Vienna didn’t treat her rivers nicely. The big one, Danube, got mostly ignored, the other, smaller ones, built over and condemned to the underground.
This one, “Wienfluss” or “Vienna River”, is something in the middle. It runs mostly in the open, albeit down in a deep bed that looks completely over-sized for such a creek. It’s for a reason though: I can remember one period of heavy rain, maybe 20 years ago, when this deep, broad bed was almost full of a wild river that had swollen to a thousandfold volume.
It’s only were the river touches the center of the city, it was built over, and it is here in “Stadtpark”, where I have taken this image, that it emerges again, dramatically supported by the architecture of Vienna’s chief architect of the time, the great Otto Wagner.
The Song of the Day is “River, Stay ‘Way From My Door”. I have it in three versions, Frank Sinatra, Ethel Waters, and finally The Boswell Sisters, and the sisters flat out win. The Dorseys on clarinet and trombone are at least partly to blame 🙂
Hear it on YouTube. Great version, make sure to hear it through.