Four days in Vienna with kids (by Robert)

[caption id="attachment_3799" align="alignnone" width="1200"] View of the Stephansdom, which was two minutes from our hotel![/caption]

Mum, Grandpa and I went on a four night trip to Austria. Grandpa was born in Vienna, but had to leave in 1939 when he was very young, and he was taking me there to show me some of our family history.

The plane journey was comfortable and short leaving us plenty of time to check in to our hotel and check out the local area. We stayed in the Hotel Royal, a lovely building that had everything we needed (except for an English TV). It’s situated right in the middle of Vienna meaning we didn’t have many long journeys. It was really easy to walk every where and we were just a few minutes from the Stefansdom (St Stephen's Cathedral) which is a real Viennese landmark.

[caption id="attachment_3800" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Traditional dumplings at Huth Gastwirtschaft[/caption]

We went to Huth Gastwirtshacft , which is a traditional Viennese restaurant, for dinner, and a few drinks as well, and sampled some of the biggest pasta (or dumplings) I have ever seen. They only gave us three pieces but it was more than enough. All the staff were really friendly and the food was very nice. It all seemed very Austrian too.

Day one:

After a filling breakfast of croissants and yoghurt we set out on a tour of Vienna. Our tour guide was Brigitte Timmermann who showed us loads of cool and interesting things. I personally liked the Monument Against War and Fascism, which was made up of four monuments, dedicated to different types of people who suffered from the Second World War.  It is behind Vienna’s opera house, on the Albertinaplatz.

[caption id="attachment_3805" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Part of the memorial against Fascism[/caption]

I also found the archives at the DOW (Documentation of Austrian Resistance) really interesting and it is definitely worth going there and looking at the small exhibition about what happened around the war years. We saw one of the voting cards for the referendum for whether Austria should join Germany under Hitler and it was amazing to see how the “Ja” (yes) was a really big circle and the “nein” very small.  I also loved the view of the city from up high.

[caption id="attachment_3811" align="alignnone" width="1200"] We had lots of delicious cake and hot chocolate in Vienna![/caption]

You may or may not know that Mozart spent many years in Vienna, so there were plenty of shops and buildings dedicated to the composer. After a long time walking we went to have lunch, at Café Mozart. The food served there was great. I had a large portion of crispy fish and chips, heated lemonade (which was really nice) and for dessert a small creamy cake… and half a portion of pancakes! This was probably my favourite restaurant that we went to, so I would recommend going.

Next, we went to the Clock Museum, three whole floors of clocks, watches and sundials. Each room explained how time-telling machines had evolved over time. Although there were some very cool clocks I personally found the museum quite boring but my sister liked it when she went a few years ago.

After we went to synagogue, we had Friday-night dinner at Alef Alef, which is a kosher restaurant. To be honest it was more of a feast. Our table was already covered in bowls and dishes when we sat down and that was only the first course. We were then provided with chicken soup, salmon and vegetables before we even got onto the main course. We had the option of schnitzel or chicken, I picked the schnitzel which turned out to be a very good choice. Dessert was a pudding smothered in sauce but I was too full up to eat any of it!

DAY TWO:

[caption id="attachment_3806" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Outside Time-Travel[/caption]

This was my favourite day of the holiday as it was jam-packed with loads of cool things. First we went to Time Travel which was a bit like the London dungeons (but without being as scary). We were given audio guides that played exactly in time with the tour guide speaking in German -  this was really clever. The experience included a 5D ride where you travel through time, a show about the Habsburg family and a music-off between Mozart and Strauss. There was also a ride that took you on a Viennese waltz, a section where you find out what it was like to be in an air raid shelter during the war and a tour of Vienna on a flying horse. I loved Time-Travel and would definitely recommend it if you go to Vienna with kids. Our hotel also had vouchers for 20 per cent off, so you should look for these in yours!

[caption id="attachment_3807" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Robert loved the horse and carriage[/caption]

We then went on a 20 minute horse and carriage ride. It was really fun, cosy and exciting and was a really cool thing to do even if it only took a short amount of time.

My great grandparents lived and ran a cinema in Vienna before World War II came along and mucked everything up. It felt really special going into the cinema called the Admiral Kino. I particularly liked the cinema’s old fashioned style which made me think that it hadn’t changed that much since my family had run it. The cinema was beautiful and I loved visiting it. You should definitely go if you are in Vienna.

