Third Day in Vienna? Third Man in Vienna!

At no point on this ride did I threaten to kill Joseph Cotten

My third day in Vienna sees me take in some Third Man sights.  Let's set the mood with the biggest hit record from 1950, with 11 weeks at #1, Anton Karas's Third Man Theme.

Of course, all of my walks through Vienna take me past the Opera.  This being the first sunny day in Vienna -- maybe the first sunny day of the trip -- and everything photographs better in the sun, this warranted yet another picture of this massive structure.

I took the U1 metro line to Praterstern, which I caught at Karlplatz station just south of the Opera.

And there was the giant Ferris Wheel, known in Vienna-speak as the Wiener Riesenrad, or Vienna Giant Wheel.

If you remember the scene from the movie, with Orson Welles's Harry Lime riding the Riesenrad with Joseph Cotten's Holly Martins, the two calmly discussing whether Lime should off his best pal Martins, the wheel turns very slowly.  And the cars are the size of a Viennese hotel room.

Did I mention my hotel room was small?

On a cold, but sunny, Wednesday morning in December, there was a small line to buy tickets for the Big Wheel.  I bought my ticket and got on board for a ride.

The Riesenrad turned slow, so I wasn't worried about motion sickness.

And, being in an enclosed box, feared of heights did not kick in.  Maybe if the box hadn't been so stable, that would've been a problem.

I sound like a wuss.  Motion sickness!  Fear of heights!  Fear of enclosed spaces!  Like Charlie Brown in "A Charlie Brown Christmas," it's like I've got pantophobia: the fear of everything,

Actually, the views from the top of the circle were quite nice.  You could even see the spires of St. Stephen's.

 Yes, I really am in the car.

 And this is the point where you look down and think of the dialog from the scene in "The Third Man" where Harry Lime compares the people below to dots and asks Holly Martins that if he offered 20,000 pounds for each of the dots, would he keep his money or "calculate how many dots you could afford to spare ... free of income tax."

And that part isn't even the best part of the whole scene at the Riesenrad, which would be the famous Orson Welles "cuckoo clock" speech, maybe the greatest monologue in the movies, which you can click here to hear.

In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, murder, terror, bloodshead.  And, for this morning, I have the rest of the Prater to explore.

You don't pay to be admitted to the park.  You buy a ticket for each ride.  This being winter, a lot of the rides appeared to be closed.

A lot of the attractions seemed to be "haunted house" themed, too.  There is no human selling tickets to this haunted house.  Only some sort of animatronic evil spirit.

This rollercoaster seemed to be down for the season.

This ride, the Sombrero, seems to be all sorts of politically incorrect.

There was a Las Vegas themed bar on the premises.  I think this was added after "The Third Man" was filmed here in 1949.

The bumper cars were up and running:

But I came to Prater to ride the wheel.  The wheel had been ridden, so it was time for my next "Third Man" destination.

The U3 line to Simmering, then it's catch the #71 tram to my next stop:

Zentralfriedhof.

Vienna Central Cemetery.

Two important points in "The Third Man" take place here:  the opening and the closing.  The opening scene is the burial of Harry Lime in Zentralfriedhof.  I'm not sure exactly where in the cemetery it was that Lime was buried, but there's no point in checking that out because (a) the movie is fictional and (b) the burial in the fictional movie was fictional as Harry Lime was not actually dead at the movie's opening.

So instead let's find Beethoven's grave.  And here he is:

Right next to him was Schubert.

And in the same section, sadly underappreciated with an underwhelming number of flowers, is Brahms.

Go to sleep, Johannes Brahms, go to sleep.

This is the composer section of Zentalfriedhof.  The above is a memorial statue to Mozart.  But Mozart is buried back in Vienna.

Across the way was this interesting looking tomb:

This actually is the most interesting cemetery I've ever seen.  The headstones are not universally traditional by any means.

Moving on, meet Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, whose equations on the property of atoms were scorned in his day.  He committed suicide in disgrace, the scientific consensus thought he was a fool, but after his death, he was exonerated,  His theorems were proven true.

His tomb bears the equation of S = k log W.  The formula for entropy.  Living my life as a gradual descent into chaos and disorder, I thought a graveside "selfie" was in order.

Next up was the artist's section.

That is the grave of the artist Franz West.  Below is a gravestone that took the form of a white cloth draped over a piano:

Multiple interesting headstones in this "honors" section of the cemetery.

This was my favorite.  I think it's the most beautiful "gravestone" I've ever seen.

I looked at the plaque to see who it could be:

Actress and inventor, the beautiful Hedy Lamarr.  I didn't even know she was buried here or that she was Viennese.

Selfie with Hedy?

Interesting tombstones all around in this neck of the cemetery woods.

The final one, the fat cat above, is Austrian artist Manfred Deix.  Don't feel inferior if you have not heard him, his wikipedia page is only in German.

There are two things in this cemetery you will see in "The Third Man."  First, are the green domes visible throughout the cemetery.

You will see them lurking in the background in a number of shots.  Second, there are the cemetery walkways.

