Sunday 23 October 2011

Viennese Wildlife

While in Vienna I noticed a couple of strange wildlife sculptures adorning the front of big imposing buildings.
The double-headed eagle is easy to explain, it's the symbol of the city. This specific example was on a Regierungsgebäude (Government Building) on Stubenring, which I photographed from the balcony of my hotel room. The gilt bee is a little harder to understand. It is on the Spar-Casse Bank on Graben.
23 October 2011 at 18:40 , Helen said...

According to

http://www.erstestiftung.org/inside-the-foundation/roots-and-history/the-bee/

the bee was the ‘heraldic animal’ of the savings banks in general.

23 October 2011 at 18:50 , Mark said...

Ah, that would make sense then. Shame my guidebook didn't actually mention why it was there!

23 October 2011 at 20:10 , Scriptor Senex said...

The bee was the symbol of thrift throughout Europe.

23 October 2011 at 20:42 , Ian said...

I love Vienna, and Sep/Oct is the best time to visit because of the vast and cheap availability of Sturm (Storm) which is apparently too explosive to be transported, but tastes absolutely delicious! If you get the chance I recommend trying it.

26 October 2011 at 17:42 , Mark said...

Damn, I missed out on trying Sturm. I did, however, have dinner at a vineyard, and consumed an awful lot of local white wine.

27 October 2011 at 05:10 , Scriptor Senex said...

I've known of exploding bottles while folk were doing home-brewed beer but I'd never heard of explodong wine before.

Post a Comment