[caption id="attachment_3808" align="alignnone" width="1200"] The Admiral Kino - the cinema once run by our family[/caption]

The final thing we did was going to the operetta, a light opera, at the Volksoper. We saw the Circus Princess, a lively performance telling the story of love, betrayal and a horse rider called Mr X. The theatre provided the audience with English subtitles on a screen which was very helpful. I really enjoyed going to the operetta as the show was funny and clever at the same time.

[caption id="attachment_3809" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Outside the Volksoper[/caption]

Day three

We visited two different Jewish museums, one explaining the history of the Jews in Austria from Medieval times, and the other displaying people’s stories and objects. I personally liked the latter more become there was a more personal feel. For more on these museums read mum’s post as she explains it in more detail.

Next on the agenda was taking a trip to the Prater which is a large theme park. The Prater is most famous for the Wiener Riesenrad Ferris wheel, which we obviously went on. Like the London Eye it slowly takes you on a vertical circuit giving you plenty of time to take pictures and look at the views. I really enjoyed going on the wheel and couldn’t resist going on some of the other rides too.

[caption id="attachment_3815" align="alignnone" width="675"] By the Ferris Wheel at the Prater[/caption]

Finally we visited Schönbrunn Palace, a beautiful building where the previous leaders of Austria had lived. We had the option of a longer, more detailed tour or a quicker one so we picked the latter as the palace was to close in half an hour. The audio guide was really interesting and I learnt a lot. The gardens were also very beautiful.

Day four

[caption id="attachment_3802" align="alignnone" width="1200"] These stairs were musical keys![/caption]

On Monday we went to the Haus der Musik which was a brilliant museum, all about sound, starting with a staircase which had steps which played musical notes. While we were there we created our own tunes, conducted the Vienna Philarmonic and more. This is a place which families will really love if they come to Vienna and I am going to write more on it in a later post.

Overall I had a brilliant holiday, there was so much to do, and eat. There were so many chocolate shops and bakeries as well as museums, monuments and theatres. I had a great time and can say that there is something for all ages. I also felt very lucky to find out more about my family's history.

[caption id="attachment_3813" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Robert and Grandpa enjoyed a cake at the famous Demel Cafe[/caption]

We had help from the Vienna Tourist Board while planning our trip, as well as the use of a Vienna Card, which gives you free travel and money off attractions in the city. 

Read the Five Things You Must Do in Vienna, by Jessica (and they are not all the ones mentioned here......)

Vienna and my family history: the trip I will never forget

My sister, Jo (left) and myself, outside the Admiral Kino

It's hard to pick one trip or journey which changed my life. Or one that is more important to me than any other. I thought about the first time I visited New York with my boyfriend and realised, in that week, how much I loved being with him, enjoyed his company and didn't want to be without him. We have now been married for 17 years and when I think of New York, I always smile.

I also thought about trips with our children - taking our daughter to the seaside for the first time and hearing her squeal with happiness as the waves licked over her feet; waving at her as she sat in a baby chair on the back of my husband's bike or burying her feet in the sand on a beach in Lanzarote. And then there is the happiness as a family of four, the contentment of vacationing as the children grow up and are becoming increasingly good holiday companions.

Instead, I am writing about a very unusual trip which I made. It was just me and my older sister on a very important journey indeed.

We arrived in Vienna in November 2011 and it was all faintly unreal, especially as I walked into the Admiral Kino on the Burgasse, one of the last neighbourhood cinemas operating in Vienna which is not a multiplex.

My grandmother’s cinema licence for the Admiral Kino in 1938, dated a few months before the Anschluss

I felt as if I had stepped back in time as I explored this place, which is a strong part of my family’s history. Long ago it belonged to my grandmother, Margarethe Ebner. She ran it with my grandfather, Berthold.

However, that was another era. That was before my grandfather was arrested for refusing to show Nazi propaganda films. It’s before he was sent to Dachau and Buchenwald for 13 months, and it’s before my grandmother, left with a small baby (my father Henry, then called Heinz), somehow managed to get the three of them out of the country. They arrived in England two weeks before the start of the Second World War.

I had never been inside the Admiral Kino before that trip to Vienna. And I was unprepared when the current owner, Michaela Englert, showed me into the auditorium.

I expected a normal cinema, but instead felt a little light-headed as I walked through the door. It was as if I was going back in time and almost surreal as the room looked so old-fashioned, from the period lights on the wall to the plain seating and decor. I am sure that it hadn’t changed much since my grandparents were here in the 1930s.

My reaction caught me by surprise. I never met my grandfather, who died before I was born (my son, Robert, is named for him) and yet (and I know this sounds strange) I felt as if I could sense him and my grandmother in this small room. It was as if something of them remained there, before their lives changed irrevocably.

