Heuriger? I hardly even [falls down a flight of stairs, explodes]

So, one of the many quirky things about Vienna is that it's surrounded by hills. On those hills are vineyards producing (exclusively, I believe) white wine. And funny story - the same emperor who declared a Schauspielfreiheit permitting the construction of commercial theatres (and hence my dissertation topic) shortly thereafter also passed a law saying that residents of Vienna who made their own wine and foods could sell them out of their home. Thus began the tradition of the Heuriger (plural is Heurigen), essentially wine gardens/taverns in the hills surrounding Vienna selling the previous year's vintage and giving the Viennese a little rustic break from the city below.

 I went to one. It was amazing. To wit:

As is becoming the formula, full story and more photos after the jump!


The deal is: you make your way out to these spots, you collect your food - usually rustic dishes, sold by weight - at a self-service buffet, and make your way out to the garden, where servers take your order for wine. I had been meaning to get out to one of these for most of this trip but hadn't gotten around to it. Last night, realizing that rain was forecast for the rest of my time in Vienna, I decided to get out to one. I opted for Weinbau Zawodsky, a Heuriger recommended by Spotted By Locals, a site I've been using with some success throughout this trip. It turned out to be a great pick; these places range from super-touristy, kitschy spots with oompah bands and dirndl-clad waitresses to family-run neighborhood spots. This was emphatically the latter.

A twenty-minute walk from the nearest tram stop, my stroll up the hill passed a church and a few fields of grape vines before I got to the house itself. Some politely-bumbling conversation ensued at the buffet, and with a nice spread of cold cuts, cheeses, bread, stuffed grape leaves, and an array of vegetable salads (including the tastiest asparagus dish I've had this rather-asparagus-happy month, thanks seasonal cuisine) I made my way up to the garden. Kids were running around the vineyards playing some made-up Calvinball-esque game. Four older men were playing Whist. A few scattered couples were there on dates. But on a Monday night, that was it. A quiet crowd.

The proprietor eventually wandered over to my picnic table and took my order - a viertel (like an Italian quartino, a quarter-liter) of the house white wine. Which, a few minutes later, was brought to the table by the six-to-eight-year-old kids who had been running amok in the vines just a few minutes earlier. Oh, this place made me happy.

It was a perfect and leisurely end to the day. I'd been feeling a bit of Vienna's stiffness after weekends in Prague and Budapest (post on the latter to come next week after a second visit), and feeling a bit of emotional fray nearly a month into this trip. This evening was a perfect tonic for me - surrounded by nature, within view of the city below, in a quietly convivial atmosphere full of affection and relaxation.

Photos below. Ah, swellness.

The walk up to the Heuriger

A WORKING FARM

THE PLACE WHERE THE GRAPES COME FROM. THE PLACE FROM WHENCE THE GRAPES COME??

My seat, under this lovely canopy.

My attempt to sneakily photograph the old men playing whist failed to capture how much one of them looked like Mandy Patinkin's laid-back, chilled-out brother. HE WAS MY FAVORITE.

The sky (a few afters after some heavy rainfall) was ridiculous and gorgeous all night.

Loveliness on the way out after dinner.

Same church on the walk back down. Tried to capture the glow of the clock face.

Selfie

I'm preparing to leave Budapest tomorrow (I feel like I could spend weeks here and still not quite have a handle on this fantastic city); no full post today - that'll be early this week or next, depending on a few factors - but instead, a perfect little poem sent on to me by my friend Kate J in a conversation we had about selfie sticks. (The gist of the conversation: I think most of the arguments against selfie sticks are silly and potentially sexist, but I do miss those fleeting moments of connection with strangers who ask you to take their picture. I've had it happen a few times on this trip and it has been lovely.)

Anyhow, Kate sent along this, which is wonderful. Click through! There might be more poems in the weeks to come, as I have friends who are KILLER POETRYFINDERS. Who knows what the future holds!

"Selfie," Frieda Hughes

You want to fix yourself into that event

With an image of the volcano, or street killing,

Or house fire, or fornicating bullfrogs,

Or the centaur dancing, or the unicorn

Piercing balloons over a pond with a fountain

Shaped like an oak tree from the undiscovered torts

That have scattered through office blocks and suburban homes,

And which may be uncovered one day

And be ripped from the sculpted foliage, becoming fact,

Causing this accumulation of lies to fall like leaves

Into the water below—and the unicorn to leap

Into fiction while you

Will be fixed in time to an image of crime,

Or joy, or wonder, or a unicorn,

As a commitment for life on the Internet

Repeated, retweeted,

But forever with your back to it.