I don't know which one is THE one where the famous final scene was shot, the landscaping being different, but that final camera shot, linked here, is one of the great movie-ending scenes, where at the scene of Harry Lime's real funeral, Joseph Cotton's Holly Martins waits for the beautiful Anna as she approaches from a distance and ... then ... walks right past him without a glance.

I'm walking in this section of the cemetery looking for the grave of ...

The Pride of Austria!  Vienna's own Falco!  Still well remembered even more than 30 years after his major U.S. hits.  Which was your favorite?  Pick one as your musical accompaniment here:  (1) the dark, brooding Der Kommissar, where Falco makes German a great language for rap;  (2) the international dance smash Rock Me Amadeus, which made Falco an international superstar;  or the jaunty fun of Vienna Calling.

This interesting tombstone was right next door.

But there are only so many interesting tombstones one can view in a day.  Back on the tram!

Back to Karlplatz.

And here I find the Third Man Museum.

I thought it was opened on Wednesdays, but it is only open Saturday afternoons.  So I went to a nearby coffee shop, for a coffee, a (gluten free) Esterhazy schnitte (very very hazelnut), and a vanilla macaron.

A civilized way to rest my barking dogs.  And what was the music playing in the coffee shop?  It wasn't Falco.  It wasn't Christmas music.  But it was awesome.  It was THIS.

Madeira in Madeira, Then the Last Meal in Funchal

Statue of something -- four men hunting a T-rex? -- in front of the cable car station

One last afternoon of vacationeering.  The three-hour cruise aboard the Santa Maria replica was booked up for the afternoon.  Oh well, three-hour cruises can be ominous.  And, besides, where does a cruise aboard a Columbus-ship replica sail next from Madeira?  Hispaniola?  That seemed to be a bit long for a last afternoon.

So a Madeira wine tour it is:

In Porto, I toured a Port wine cellar.  So in Madeira, I toured a Madeira wine maker.  The tour consisted of looking at barrels:

Lots and lots of barrels:

Facetiousness aside, I did learn the key differences between Madeira wine and port from Port.  First, port is aged in cellars.  Madeira is aged in attics, so it is gently "cooked" by the warmth of the attic.  Port digs the cool.  Second, Madiera is made almost exclusively with white grapes, while port can be made with either (but in America our port is almost always red).  Finally, those barrels.  Port is aged in French oak and the barrels are eventually sent to Scotland for a second life as whiskey vessels.  Madeira?  Good old American oak!  Drink Madeira and MAGA!  And those American oak barrels never get too old for wine.

We also got to see archaic machinery that is no longer used:

This is part of the tour group.  As with the port tour in Porto, the tour group was mostly Brit.

Finally, the tour ended with a tasting.

The best part,

A little more wandering the town before supper,  This is the fort:

It's now a sunbathing (and ocean swimming) spot for people in swimwear who you never wanted to see in swimwear.  (I would've fit right in.)

The fort is in a bit of disrepair.

But, fortunately for Madeira, the disrepair is a function of the fact that it really hasn't needed to be used as such for a couple hundred years.  Time for supper.

I didn't supper-blog the previous night's supper because it was only OK:

Scabbard fish with banana.  Or, as I like to call it, A Perfect Day for Bananafish.  Ask J.D. Salinger if you don't catch the allusion.

Dinner tonight, my final dinner in Funchal, my final dinner of this vacation extravaganza adventure, was the Mozart:

OK.  So some (but not all) of the wait staff are dressed in period costumes.  And the dishes are all named for classic composers (love love love the fact that the "Salieri" was a tofu dish).  And despite the name "Mozart," at no point did the wandering musicians play "Rock Me Amadeus," the food was absolutely awesome.  Ótimo.

I opted for the multi-course special.  Three courses and unlimited house wine for 39 euro.  The starter appetizer was gratis:

A very tasty herbed cheese dip, served with what tasted suspiciously like an original flavor Dorito.  I'm not complaining.  It was good.

Next was the appetizer:

The Beethoven!  Which, as you expect from the name, is a "carpaccio" of octopus.  Served with some more of Mozart's fave, Doritos.  The octopi were swimming in an ocean of balsamic vinegar.  Out of this frickin' world amazing.

They were out of grouper so I couldn't get the main course I wanted, the Berwald, which was a combo plate of grouper and salmon and prawns.  So I settled for the John Field, sea bass and clams.

I don't know who Berwald or John Field is, so the substitution was delicious.  And because I'm a philistine, I had the house red.  Plenty of the house red.  The staff at the Mozart were quicker on the wine glass refills than a normal restaurant is with the water or iced tea.

I can't tell you home many glasses of wine I drank because the glass never got below one-third full.

Next was the palate cleanser, some drinkable orange sherbet:

Then the Madeira course:

A very welcome course.  Last up was dessert.  Because it was summertime, and the living was easy, I opted for the Gershwin:

A passion fruit souffle, with a side of passion fruit ice cream.  Yes, it was a symphony of flavor.  Why do you ask?

The meal went on and on and on and on,   But at some point, the Mozart staff stopped refilling the wine glasses and it was time to stumble back to the hotel through the dark streets of Funchal.

And that concludes the vacation blogging for Portugal 2017.  It's time to fly home.