densely populated with Mozart-themed totes flogging tickets to The Marriage of Figaro outside the subway exit, and on the other side of the square, lined up on the street, a row of fiakers (gaily decorated, horse-drawn hire carriages). 