A few notes on ME!

Heading to Budapest later this afternoon (got any tips? Send 'em my way! I feel oddly certain that I'm going to love it best of this first month's cities) but a quick post before I roll out for the weekend. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm learning things About Me as well as About Vienna, and this is my first attempt to articulate a few of 'em. It's super navel-gazey and probably of interest only to myself! So I'm gonna start with a photo from earlier this week on a gray, rainy day in Vienna, and then after the jump we'll get into the Me Me Me stuff.

Just outside the Albertina on a dreary morning. Still pretty atmospheric and impressive!

Given the impetus for this trip, I obviously was going to be in a meditative, self-contemplating place. I’m kind of rebuilding myself, and between the new life circumstances and the new surroundings, well, there’s a lot to reconsider! Travel is good for that, and here are my early thoughts, sure to change as I start exploring more wide-ranging cultural environments.

1. I love the wander. I sort of knew this before – I’m not the biggest museum-hound, so while I’ll almost always check out a city’s symphony/opera/theatre/jazz scene by night, by day I am more prone to poke into bookshops, wander down alleys and seek out parks and public spaces. I’ve been accused (I’d say one-quarter affectionately) for only caring about where I eat when I’m on vacation, but really it’s much more the case that I like exploring cities to see how neighborhoods fit together, to get a feel for their tempi and dynamics, and to sort of test out what it might feel like to live in Portland, Prague, London, wherever.
2. I like to listen more than I like to talk. Even when I’m meeting up with friends on the road, or running into new acquaintances (sweet Ernst! swell Moe!) I’m almost always going to be driving the conversation by asking questions rather than telling my own stories. This goes beyond conversation, actually – I’m not philosophically opposed to selfies, but I don’t have the urge myself, nor is my instinct (usually) to insert myself into the frame when I see something weird or interesting. I don’t super need a photo of me holding up the Tower of Pisa. I want to capture what I see.
3. I’m really comfortable with quiet. I’ve thoroughly loved being mostly without the walking-around tunes and podcasts that underscored my last few years in Boston. It was a weird adjustment but I feel more connected to my surroundings and I find my brain likes the room to romp around like a dog at an off-leash park. (My brain is a Frenchie who thinks he is bigger than he is. He’s a real tough guy yes he issss.)
4. I love being active in the world. I hate gyms, although I’ve grown fond of my stationary bike as part of my morning routines back in the States. (It kept me sane through the ugly darkness of the first third of the year.) But nothing makes me happier than spending a full day on my feet, climbing the hills of Prague or riding a bike around the Ringstraße back in Vienna. The same’s true when I’m lucky enough to get to a lake – I love rowing, hiking, the whole nine yards. If there’s a sense of motion and exploration, I dig it! If it’s just me in a box trying to make myself better… what could be more booooring
5.  Elitism makes me an obnoxious crank. I love public spaces, public sculpture, architecture, history, places of worship, public buildings… and there are few things that actively disinterest me more than the interiors of e.g. Versailles or Schönbrunn. The concept of touring rooms decked out in opulent displays of wealth, that virtually nobody saw or used in the nineteenth century, rankles me for some weird reason. (I’ve also started to find that I feel this way about food – not that I’m averse to the high-art experiments of an Alinea, but on the road I would infinitely rather find a neighborhood café, würstelstand or food truck than follow the Michelin trail.)  Schönbrunn gets a half-pass, as the grounds have a long legacy of being open and free to the citizenry of Vienna (even if this was largely a “bread and circuses” maneuver). If tourist sights can teach us something about how life was lived by the many, I’m really into it. If it teaches us how a handful of wealthy or noble people lived… hard pass.
6. I am a deeply social creature. I actually learned this the hard way during comps year, finding myself in a bit of a depression as I convinced myself that I had to focus on my studies to the detriment of my friendships and relationships, but this trip has reinforced it in a more positive light. It's incredibly important to me to keep my sense of connection to people back home, whether through social media (its one and only good use, I think, is for long-distance friendshipping), email, postcards, skype calls... Particularly as my non-hostelling style of solo travel doesn't put me in contact with a TON of people, this becomes very important! (Conversely, when I do meet people like Ernst or Moe, it automatically becomes a week-highlight.)
7. I am best when off my computer and in the world. Touched on this earlier, but was reminded earlier this week: because my computer is a powerful link back to friends, it's tempting to spend too much time on it during these precious few months of exploration. When I remember to shut it down and get out into the world, I'm all the better for it! SPEAKING OF WHICH, GOODBYE FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE

