Christmas in Vienna

There Are Days
when the city
outshines itself.
This past Monday
was one of those.
The white clouds sailing
in the blue skies high above
the Donau-Kanal only enhanced
the quality of that morning's brilliance,
illuminating even the façade of
St. George's Church to the left,
still in the shade,
by sheer reflection of the light
around it.
I took this picture from Hafnersteig,
at the corner of Griechengasse,
a part of the city so full of reminders
of the myriad contributions to the city's
commercial and intellectual growth
by Greek immigrants,
of people who came here
during the 19th Century,
looking for tolerance and
freedom of religion.

Illuminated
by midday's sun,
the Christmas lights
above Kärntner Strasse -
the historic center's shopping boulevard -
shine even more brilliantly
than at night when
artificial light is but a poor cousin
to the sun's power

A Few Stray
rays of sunshine successfully
travel down to the bottom
of Kohlmarkt -
a rather canyon-like narrow lane -
and alight the silver and white
Christmas decorations of
Berger's bookshop

The Gingerbread Angel
can only imagine the light
around her, what with
the silver star
in front of her eyes -
much to the delight of the
powderblue snowflake that
does not even try to conceal
her schadenfreude,
laughing so hard
she almost falls off the shelf

A Gilded Bauble
leans against a cookbook
singing of bratapfel and ginger

Christmas Tree
A Norway Spruce graces
the courtyard of the
"Böhmische Hofkanzlei"
designed by baroque architect
Johann Fischer von Erlach to house
the Bohemian Court Chancellery
during the first half of the 18th Century.

The Chancellery is long gone
and today the palais is home to Austria's
Constitutional and Administrative Courts.

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Photographed
28 December 2009

Gingerbread angel and snowflake:
Kameel Pâtisserie
Gilded Bauble:
Babette's Foodie's Paradise
Am Hof

Glossary:
bratapfel - Baked apple
schadenfreude - Pleasure derived from the misfortune of others

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Images & Text
© by Merisi