An Uplifting Afternoon

by forumholitorium

What better way to bid January adieu than to meet a dear old friend for Kaffee and Kuchen in a café devoted to antique elevators? If you like, you can sip your brew while sitting in one of two old Viennese lifts in the main room. While perfect for a romantic rendez-vous, an elevator seat is not the best choice if you want to stretch your legs. Thankfully there are also three tables with ample legroom. In Katherine Swift’s magnificent The Morville Hours, she writes of how the double-headed Roman god Janus was depicted in a 15th century Book of Hours as feasting in January, one head eating chicken, the other drinking from a goblet. Lacking a second head, I did my best to gracefully mimic the god of beginnings and doorways, alternating between sipping coffee and nibbling on a slice of marble Gugelhupf, that quintessential Viennese yeasted cake. 

Ring-shaped Gugelhupf has been eaten here for at least two thousand years. Bronze cake pans have been found that date back to the days of Carnuntum and Noricum – when Vienna was just a Roman military base called Vindobona. There were surely crows back then as there are today, but which ones – hooded or carrion? Were the rooks already spending the winter here and flying off to what is now Russia in the spring? Sadly not one of the pressing questions of archeology, but I would be interested in the answer just the same.

Since the infamous Vienna wind had taken the day off, our café visit was followed by a stroll through the nearby Belvedere Palace Gardens and Botanical Garden. The spire of Stephansdom gleamed white in the distance, the haze mostly blotting out Kahlenberg, Vienna’s own mountain. Odd was what looked like a plume of smoke from behind the spire. Had the terrorists who have been plotting to blow up the cathedral finally succeeded in setting it ablaze? No. More plausibly, its source may have been the city’s photogenic incinerator in Spittelau, which lines up with the cathedral and the Belvedere gardens.

The afternoon was a nice break from work and the computer screen on the one hand and windy, walk-discouraging weather on the other. My spirits were lifted up by historic elevators, good company, and conversation. Perhaps it was no coincidence that my friend and I met at a café where the following sign graces the counter. Portier is the German word for porter or doorman. The waiter even wore an old-fashioned hotel porter’s uniform. Our doorway champion Janus would surely approve. Now the door of January is firmly shut behind us and it’s forward into February.

Wishing you an uplifting afternoon!