A few notes on Viennese culture

After a few weeks here in Vienna, there have been some interesting details that stick with me. Bearing in mind that Generalization Is Problematic and #NotAllViennese, here's a few of 'em:

1. POCKETS! They have 'em here, but they are rarely used. Even when it's cold out, if you've got your hands in your pockets, you're the weirdo standout American and everybody is looking at you (ok not true but it's oddly Not Done).
2. TABLE MANNERS! As with everywhere in Europe, you keep your hands above the table and your elbows off. Also common over here: keeping utensils in each hand (usually fork-left, knife-right) rather than switching back and forth. Challenging for a uni-dextrous person like myself. But the real kicker for me is that in the past three weeks, it's become apparent that utensils do not leave your hand. Unless you're grabbing beer/wine, you keep your utensils poised throughout the meal like a hungry cartoon wolf. Bonus note: it is weird to try to follow local custom while eating pizza, sawing away at crust pieces while every fiber in your being is shouting "It's finger food now! Why aren't we using our haaaands!" Because we're trying not to look like a monster, dummy.
3. SMOKING! Generally true in Central/Eastern Europe, but while most of Viennese culture follows a more Germanic/Western Europe model, their smoking culture has not eased up. It's surprising that after only eight years of Chicago's own indoor smoking bans, this in particular has registered as such a huge culture shock, but man, No-Smoking sections of cafes are pretty functionally meaningless!
4. CONSERVATIVISM! Not really politically - while Austria barely defeated a scarily far-right nationalist in the Presidential election this week, Vienna follows the nation's model in which urban/College-educated voters skewed left and rural/less-educated voters went for the right-winger. But in general there's a formality to most interactions that takes a bit of getting used to.
5. CELL PHONES! They basically don't use them! Particularly coming from Boston, where the overwhelming youth culture means almost everybody is on their phone all the time, it was jarring to notice how few people ever take theirs out in public unless they're taking a call. Not only that, but almost nobody puts on headphones when they're out and about. It's like they enjoy living in a world-class city and don't need to constantly escape to shallow electronic happiness-simulators? WEIRD. I have started to follow their lead and reluctantly admit that it's refreshing and good, though I expect to abandon this behavior as soon as I'm back in Dumb Ol' America.
6. RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE! Okay, this one actually has an odd relevance to my work here, as I've lost a handful of research days to liturgical holidays! Whit Monday is more commonly taken off as a holiday throughout Europe, but Corpus Christi is also a public holiday here. And when I say public holiday, I don't mean some Columbus Day "some places are closed but who knows beyond the post office and some banks," I mean virtually every shop and restaurant in the city closes down. Grocery stores, the whole nine yards. Some cafes do stay open (ditching their cheap daily menus since they know they're the only game in town) but by and large, pack yourself a picnic and get out for a hike or you'll be wandering an oddly empty city. This is kind of cool, lost-research-days aside, but it is an odd thing, and almost certainly a legacy of the über-Catholic background of the Austrian empire back in the day.

I have also been noticing things about myself (besides "I'm good at making lists that get all judgy about the Austrians but what about MY weird tics, huh, smart guy") but that's a post for another day. (Possibly tomorrow.) (Since everything will be closed for Corpus Christi.) [Runs out to stock up on pastries and sausages]

Pra-HA!

This weekend's getaway from Vienna (and ugh, who wouldn't want to get away from Vienna) was Prague. I took an impulsive, almost-literally last-minute-decision trip up a day early so that I could surprise my dad at a concert he was playing with his university’s symphonic band and choir. It was incredibly well-worth it. I got to listen to some fine singing and playing, and afterwards we wandered a bit of Prague’s gritty eighth district looking for late-night food and catching up on our mutual travels. Mostly it was just incredibly worth it to see how delighted and surprised he was to find me in the audience. Gosh I like my dad.

I promptly got incrediblysick – this weeks-old cough giving way to a full-blown cold – but was largely undeterred from exploring the city. And that’s what I loved about Prague – it was a perfect city to explore on foot, wandering through parks and side streets and enjoying the quiet bits tucked away from the tourist frenzy of Wenceslas Square, the Charles Bridge, Old Town Square and so forth. (I did visit those spots, but at 6:30 AM they are delightfully quiet and atmospheric rather than swarming with visitors and vendors.)

