We succumbed to the cold and headed to the shopping center in Neubaugasse to stock up on gloves, hats and under-shirts. By the time we decided what to buy it we had to head to our reservation at Buxbaum. The intention was to short circuit our lazy food/tourist experience by going to a Michelin-rated restaurant that would give us a positive impression of the local cuisine. We ordered one of everything off of the lunch menu. It was fine; the trend of small plates, daring mixtures of flavors, unexpected parings of sweet in salty or vice versa, there are fashionable flavors, cooking techniques and although the cuisine is different, I was reminded that upscale dining basically tastes the same in every country. And we agreed, as we always do, not to go to expensive restaurants anymore. The only other patrons were businessmen visiting from the UK.
Even with our new winter apparel, it was so cold and unpleasantly wet outside that after lunch we inadvertently became Viennese by taking a long coffee break, reading the news and snacking on cakes at Cafe Diglas.
The Bruegul show at the Kunsthistorisches Museum was impossible to get tickets to, but we saw a collections show curated by Wes Anderson and his wife. The show looked like a Wes Anderson movie. Visually very appealing, completely corrosive of the historic and artistic importance of the works in the collection. But I liked to see it just the same, perhaps because so often visual art exhibitions are aesthetically destitute and can be experienced by someone with 20/20 vision just as well as someone with 0/20 vision and a text-to-voice program reading the curatorial statement.
The top floor temporary space showed photographs of "The Last Days" by Helmut Wimmer, who had photoshopped scenes of nature into the museum galleries as if humanity had gone extinct and nature was taking back possession of the world.[1] I liked the idea, which was basically a site-specific recreation of the book “The World Without Us.” The execution could have been pushed further; some of the photoshopped works did not take into account basic things like the direction of a spotlight on the gallery of heads, which would have cast a shadow on the photoshopped forest floor, or even the color space of the superimpositions and the background. The artist paid attention to the glossy floor reflections, but could have used a few more youtube tutorials on digital collage.
The highlight of the day was using a Lime scooter to go home, which was a lot of fun and somewhat dangerous. I can see these as the future of transportation. Much faster than walking, not the lifestyle/danger commitment of biking, especially since bikes in the US are required to use the streets, but scooters could use sidewalks, and no worries about parking them.
We ate Nguyễn's Phổ, which was packed and appropriate cuisine for a cold, wet day. The broth was good, with a strong meat flavor, but they didn't serve the fresh lime or sauces that you're supposed to get with phổ.
[1] helmutwimmer.net
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