Days of Art & Imagination at Burg Wildegg
When I was offered the chance to spend a weekend modeling for artists at a castle, I didn’t need details. I couldn’t help imagining Neuschwanstein, although the organiser warned not to get too excited: “This is a small castle.” Coming from a castle-free country like America (excepting Disneyland), how could I not be thrilled to [...]
11 Women & Their Wines
I will side-step the many clichés in introducing a piece on women in wine – overalls and calloused hands are not key – and go straight to setting a scene: It was at last year’s VieVinum wine exhibition at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, where throngs of winemakers were cramped, shoulder-to-shoulder, into every marbled nook [...]
Twelve-Tone Vinyl at Palais Fanto
An international crowd had gathered at the Palais Fanto for the 15th anniversary of the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna, the murmuring mingling with the clinking of glasses echoing against the marble of the 1917 neo-classic palace on Schwarzenbergplatz. Several of Schoenberg’s descendants had made the trip from California to hear the composer’s legendary recordings [...]
Through the Grapevine
To establish one of Europe’s finest, most significant wine archives and cellars is no mean feat. Peter Pühringer – a German construction engineer and fund manager who spent over €80 million restoring the Palais Coburg after he bought the ruined former summer residence of Ferdinand von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the late ‘90s – is a confirmed [...]
Schanigärten: The Sidewalk Takeover
Impatient for outdoor socialising, Vienna tempts the spring season starting on 1 March – the day the city’s 1,800 Schanigärten are officially allowed to open. Whether or not winter has given up, the fresh-air freaks begin basking in the Saturday afternoon sun at outside tables on the Naschmarkt. “Oh look, they have blankets,” an American [...]
Sensing the Südsteiermark: A Tale of Two Hanneses
If perspective and sensory exploration is everything in wine, then the culmination of Steiermark’s landscape, aura, people, gastronomy and passion, manifests into a region that is quickly becoming the go-to place. My focus is on one of the three classified wine-growing regions in the greater Steiermark (Styria) area, Südsteiermark. Triangular in shape with its northern [...]
A Slice of Wiener Life, According to an Ausländer
An honour system. For riding the metro? This was something new. How can you allow people to just wander onto a platform without bothering to check their tickets? And what’s with pushing buttons or yanking handles to open the wagon doors? These were some of my very early impressions when I first found myself in [...]
Naked at the Naked Men
The Nackte Männer exhibit at the Leopold Museum has been a hot topic in Vienna since it opened in October – provoking a lot of good banter and not a few jokes on the subject of male nakedness in art. So why are female nudes everywhere in art, when the slightest glimpse of a male [...]
Read My Body: The Language of Touch
In the far corner of a whitewashed studio, a young man kneels, offering a shoulder to his partner. She drapes herself over his shoulder and he effortlessly lifts her into the air, one hand at her waist. As they spin, she leans against him and he rotates her until she is cradled in his arms. [...]