I was in Vienna, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but with a less than beautiful 20th-century history, for the screening of Double Exposure: Jewish refugees from Austria in Britain. This documentary is made up of interviews with 25 refugees from Austria who settled in the UK, including my father, who was the youngest to feature.

When she was arranging to take the exhibition to Vienna (where it was on at the Literaturhaus), the maker of the film, Dr Bea Lewkowicz, asked if there was somewhere nearby to screen it.

“When I was told that the nearest cinema was the Admiral Kino, I nearly fell off my chair,” she told me. “Your father hadn’t said that it was still going.”

Unfortunately my father couldn’t attend, so my sister and I decided to represent him. I don’t think I realised how emotional it would be, how strange to feel part of other people’s memories.

The exhibition is a photographic display of the 25 refugees. They include some well-known names, such as the violinist Norbert Brainin (famous for the Amadeus Quartet), historian Richard Grunberger (author of A Social History of the Third Reich) and the composer Joseph Horovitz.

Both film and exhibition are incredibly moving. Many of the people included have strong, clear memories of their Viennese childhoods, of coffee houses and delicious whipped cream. Then they recall the sudden, horrendous changes in their lives after 1938, the friends who deserted them, the whisperings of their concerned parents, and the struggle to leave their homes.

The Germans moved into Austria to widespread acclaim on March 12 1938. This was the Anchluss (annexation) and the Jewish population of Austria at that time is estimated to have been around 200,000, of whom around 180,000 lived in Vienna. Around 65,000 were killed in the war.

Some of the stories in the film are extremely painful. As most interviewees were children at the time, they recall leaving their parents and never seeing them again. Otto Deutsch, who, aged 83, also attended the Vienna screening, told of how his sister was eight months too old to be included on the Kindertransporte (where thousands of children, aged between 6 and 16, were allowed into the UK). He never saw her, or his parents, again, but remembers his sister running alongside his train as he left, telling him to be a “good boy”.

My father, Henry, on screen during the documentary

Another interviewee, Gina Gerson, left with her sister. At the end of August 1939, she was thrilled to receive a telegram from their parents, who had somehow managed to get visas and reported that they would arrive on September 6. War broke out on the 3rd and they never made it.

My grandparents were “expropriated” of their cinemas within days of the Germans’ arrival (they also owned the Johann Strauss Kino which is no longer in existence). The stormtroopers also took all their cash and jewellery. They were very fortunate to get domestic visas to England; many of their relatives, including my grandmother’s mother, were not so lucky and died in Auschwitz. Meanwhile, the Ebners ended up in the tiny Norfolk village of Binham, where they became butler and cook to the Reverend Carroll and his two spinster sisters.

Everyone’s story matters, wherever it is told. And yet hearing the stories while in Vienna gave them so much more poignancy. Many of the interviewees felt conflicted, still Austrian (Viennese in most cases) and yet so grateful to Britain for offering them refuge, for saving them. And I felt conflicted too, as if I shouldn’t have been there. As if, in a different world, I would never have been born, and my Viennese father might still be welcoming people to the Admiral Kino.

To find out more information about, and to access the interviews in the documentary, visit Refugeevoices.co.uk, which contains most of the Jewish-Austrian interviews featured in Double Exposure.

Vienna and my family history: the trip I will never forget

My sister, Jo (left) and myself, outside the Admiral Kino

It's hard to pick one trip or journey which changed my life. Or one that is more important to me than any other. I thought about the first time I visited New York with my boyfriend and realised, in that week, how much I loved being with him, enjoyed his company and didn't want to be without him. We have now been married for 17 years and when I think of New York, I always smile.

I also thought about trips with our children - taking our daughter to the seaside for the first time and hearing her squeal with happiness as the waves licked over her feet; waving at her as she sat in a baby chair on the back of my husband's bike or burying her feet in the sand on a beach in Lanzarote. And then there is the happiness as a family of four, the contentment of vacationing as the children grow up and are becoming increasingly good holiday companions.

Instead, I am writing about a very unusual trip which I made. It was just me and my older sister on a very important journey indeed.

We arrived in Vienna in November 2011 and it was all faintly unreal, especially as I walked into the Admiral Kino on the Burgasse, one of the last neighbourhood cinemas operating in Vienna which is not a multiplex.

My grandmother’s cinema licence for the Admiral Kino in 1938, dated a few months before the Anschluss

I felt as if I had stepped back in time as I explored this place, which is a strong part of my family’s history. Long ago it belonged to my grandmother, Margarethe Ebner. She ran it with my grandfather, Berthold.


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