AUSTRIA

The city where I lived for almost 40 years, that is, Trieste, was for a long time a port of the Austro-Hungarian empire and it was Charles VI, Maria Teresa's father, who launched the small city into this important role, later increased by her mother. For this reason we people from Trieste have many connections with Austria and in recent times there has been a revival of that period which ended at the end of the First World War when Trieste joined Italy after a hard war which cost 600,000 Italian soldiers fallen and most of whom are buried in the Redipuglia cemetery. Today, however, the people of Trieste participate in the New Year's concert and the last piece played is the famous Radezky March like at the Vienna concert. Furthermore, Trieste hosts the Operetta festival which attracts the participation of many Austrians. Lately, many Austrians have bought houses in Triesste and we increasingly hear German being spoken, a language that I also studied in middle school, high school and university. Having said this, let's go to Austria which I visited in 1969 in the summer following my graduation. I took the trip by car with my friend Romano and we visited several cities such as Klagenfurt, Villach, Graz, Linz and of course Vienna where we stopped for a few days to visit its main attractions. I returned to Vienna two more times, the first on a 1980s train trip that centered on visiting three nearby capitals; Vienna, Prague and Budapest and then I returned more recently on a trip that included much of Central Europe, starting in Prague and ending in Zagreb. Austria is a beautiful country, very green, well kept and has riches of incomparable landscapes such as lakes, valleys and mountains, as well as beautiful and elegant villages and cities. In particular I liked Villach and Klagenfurt, where I spent New Year's Eve dancing the Viennese waltz in a large nineteenth-century style building. Another beautiful memory is linked to Maria Worther See where I went skiing from Trieste and the Kotschah Berg, but my heart remains linked to Vienna, above all for the memory of Sissi and her husband Emperor Franz Joseph. I accidentally saw an exhibition dedicated to Sissi at the palace in Monza which struck me a lot due to her unhappiness in life at court, her depression and the endless trips that continually took her around. She also lived in Madeira and Corfu and during yet another transfer to Geneva she was killed by an extremist while she was boarding a boat. In Vienna I stayed for almost three hours in the private apartments of Sissi and Franz Joseph, discovering that she had even invented and had built gymnastic instruments to keep fit and then she had long hair down to the floor and spent a whole day washing it once a week. week. The building that contains these apartments is the Hofburg which is very rich also for the other rooms where people ate, danced and then there is the Spanish riding school for the white horses of Lipiza which is located in Slovenia a few steps from the Italian border of Trieste. In Vienna I visited many museums of which the Austrian capital is rich: the Belvedere which was born as the summer residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy and today is an art gallery museum with beautiful paintings including the kiss by Klimt and paintings by Schiele and Kokoschka at the upper Belvedere , then there is an uphill lawn and white stairs and you arrive at the lower Belvedere which is a museum that hosts temporary exhibitions. The same painters are represented with their paintings at the Leopold Museum. Other attractions in Vienna are St. Stephen's Cathedral, the Capuchin Crypt with the tombs of the Austrian emperors, the Maria Hilfer Strasse shopping street, the Parliament Building, the Graben the downtown street next to the cathedral and outside the Prater the green park on the Danube with the giant observation wheel and of course the great Schoenbrunn palace where the court lived in the summer. There are typical Austrian cafes where you can eat Sacher Torte and many delicious pastries. For years, Vienna has won first place as the city with the best standard of living from many points of view< div class="separator" style="clear: both;">