You never really know what's behind the door of butter-colour and dull houses in downtown Vienna #1
With its bright and spotless streets, busy cultural life and environmentally-friendly attitude, Vienna is the portal to Western Europe and progressive values for most Hungarians. However, when it comes to architecture the capital city fails to win hands down: after 2 hours of walking one can get the impression that the Viennese streets actually repeat themselves. Even though the houses are well-maintained, they lack of creativity and singularity.
Except if you go inside them. That's the point when things turn out to be interesting.
During my last trip to the "City of Dreams" - just a slight reference to its renowned inhabitant, Sigmund Freud - I managed to sneak into some of them.
I shot this photo from the stairway. Normally we would call it first floor, but the fin-de-siécle Bürgerschaft would be dismayed to hear that and stick to the term "mezzanin". Indeed, if I had shot a better photo, one could see that the inscription of the table reads that word. And that's a common Viennese phenomenon which is rooted in the everyday lives of citizens.
We just need to time-travel to the very beginning of the 20th century when there were strong restrictions imposed on how you build a house. According to the law, entrepreneurs were permitted to construct buildings with a maximum height of 25 meters and a maximum number of 4 storeys.
And it was high time Viennese people showing their wit and deep understanding of the bureaucracy. Although they placed a great emphasis on keeping the height parameters, still they found one loophole. As they would be only charged for building one more level (Stieg), they called the actual first etage "Mezzanin" ("Half storey" from the Latin mezzo 'middle'), so that the counting of the "real" floors started above it. Only by altering a name many people hasmd managed to avoid taxes.
Actually, I like the residents of Vienesse dull houses.
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