Anyhow, here’s a sliver of the pile of photographs I took, and another “maybe videos are a way to communicate my experiences?” attempt. This one’s score is pulled from dad’s concert – my one nod to that impulsively delightful night, since I completely forgot to take pictures of the concert or the two of us. (As I similarly did not get pictures of myself with an old friend from high school who now works in Prague - a really enjoyable evening of catching up after an ungodly number of years.) More written thoughts in future posts, as I am beginning to Discover Things About Myself And The Places I Am, but for now let's just lookit the purty pictures. (I may eventually post more in albums elsewhere but we'll worry about that one later.) Click below to seeeeeee...

Prague has so many excellent horse sculptures. This one was just sitting around on my walk to Vinohrady!

Again, just a random street in a random neighborhood headed from my cheapo hotel room to my cheapo AirBnB. Colors are nice even (especially?) on cloudy days!

Astronomical clock! Ol' Pappy Death hangin' out there just making sure we are all appropriately aware that all is as dust, happy sightseeing everybody!

I know nothing about this carving (although icons like this used to take the place of house numbers until recent times) but I'm pretty sure if you put a coin in that fish's mouth the fella will sing you a tune!

Rarrr (Prague Edition)

Foxy ladies on every corner in Prague, although some of them are KIND OF UNSEEMLY.

Prague is also full of these little parks scattered throughout the city (along with a few big ones). It's a city built for walkers and you are constantly near some trees and greenery, and basically that's all I want out of life I think?

Stumbled into a nature preserve (with a greenhouse that I did not visit) between the New Town and Vinohrady. This was such a blissed-out peaceful spot.

Speaking of blissed-out peaceful spots, KFC is huge in Prague! That may have to do with the fact that, as my friend put it, Czech cuisine is "basically like Thanksgiving dinner every night," so maybe there's some associative taste at work there. Still: weird and unnecessary!

The show I intended to see at Laterna Magika! They rescheduled (I assume still working on it) and instead I saw their 1970s warhorse "Wonderful Circus," which was bizarre. Very clearly groundbreaking in its time (constantly mixing projection and live performance), it read as a super dated period piece for tourists. Not a bad time, but boy would I like to see one of their newer pieces...

An attempted panorama from the castle just a little before sunset.

A slightly more defensive view of the city from - I believe the technical term is "them little arrow-shootin' slotty-holes in the wall of the castle."

Tiny part of one of the twenty massive canvases in Alfons Mucha's Slav Epic. This face fascinatingly recurs through his depiction of Slavic history - not in every canvas, but enough that it feels like a motif. The collection as a whole is pretty stunning - the tryptic depicting Jan Hus in particular is remarkable, and there's a mystical canvas ("The Holy Mount Athos") that strangely felt like finding the template for a whole subgenre of comic art - shafts of light, otherworldly shades of green, windswept hair, etc. It's a pretty groovy project, guys!

ALSO GROOVY: MORE PARKS! This one (Stromovka, north of the river) is a sprawling blend of trails, trees, ponds, playgrounds and food spots. It was slightly anti-charmed by the presence of a ton of bulldozers in the midst of some Sunday re-landscaping, but there were still plenty of pockets of loveliness. It was a magnificent way to spend my last afternoon in Prague

My final meal in Prague, meanwhile, came at Lokal, just outside the park. Incredibly friendly waitstaff and delicious food - their tripe soup was one of the best things I've eaten all trip, rich and with none of the textural grossness that tripe soup can have. High-quality pivovar rounded out a great meal, even if I made the mistake of ordering the house "specialty" of "fried cheese with tartar sauce." You might think, as I did, that its presence among other entrees would imply additional ingredients, but NOPE. Ah well - it was literally the one not-great thing I ate in Prague (a roasted duck leg in Vinohradsky Pivovar and a burger dinner at Dish being the other significant highlights), so I'll take it.

In The World

Sometimes it's a bit tricky trying to balance the competing impulses of "You're abroad! EXPLORE!" and "You're abroad to work your dissertation! DON'T LOSE TIME!" I'm pretty fortunate, though, that all my archives are within easy walking distance of each other. What this means is, come lunchtime, when many of them close, I have a good deal of down time to poke around the inner city of Vienna.

