The train out of Prague was nice, in a kind of Poirot/Holmes stylee, as we had to sit in a booth. There was a lock on the door, and when the ticket man/coffee man came, they knocked before entering and closed the door behind them, even though it was made of glass so it wasn't exactly private anyway. Regardless, it was a nice trip, and we had our booth to ourselves almost the whole way.
When we got to Vienna we weren't sure which station to get off at, and then when we got off and U-Bahn'd over to the correct stop, we couldn't decide on which direction to walk. We got to Hostel Ruthensteiner in the end however. It was a strange place; very nice, and pretty clean, but the staff were pretty anal about being environmentally friendly/smoking/keys etc., which was a bit off putting. Also, the kitchen was tiny and always packed full of people, making it pretty awkward to cook food, which was a problem because Vienna was probably the most expensive place we visited.
Anyway, it wasn't such a big deal, since we'd only be sleeping there, and it was still a pretty nice place. The first thing we did was head to the Secession Building:
It was pretty impressive from outside, and pretty bizarre inside. We paid about 10 euros to see two exhibitions; the first of which a crap piece of rock in the middle of a huge white room, which apparently the "artist" had slept inside or something (I'm not entirely sure, I wasn't paying much attention to it).
The second, which was what we really went to see, was this:
Gustav Klimt - Section from the Beethoven Frieze (1902):
Actually finding the frieze was quite difficult. We went in, looked halfheartedly at the rock sculpture, awkwardly asked the attendant about a cloakroom (as we anticipated a larger gallery), came back, went downstairs, saw a pole dancing stage and a seedy looking bar, got confused and went back up, asked the reception guy where the frieze was, he said "go through the bar", so we did, and we found it right at the back. However, the bar we went through, and the club built around the bar, was a swinger's club called Element 6. This swinger's club was complete with S&M equipment, like a cross with manacles, and huge screens showing porn. There was also private sex rooms, and beds lying around under palm trees for exhibitionists (including inside the room with the frieze - a room which was darker than it probably should have been for proper viewing, to accommodate the shaggers).
When we left the sex club/gallery, we saw a woman going in with her kids; I'm pretty sure the reception guy didn't bother to warn her. I took comfort in the fact that she was British, so she'd probably be very shocked and indignant about it.
After our sex club adventure, we visited the Leopold Museum. I think tiredness was generally one of the most debilitating features of our trip; we struggled to have the energy for looking around exhibitions (or at least I did, especially with a sore toe), and as a result probably didn't take the time we should have in studying the various artworks. The Leopold was great, it had some brilliant Secession paintings and posters and some amazing works by Egon Schiele, an artist I'd only vaguely heard of before going abroad:
Egon Schiele - Nude Self Portrait (1910):
Gustav Klimt - Poster for the First Secession Exhibition (1898):
Koloman Moser - Poster for the Thirteenth Secession Exhibition (1902):
I love the red eyes on the Schiele painting. His works were some of the most impressive that I saw while I was away, they were so expressionistic yet stylistic and bold.
It was raining when we came out of the Leopold, and we planned to go to the Museum Moderner Kunst after a trip to a cafe, but we ended up just heading back to the hostel, we were so tired and short on time.
Day 2 in the next post.
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