EGU 2023

And so it’s back to EGU. I still don’t fancy the rather long train journey so it was a flight from Manchester – but why are there no direct weekend trains from York to Manchester any more – to Vienna. The Sunday flights seem to have stopped so I arrived on the Saturday giving a whole day for sight seeing and the opera.

Saturday night’s dinner was at Rado’s – with a good example of Vienesse quisine.

 

Pork ribs at Rado's - squint hard and you can see some vegetables!

Rado's restaurant

On Sunday I opted to visit Schloss Schönbrunn, a classic Habsburg summer residence – all formal gardens, fountains and grottos.

 

Schloss Schönbrunn

Terry Prachett would be proud of the obelisk fountain with the obelisk resting on the backs of four turtles, apparently to signify strength or durability – perhaps that is what inspired Great A’Tuin, though as I recall it was four elephants on its back.

 

The Gloriette was suitably glorious and the palm houses have a pleasing steam punk aesthetic.

 

The evening saw me back at my favourite Vienesse haunt for a performance of Lohengrin. No spoilers but in the first act the hero save the love interest, Elsa, from death and they immediately agree to marry; our hero just has one request, Elsa must promise never to ask him his real name…..

As ever it was a joy to be back - it really is one of my favourite buildings.

The "Iron Curtain" safety curtain art work

Lohengrin is, superficially which is as deep as I get, about a Grail knight saving an innocent so it was hard to see why the production featured the chorus as a bunch of lederhosen clad burghers rather than armour clad knights. It was also rather disconcerting that the main way you could tell that the guy who had been due to kill Elsa had been thwarted was that he spent the rest of the opera in a long white shirt minus lederhosen. Perhaps this had a deeper meaning!

 EGU then began on the Monday – posters are back though not as many as in previous years and the poster sessions happen during the day so, unlike in years past, you can get to the free post talk beer without having to resort to scrumming. I guess it’s more civilised.

 

Where is the beer scrum?

On Tuesday there was a nice ego boost hearing a climate scientist talk about using the palaeothermometer that I developed with Stuart Black and Emma Versteegh about 10 years ago. I also learnt that despite many years of research, biochar researchers still seem pretty uncertain how long any biochar added to soils actually lasts.

There were some good educational games on show on Wednesday – Cranky Uncle was the slickest looking, teaching people about climate denial techniques, not to use but to recognise. Then it was back to the opera – I wasn’t bowled over by Salome the last time I watched it but tonight’s performance was fantastic. Many curtain calls. Brilliant music with a large orchestra, the percussion looked like they could barely fit in their alcove at times, and a really good production with interesting use of one stage cameras projecting onto a back wall for close ups of the opera singers so you could see them acting as well.

 

A busy night for the horns in Salome

More talks on Thursday and Friday together with more Austrian bread – carrot bread seems like a good way of getting more vegetables into your diet, though it doesn’t look great in photos.

 

Carrot bread - better than it looks!

As ever, the scene of exhibitors packing up on the morning of the last day has a tinge of melancholy to it.

 

Time to go home - at least for the exhibitors

The final opera of the trip was Carmen. A sausage with bits of cheese in it was the pre-opera dinner tonight, excellent as always. 

More great Viennese food

Carmen was another good production with relatively modern day smugglers using a fleet of Mercedes for transporting their goods. The soldier running circuits in his underpants at the start was understandable given the army context but the rationale for the naked ballet dancing before the start of Act 3 was less clear – some sort of idyllic rural scene or the freedom of being a smuggler rather than a soldier?

 

This view always reminds me of.....

On Saturday it was a quick trip home – again the joys of the airport train connecting to the metro had me at the airport in less than an hour from central Vienna. There was almost an Austrian style travel experience in the UK. As I only had hand baggage I just walked through the airport and caught a train almost immediately into Manchester. Then of course I had to travel across Manchester due to the lack of trains to York at the weekend and there were further delays due to tunnel inspections. Welcome home! Perhaps I’ll be back next year, I’ll need to look at the opera programme.