Blue Danube

[porphyry]

Since this is evidently what the valley of the Danube looks like just a short distance above Vienna, why on earth do our Viennese readers so often talk of vacationing anywhere else? Or is it possible to become bored with seeing a 200 meter waterfall?

Comments

[filialucis]

There are lies, damned lies, and Disneyfied versions of geography.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Actually its by Hugh Harman, Disney's far more artistically successful competitor at MGM. But wouldn't it be nice if there was someplace that did look like that (without the naked babies)?

[benicek.livejournal.com]

My daughter was mesmerised by that from the moment the translucent faerie appeared. She waved goodbye to them at the end.

Last time I saw the Danube it was a concrete lined trough with teenagers doing BMX stunts under the road bridges.

I can't imagine why Londoners believe themselves to be living in a filthy, crime-ridden nightmare. Haven't they seen Mary Poppins?

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

The clip reminded me again of Offenbach's allusion to the Blue Danube waltz in Belle Lurette ("Entre nous" CD I. 16).

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

It has a similar effect here.

Is London crime-ridden? I wonder how the statistics comapare to large American cites, but am too lazy to look it up.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Because "the country places and the trees don't teach me anything, and the people in the city do". Or rather, I just like to visit museums.

And it's true what filialucis said, I'm afraid. The Danube isn't even particularly blue. (Still the shower of blooms reminded me of Stroheim's wonderful "Wedding March". Thank you for that.)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I quite agree with you on the Horace (I hope its Horace), but I couldn't resist my little joke, since I have to think of something while watching ten cartoons like that a day.

How I wish I could see films like the von Stroheim these days!.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Oh dear.
When I was a kid, I believed Germany looked like a combination of the soft-valleyed Grimm Brother illustrations full of dwarfs and princesses (no idea by whom) and those Heidi-film varieties in the songbook my mother used to teach us german by. And of course the pictures full of happy, well-fed children waving red flags at young pioneers in our GDR reading book (post coming up, I have it here...) which starts like: "Mama, Papa, Landesproduktionsgenossenschaft" (german for kolchose).

I couldn´t believe, the muddy, greyish country smelling of coal (still love the smell, though for that reason) I visited twice a year by train or Morris, was supposed to be Germany?!
My childish Germany, was this wondrous Wonderland with all the bright yellow stars above the soft landscape where Rapunzel let her hair hang down and so much more real than the border train stations and Kalashnikovs aiming at us, I saw.
Oh, Vienna...
All the brownish Danube ever did for me, was giving me pneumonia at bathing in it with my friend and colleague with whom I wandered all of Vienna´s streets and coffee houses (mostly;) and then we just had to take that bath, but this was er: far later in life. And still my child-self & I love seeing the Vienna New Years Concert with the kitschy ballet scenes in one of the castles, every year. It is quite like watching that Disney thing above and this year there were even kids as angels dancing into the concert hall!
Oh, dear.