Today I grabbed lunch at Soho Kantine, which is one of the swellest little tucked-away spots in the downtown area. A favorite of workers near the Austrian National Library (and the numerous museums surrounding it), the setup is simple: there's a menu outside listing that day's two dishes (typically one vegetarian, one not). You go to the bar, order your dish and a drink, get a token (mine was a Minnie Mouse keychain) and bring it to the kitchen where they dish you up.  You find an open spot at one of the tables, dish your own silverware, and tuck in. It is a cool, cool spot, and does very encouragingly brisk business. (Oh, and lunch is 6 Euro for two courses. Ridiculously swell.)

Silverware hiding nooks

An odd British-American iconography splashed all over the place. I like it.

The Kitchen! And... Queen Elizabeth is a monkey? And a spider chandelier look Vienna is confusing and cool at the same time.

There's an outdoor area too, if you're inclined. Pretty cute IF YOU ARE A SMOKER.

Awww THE CUTEST

MURDERSTICK ALLEY

It's also quick, so I grabbed a scoop of ice cream from Eis Greissler (one of the better ice cream shops in town - I went with hazelnuss, CAN YOU GUESS WHAT THAT IS) and meandered. It is not bad having these surroundings on a lunch break.

Thought this guy was gutting a fish, but now I think he's cutting cloth. Could I have read the plaque? NO TIME I HAD TO GET ICE CREAM

The mall. It is nicer than the malls I remember from my youth.

Anyhow, that was the midday break. Now I'm settled into the Theater Museum library, tapping away at another round of research. Hooray for birds-and-stones on this trip!

Sachertorte and the neighborhood cafe

This afternoon, having received some good word from the National Libraries too late to be able to visit them before they closed, I decided to hunker down and go over my list of requests and try to organize my thinking on the next two weeks of dissertation research. It was time well spent (found a lot of already-digitized material and confirmed the high-priority items I'll have to have scanned over the coming days), but it also gave me a chance to relax in a Viennese cafe (Cafe Goldegg, to be precise).

The saying is that the coffeehouse/cafe is the Viennese living room, and that's kind of what I found. Lots of people ordering a cup of coffee, maybe a pastry (or as the evening kicked in, maybe a cheap daily-menu meal and a beer) and chatting, reading the newspapers, or (like me) getting work done on their laptop. Though we laptop-workers are by far the minority, and frankly I doubt I'll do this again.

It also gave me a chance to try the obligatory sachertorte, the famous cake o' Vienna. If golf is a good walk spoiled, sachertorte might be thought of as a good chocolate cake spoiled. Specifically: it's chocolate cake with a thin layer of apricot jam. Because, as the old saying goes: "Who wants chocolate when you could have chocolate with apricots for some reason?" But because Chancellor Metternich liked it (ALMOST as much as he loved the police state and a vast network of domestic spies and dramatic censorship wait come back I'm gonna talk more about cakes) it was here to stay. The word on the street is that sachertorte really needs a heaping pile o' whipped cream (or as the Viennese charmingly call it, "Schlagobers," oof why).

What I'll say is: this was pretty damn tasty, although I didn't really love the apricot jam, which I guess means I don't really like sachertorte. But I loved Cafe Goldegg, so I'll most likely be back on odd afternoons and mornings to have a cup of coffee and try to translate the local papers. And I'll probably post about more cafes, because maybe it was inevitable that this blog would deteriorate into Things I Ate Abroad.

UPDATE: Immediately after I hit "post" on this, two Austrian men arrived with their own pool cues and started playing billiards. Vienna is magic, don't believe me when I try to convince you otherwise.

Fahrräder sind RAD, dude

Vienna is a beautiful cycling city. Beautiful enough that I have a spare moment at lunch to post about it, because it's such a quick system to zip around! I've mentioned this elsewhere, but they have a Citybikes program similar to the Hub in Boston and Divvy in Chicago. Difference being, it's cheap. As in, one euro to register, and the first hour free on every subsequent ride. So, in essence, my non-rainy-day mode of transit for this trip is a bike that cost me 1 Eur for about four weeks. Not. Too. Shabby.

What really makes it worthwhile, though, is the fact that the city's bike infrastructure is superb. Bike lanes are plentiful, usually separated from traffic, and sometimes even from pedestrians. Lanes are demarcated, and intersections usually are clearly marked so you never have to wonder where you're headed next. Well, almost never. If you're a semi-clueless tourist/researcher, you miiiiight accidentally go the wrong way on the Ringstraße and take a full loop around Vienna rather than heading the right way. But even then, you're adding about 15 scenic minutes to your trip: NOT SHABBY.

