Melk

Looking at the stage curtain in Grein's theater
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(I've added pictures to Doug's report yesterday.)

Saturday. Doug mentioned yesterday the variety of experiences we’ve had. After spending Thursday night at the very international Marriott in Linz, we stayed last night at a very gemütlich family-owned pension, where we had no occasion to speak English to anyone except each other. The matriarch of the family rolled up on her bike as we were putting away our bicycles, and engaged in a very friendly conversation. She first guessed we were Dutch, but when she learned where we were from, she told us in some detail about her uncle in New York. I picked up that he had studied journalism, and had done something very high above the city. I looked suitably impressed and was able to tell her that we also had a son who lives in New York.

A Day of Delights

Looking out over Grein
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Yesterday was a challenging day, both emotionally and physically, but we were able to relax at the end of it watching the sunset on the river while eating some Italian ice. And today has been filled with unexpected delights.

The delights began with a visit to Grein’s remarkable 18th century theatre. It’s a very charming little space--seating about 160--that’s been in continuous use for over 200 years. It feels distinctive to me in the sense it gives of what theatre would have meant to the middle class of the time. The theatre is attached to the Rathaus, which included the town jail, and we saw where the hole in the jail wall was so that inmates could also watch the plays. Playgoers brought food, drink, and smokes for the inmates so they wouldn’t disrupt the show.

Stage curtain and box Napoleon is said to have used when he visited Grein
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The next delight was a stop for lunch in the town of Pöchlarn, which likes to call itself the center of the Nibelungengau. For those of us who only know of the Nibelungen through Wagner, the Danube does not figure in the story. But it seems that the original Nibelungenlied was composed by an unknown Danube poet and much of the (pre-Wagner) story takes place on the Danube (including Siegfired’s widow’s marriage to Attila the Hun in Vienna!) I decided to honor the poem by ordering the restaurant’s special, the Nibelungenspiess, which turned out to be an impressive looking spit with beef, pork, bacon, and a few token peppers on it. It was delicious.

Reserved seat at Grein's theater. Season ticket holders buy a key to unlock the seat.
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Pöchlarn is also the birthplace of the artist Oskar Kokuschka. Kokuschka was just a name in an art history book to me before today, but we stopped at his birthplace, now a lovely little museum. We were the only people there for the hour we stayed to look at a collection of original drawings as well as copies of some of his more famous work, and we left with a print of a beautiful fan he made for Alma Mahler. Kokuschka--like virtually every other Austrian creative figure of the early 20th century, it seems--was one of Alma’s lovers.

My Nibelungenspiess
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We are now in Melk, famous for its Benedictine monastery, which figures in Eco’s The Name of the Rose. As part of today’s theme of unexpected delights, we stumbled on two weddings here: the first at the Rathaus, where a town band in traditional dress serenaded the couple as they came out; the second a much more elaborate affair in the huge Baroque church at the monastery. We stood by the side to watch and listen, and were surprised to hear the choir sing, in English, “The Rose,” (“Some say love is like . . .) I last heard, or sang, that song at New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, in somewhat different surroundings.