Class Field Trip to Klagenfurt – Fuchs’ Apolalyspe Chapel

My class met at 8am on Saturday morning at the Meidling train station for a day-trip to Klagenfurt, 4 hours from Vienna, near the Italian border. Our main purpose was to visit the Apocalypse Chapel that took Ernst Fuchs and his assistants 20 years to complete.

If you remember from earlier posts, Professor Ernst Fuchs is the mentor and teacher of several of my teachers.  Three of them, including Laurence Caruana (our director), Kuba Ambrose, and Amanda Sage worked with him at the chapel. Unfortunately, Laurence wasn’t feeling well on Saturday, and so he stayed home with his son while his wife Florence (our administrator) came with us.  This was great as she had never seen the chapel, despite having heard so much about it for years.

The train ride there:

I love seeing new sights and am a morning person, so I was like a kid in a candy shop during the entire 4-hour trip. Excited!  The Austrian student beside me liked seeing my tourist’s perspective as she had grown bored with the scenery.  I was glued to the window the whole time (literally – if you stick the lens of your camera to the window, you’ll avoid having glare or reflections from inside the train in your pictures and the dirt won’t appear as much – you’re just limited in your angle of view).  The side I chose to sit on may not have had as dramatic views as the other side (more mountainous and bigger castles), but we had the sun versus the thick haze.  Still, a few times, I went running to the other side (when my neighbour was at the washroom) or simply turned around to grab a few shots.  My classmates lovingly teased me all day about my enthusiasm 🙂 and the nearly 600 hundred of shots I took -(I’m only sharing 150 of them here 🙂  ) not always caring about the results, just enjoying the play time. Editing them took most of the day on Sunday.  Enjoy – not bad from a fast-moving train with dirty windows.

Lunch:

We arrived in Klagenfurt at 12:21pm and couldn’t find a place to eat fresh trout from the lake  (we were off season and the locals didn’t seem to know about this specialty).  We ended up at Sukothai restaurant at 22 Domgasse.  Wow! My panang curried chicken was soooooo good and I had been soooo hungry, choosing not to eat on the train.

The Chapel:

We had a 2pm appointment in front of St. Egid church, so we rushed there after lunch – my snapping the occasional picture only to have to rush to catch up to the group.

The chapel is usually only open for tours at 11:30am, 3 days a week.  When organizing the trip, Florence had asked for us to have access to the chapel for 3 hours, but once there, we found out that we would only be given 1 hour.  We also found out that we weren’t allowed photos without written consent by Ernst Fuchs – something that would have been easy to arrange if we had known.  Florence tried to change the caretaker’s mind, but to no avail. Luckily, I was able to persuade him to allow 1 group shot inside the chapel – so bringing my heavy tripod was not a waste after all.  If you want to experience the chapel, however, you can read about it in this article and even better, take a 360 degree tour in this panorama gallery – just click on the directional arrows top left to walk around the chapel.

We looked around, asked questions, heard Laurence say a few things about it on the speaker phone, took a group shot, had a brief closing circle around the altar, and were out by 3pm.  I certainly got a visual appreciation for the work, the colours, the various styles – but didn’t really enter the space on any other level.  I’m sure others had different experiences – if you feel like sharing – please comment below.

To the Lake:

My classmates were keen on my suggestion to go hang out at lake Woerthersee. Most took the bus there while Martin and I walked the 4.5 km trail along the canal past lots of locals enjoying the summer weather.

I could imagine spending a few days here exploring the town and natural areas – especially their many hiking trails and boat ride around the 20 km lake. My soul needs water – finding the lake, even if just the tip of it, was top on my priority list.  For a couple of hours, therefore, we parked on a dock and basked in the sunshine until it set – which coincided with a sudden drop in temperature.

Train Ride Home:

We then headed back to town by bus, found stuff to eat and got on the 7:39pm train.   I did participate in a 21-questions animal game and an “exquisite corpse” drawing game (involves folding a paper in 3 and having 3 different people draw the head/torso/legs without looking at the other parts). Having been up since 4:30am, however, I slept most of the trip home while others mostly socialized.  I got home at midnight on the dot.

Overall, it was a great trip – a wonderful opportunity to get out of the city, to discover another corner of Austria, and to learn more about the lineage of visionary artists who have brought the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art to life.

P.S  I have written other posts on Ernst Fuchs as we visited Fuchs’ Rosary Paintings last week, attended his birthday party last month, and spent several hours visiting his villa/museum in October.  He is not in the greatest health, and so we don’t see him in our classroom very often, but he recently made recommendations on my “self-portrait” painting that were very helpful.