Friday 20 December 2013

Merisi's Around Town
Christmas in Vienna

There Are Days
when the city
outshines itself.
This past Monday
was one of those.
The white clouds sailing
in the blue skies high above
the Donau-Kanal only enhanced
the quality of that morning's brilliance,
illuminating even the façade of
St. George's Church to the left,
still in the shade,
by sheer reflection of the light
around it.
I took this picture from Hafnersteig,
at the corner of Griechengasse,
a part of the city so full of reminders
of the myriad contributions to the city's
commercial and intellectual growth
by Greek immigrants,
of people who came here
during the 19th Century,
looking for tolerance and
freedom of religion.

Illuminated
by midday's sun,
the Christmas lights
above Kärntner Strasse -
the historic center's shopping boulevard -
shine even more brilliantly
than at night when
artificial light is but a poor cousin
to the sun's power

A Few Stray
rays of sunshine successfully
travel down to the bottom
of Kohlmarkt -
a rather canyon-like narrow lane -
and alight the silver and white
Christmas decorations of
Berger's bookshop

The Gingerbread Angel
can only imagine the light
around her, what with
the silver star
in front of her eyes -
much to the delight of the
powderblue snowflake that
does not even try to conceal
her schadenfreude,
laughing so hard
she almost falls off the shelf

A Gilded Bauble
leans against a cookbook
singing of bratapfel and ginger

Christmas Tree
A Norway Spruce graces
the courtyard of the
"Böhmische Hofkanzlei"
designed by baroque architect
Johann Fischer von Erlach to house
the Bohemian Court Chancellery
during the first half of the 18th Century.

The Chancellery is long gone
and today the palais is home to Austria's
Constitutional and Administrative Courts.

Gingerbread angel and snowflake:
Kameel Pâtisserie
Gilded Bauble:
Babette's Foodie's Paradise
Am Hof

Glossary:
bratapfel - Baked apple
schadenfreude - Pleasure derived from the misfortune of others

Photographed December 2009
Images & Text © by Merisi
R e p o s t

12 comments:

  1. Dear readers,
    I am around, today here, there tomorrow, capturing Christmas, taking in Christmas cheer with family and friends. I hope you'll find something among those old pictures (four years, time does fly, indeed, seems like yesterday I snapped those pictures!). Enjoy, and holiday cheers to all of you, near and far,
    yours,
    Merisi

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  2. The light is pelucide...
    The gingerbread are seriously tempting. None to be found in Paris ;((

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  3. Some government buildings are definitely awe inspiring, when they use the light the right way

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  4. What beautiful scenes celebrating this time of year - hope it's a Happy Holiday for you and yours!:)

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  5. Those pictures are timeless beauties.
    Besides for the blue sky. This week was excetionally dull and grey. But shopping on Kohlmarkt and Neuer Markt was so much fun! Did you ever enter freytag & berndt at Kohlmarkt. The best service for travel litterature. I asked for a Rome-guide with walks. They had a selection of 5 books. Short walks, modern walks, stories on walks ... I love it when shopping works out. :-) And I truly love the 1st district, no matter how many tourists visit this city.

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    1. Oh yes, F&B was one of the first stores I fell in love with when I moved to Vienna. And I love the 1st District, no matter how many tourists are in Vienna, I know so many streets and hidden places where I can shop and wander as if I was alone on my very own star. Drop me a line if you want to know anything about Rome, that's a place I once called home and it is still in my heart.

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  6. Love a glorious day like that! I hope someday I am able to go visit your city.
    Sigh. Merry Christmas Merisi!

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  7. A beautiful collection of shots, Merisi... the first pair are very dramatic indeed.

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  8. A great collection. I especially like the first photo, and the Christmas tree...and the silver decorations in the bookshop look like they are dancing. Oh heck, I like them all.

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  9. So so beautiful, very elegant, and a magical quality of Christmas is most certainly present...you can almost see the twinkle of Santi hoho if you look really hard~

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  10. I love the gingerbread angel! Merry Christmas!

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