Laundromats and Schönberg

My thoughtful artist-landlord installed a washing machine in the apartment prior to our arrival. However, due to various complications I wasn’t able to use it until now, three weeks after moving in. I’ve been searching everywhere for a Waschsalon (laundromat), on the internet, in the streets, in the yellow pages; imploring people if they knew of one. Evidently even the good citizens of Vienna find it difficult to locate laundromats. Low and behold, on a stroll last night, in perfectly delicious cool weather, I decided not to return to my apartment after sampling the galleries in the inner city, but to walk right past it in a quest to discover what the opposite direction might turn up. (I’m usually headed toward the alte Stadt (the old inner city). Lo and behold, practically around the corner, a veritable army of washing machines, a dry cleaning operation, and an offer to do it all for you if you can’t be bothered to do it yourself. But the little home washing machine makes all manner of rough, gruff sounds, with the clothes magically emerging in a nearly dry state. So I asked myself, what would John Cage do? (My guess: his own).

In the same way, before locating it on the map, I unexpectedly encountered the Arnold Schönberg Center---one of the top ten places on my list. Lisztstraße (sorry, couldn't resist) intersects with my street, Traungasse. Out for a walk last week, I simply had to walk on this street named after Liszt, and suddenly there was the striking building, the Palais Fanto (housing the Schönberg Center), a disorienting reminder of New York's Flatiron Building. In her immensely engaging book, The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir, Marjorie Perloff writes about the Palais Fanto in Vienna, with gripping stories detailing its history---and her own, originating in Vienna and later in the U.S.