Kinder können nicht sagen wie heiß der Tag ist,
wie scharf der Duft der Sommerrose,
These evocative lines from Robert Graves indicate how some pots translate so very well. Yesterday, travelling around Vienna left me little time for reading -only perhaps for a few lines of poetry. I started by going North to the Landstrasse – and wandered Feclessly down the Hauptstrasse which had interesting markets. I tried using the Sun to navigate but wandered in a direction away from the Danube Canal. Easily distracted, as usual by a bookshop I found an excellent plastic sleeved grammar of German on three foldable sheets. Then found an excellent cafe where the small house torte was the best that I found in Vienna thus far. I then followed a friends advice and entered a Church founded after the second encirclement of Vienna by the Turkish forces.
During a further digression around towards the Canal and the Prater, I discovered a pleasant Chemist/Herbal shop, bought some cough sweets for flying and generally forgot all my language skills explaining ludicrously St John’s Wort and its supposed benefits. I forgot the Latin name-hypericum.Walking over a 1950s bridge I arrived eventually in the Prater. Then there was a large tennis club and I wondered if this might be one that was referred to in Vienna by Eva Menasse. After apassing a cheerful group of blind children through tree-lined avenues, which neverthless gave thought to some reflection, I arrived at an interesting denkmal, the Habsburg composer, Carl M.Ziehrer. Finally looming out of the mid afternoon mists I saw the Prater wheel and felt Harry Lime must be about to emerge with a grotesque smile from the surrounding fun-park.
Karl Michael Ziehrer (also spelled as Carl Michael Ziehrer) (May 2, 1843 – November 14, 1922)[1] was an Austrian composer. In his lifetime, he was one of the fiercest rivals of the Strauss family; most notably Johann Strauss II[2] and Eduard Strauss.
penwithlit 