Posted by Mark Silva at 6:20 am CDT
VIENNA — The foreign minister of Austria, Ursula Plassnik, is tall and, uh, stately.
(President Bush and Austrian President Heinz Fischer shake hands with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, left, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, right during a photo-op at Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria Wednesday, June 21, 2006. AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
In the magnificent Hofburg Palace, President Bush stood alongside Austrian President Heinz Fischer this morning, with the two presidents flanked by Plassnik and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “This is called thorns between two roses,” Bush said.As the leaders posed for ceremonial photographs, an Austrian radio reporter asked Bush about his impression of Vienna. Bush replied: “Beautiful city.”
“Satisfied?” Fischer asked the photographers.
“That’s a funny thing to ask the press,” Bush said with a smile. “They are never satisfied.”
I was quite satisfied with my walk around Vienna this morning, stopping on one narrow side-street to ponder the quiet house where Mozart composed The Marriage of Figaro.
Mozart started on Figaro in 1785 at the behest of Emperor Joseph II, commissioning an opera for Vienna.
But I’m whistling Dixie trying to recall any of the musical lines composed in that house as business beckons and I wander back toward the coccoon of the traveling press bubble. Inside the bubble, that’s where meetings like Bush’s appearance between the roses take place.
After some grips and grins, the leaders filed into an adjacent room of Hofburg Palace for today’s meetings, with U.S. and Austrian officials taking seats on opposite sides of a conference table. Bush was joined by Rice, U.S. Ambassador to Austria Susan McCraw, Press Secretary Tony Snow, National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, Communications Director Nicolle Wallace and Chief of Staff Josh Bolten.
On the Austrian team: Fischer, Plassnik and several ambassadors.
Asked how the meetings were going, Bush said, “Very well, and you can quote me on that.”
The palace originally was erected as an opera house for Emperor Joseph I in 1705.
The reporter assigned to pool coverage of this greeting reports that the ceremonial reception room for the Austrian president once served as the bed chamber for Maria Theresia. The room is wallpapered in red silk, with gold stucco on the ceilings and two life-sized paintings of Maria Theresia and Francis I.
The tall astronomical clock in the room had its numbers inverted so that 9 sits on the right side of the clock face, 3 on the left — the official government explanation suggests that this allowed Maria Theresia to see the time of day by gazing at a mirror without having to get out of bed.
We’re assembled in a holding room of the palace for a news conference that Bush will hold with European Union leaders this afternoon in a brilliant chandeliered and pillared hall of the palace where Beethoven is said to have delivered his Eighth Symphony.
Later today, Bush will visit the Vienna Boys’ Choir before embarking for Budapest.
