Vienna Waited For Me?

 I spent roughly 48 hours in Vienna, as Erin Jenne, a friend and co-author, invited me to Central European University to give a talk about my ongoing research and to help her grade her class's poster presentations.  It was not my first time to Austria, as I did visit Salzburg during my Eurailpass summer long ago, but it was my first time to Vienna.  Indeed, I am pretty sure Vienna was the only European capital on this side of the former Iron Curtain that I had not visited other than Athens.  And I am pretty sure we will do Greece next year.

I am most grateful for the chance to present our work on both legislative and defense agency oversight over democratic armed forces, as I received a bunch of really good questions from both the audience in the room and those watching online that has already caused me to add a paragraph to our essentially complete book.  The ethnic conflict class was a blast to the past as Erin had teams of students compare pairs of situations, mostly across space but some over time, applying theories of ethnic conflict to understand the variation.  It exercised old brain muscles, as I have mostly left that stuff behind when I moved onto civil-military relations.

Speaking of ethnic conflict, CEU is in Vienna because it was kicked out of Budapest, Hungary.  George Soros, bogeyman of the far right, essentially pays for CEU, so Orban objected to the school and pushed it out.  It has only been a few years, but enough time has passed that the students of today don't really know the history of the prior situation.  Oh, and the place we ate at after my talk had the most unusual lamp:

Since both events were in the evening and my flight got pushed to the mid-afternoon on Friday, I had time to see the city.  On my first day of tourism, I hit the two museums near my hotel, both based in a prince's former set of palaces.  So, it was a two-for--seeing some great art and walking around a big palace or two.  And, yes, not only is Vienna chock full of massive buildings but a heap of palaces.  I aimed to walk around much of the historical center and accomplished that. 

Klimt's Kiss was the featured
piece at the first Belvedere palace

The second Belvedere palace
had Ukrainian art exhibited

 

 

Oh and I found the restaurant that was recommended to me.  I was looking for strudel and found it.

I had plenty of time before my flight to go to two more museums--one about the history of Vienna and a modern art museum.  I learned a lot about Vienna in a short period of time.  That there were huge divides between the left wing city and the countryside in the early 1900s that created much tension, for example.  I was surprised at how much anti-semitism was discussed, even going so far as to mention how Austrians tried to duck responsibility by considering themselves the first victims of the Nazis.

The wire cutters and wire here are from when Austria and Hungary cut the fences separating the two countries in 1989 which ultimately led to the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of communism and autocracy in Eastern Europe.

My timing was good as one of my fave artists had a special exhibit that started on this day I had to do some tourism.  I am not an expert on art, but, yes, I know what I like. Roy Lichtenstein's art has always resonated with me, partly because of my old hobby of collecting comic books, partly because I like art when it is colorful and dynamic, and partly because he had a great sense of humor.  I learned a bit more about him and that he had some sculptures.

This trip to Austria was the first of two this month as I am going to spend the end of the month skiing in the Austrian Alps, my first time skiing in Europe.  So, I predict more schnitzel and strudel in my near future.