Random Reflections
A fascinating look at Baroque, history
Tom Claridge

It was a couple of years ago that Maestro Rob Hennig first mentioned the idea of taking his two choirs on a European tour.

Back then, my expectation was that we'd get a chance to sing in a couple of English cathedrals and perhaps cross the Channel for a bus tour of France and maybe Italy.

When instead it turned out to be a tour of Austria and the Czech Republic, I was slightly disappointed, if only because I hadn't a clue what lay in store for us.

Back in the mid-20th Century, history for Ontario students was primarily British, with a smattering of the North American (primarily U.S.) variety.

Sure, we did learn some modern history, and in those days every student knew about Hitler and the Second World War, and we were even starting to earn about the horrors of the Holocaust. But as for Central Europe, most of what we knew was Cold War-related.

Back then, everyone knew about the partition of Germany and Berlin, and the fear was that the Soviet Union would preside over the westward expansion of Communism, whether or not the tool became a nuclear conflagration.

Although I knew full well that Hungary was in the Eastern Bloc, I knew precious little about Austria, let alone the fact that Vienna was occupied and divided up along lines similar to those in Berlin, with Soviet, British, French and U.S. sectors remaining until May 1955 when the occupation ended and the city regained its status as the capital of modern Austria, a nation of nine provinces and a current population of slightly over 8 million.

Small wonder, then, that when we arrived in Vienna we discovered a truly fascinating metropolis with 1.6 million inhabitants and an ancient and modern history that few places in the world could equal.

One of my first impressions was that Vienna's public transit system puts those of any North American city to shame.

As one small example, at a time when the Toronto Transit Commission is looking at purchasing a new generation of low-level streetcars, Vienna already has a fleet of such trams that run so smoothly and quietly that we suddenly noticed them passing along in front of our Hotel Kavalier in the city's west end, a halfhour taxi ride from the city centre.

Similar comments can be applied to our other two overnight stops, Salsburg and Prague. Even Salsburg, with a population of barely 150,000, has a trolley bus system that realty makes one wonder what on earth was in the minds of the TTC management of the day when they ended trolley bus service in favour of smelly diesel buses.

As for Prague, its transit system was inferior to Vienna's but still far better than Toronto's. More about that later.

Although the high points of the 10-day whirlwind tour were musical — both listening to two excellent choirs and our own performances in or near Vienna, Salsburg and Prague — we also learned a lot from our knowledgeable and eloquent Austrian tour guides.

As examples, they told us that Austria's absorption into Hitler's Third Reich in 1938 was almost universally welcomed by a population that had looked enviously at Germany's economic progress while their own country remained mired in the Great Depression. As well, the guides confided that Austria's treatment of its Jewish population was far worse than Germany's in the 1930s, and that one consequence of the outbreak of the Cold War was an almost complete absence of action against Austrian Nazis in areas occupied by U.S. and British forces.

In Vienna, we learned much about the Hapsburg dynasty, which had its origins in the 10th Century and continued until the end of World War in 1918 with the founding of the Austrian Republic. A tour of Schonbrun castle (the Hapsburgs' summer palace) in what was once the Vienna Woods opened our eyes to mind-boggling opulence. And we were told that even that lavishness was eclipsed by the midcity winter palace, which we didn't have time to tour.

When one thinks of monasteries and monastic lives perhaps the first thought is of self-imposed poverty and an eschewing of things material. However, there was no semblance of either when we visited Melk Abbey, overlooking the Danube. The Benedictine abbey, one of the world's most famous monastic sites, was founded in 1089, but today's impressive Baroque structure, built between 1702 and 1736, can only be described as massive and opulent, its chapel acoustically perfect and its ornamentation priceless.

Although it's 20 years now since what's now the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) ridded itself of communism, the contrast between Austria's wealth and its neighbour's relative poverty is still striking, as is the absence of any border controls now that the Czech Republic is in the European Union, albeit without yet enjoying the euro currency.

As our buses whipped across the border I couldn't help but wonder whether we'll ever see anything similar between Canada and our opulent giant to the south, where now we face barriers akin to those the Czechs encountered in trying to cross over into the "Free World."