Note, too, the smooth and clean asphalt. Yep: they street-clean the bike/walking paths, and nearly every inch of biking routes in Vienna is better-maintained than almost every inch of pavement of any kind in Chicago (we won't even begin to bring Boston into it). Hooray for infrastructure investments!

Anyhow. I do love the transit here - it's quiet, fast, efficient and timely - but cycling through the tree-covered bike paths that lace through the city has got me very happy to be on two wheels for most of my stay. Here's hoping I find more of the same as the summer rolls along!

Archives

Lest we all think I'm only here for fun/recuperation... It occurs to me that I never posted about the (comparatively dull) news that I've visited my first archives in Vienna! Namely, the manuscript collection of the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (formerly the Stadt-und-Landesbibliothek) and the Musiksammlung (Music collection) of the same institution. Both trips were smooth and encouraging - which is good news, as these were the most laid-back archives I'll be dealing with, allowing a fair number of requests at a time and providing a generous photography/duplication policy.

This week I'm making my first visits to the Nationalbibliothek's collections (the Theatre Museum library, the music collection, and the manuscripts and rare books collections) as well as the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, all of which are a bit thornier than the Wienbibliothek, but I think - I hope - manageably so. The hope is that by the end of this week I'll know how much I'll be able to track down on this trip, and make plans for how to request scans/photographs from back in Boston of anything I either can't get ahold of this trip, or discover subsequent to my departure.

Basically, I think by the end of this week I'll have a vague sense of what the future looks like, and I think that's... dare I say... NEAT??

Here's a picture I took the other day, when I did not want to leave the house (because sick and sad) but I did. I'm awful glad I did, too - Vienna is nicely teaching me that it's important to be in the world!

Semicolons: an overshare

This post might be an overshare, but what the hey. Full story after the jump, so's you can skip it if you're not feeling it…

Wochenende

It's crazy to think that it's not yet been a week since I flew over here - but it also feels weird that it's already the weekend. With my archives closed, the sun making a surprise appearance (it was slated to rain all day), and my cold seemingly abating, I decided to strike out into the world. Here are some photos and a video about it! Neat!

The grounds of Schloss Belvedere, the summer palace of Prince Eugen. AKA Wacky Tree Towne

That's the palace in the background! Lotta babies crawling all over the walls here.

If there's one thing Vienna is obsessed with, it is FOUNTAINS. Lots of 'em, and they are all pretty stunning.

Each of these kids represents a month of the year! October (middle) is stomping grapes! November is blaring away on a trumpet cos... November is National trumpet-blaring month in Vienna? OK WHATEVER

"Lookit me, now I'M the Sun King!" - Guy on right.

Ahhh, the famous penguins of Vienna! (This is the Stadtpark, a beautiful green space just outside the Ringstraße. Lots of grass-lounging going on today.)

Franz Lehar! According to a production of The Merry Widow I just saw, he was basically responsible for World War One! Okay, that was a pretty terrible production and actually it's a lovely show! Don't do terrible productions of The Merry Widow that blame it for WWI, you guys!

Newspapers at Cafe Pruckerl. More cafe photos to come as the month goes along, because cafes in Vienna are indeed as amazing as you have been told they are.

The Prater! For most Viennese, they mean the park when they say the Prater, not the (kind of amazing) garish amusement park. We'll get to THAT one LATER.

Cool wall...um... thing? Not a mosaic. Not a fresco/painting. Just some cool stuff on a wall that you can only see if you wander randomly behind a building that looks insignificant in the Prater.

This is the ferris wheel from which Orson Welles said he'd pay Joseph Cotton $20,000 to murder me in The Third Man. At least that is my recollection of the scene. It is SCARY to go here now. He called me an ant!

Not pictured: The extremely bored men working the shooting gallery immediately beneath this photo.

NO TRADEMARKED LIKENESSES HERE, THIS IS JUST A GENERIC FAIRY TALE TEACUP RIDE, WE'VE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF THIS - HOW YOU SAY? WALTER DIBNY?

Spittin' clowns at the Prater

Today's other realization: Vienna is a fantastic biking city. Great network of separated bike lanes, often color-coded, usually with their own stoplights, all very well observed (except for clueless tourists, including me once in a while). It's fast, and with the $1-euro registration, free-for-the-first-hour-every-time bike rental system they have in place, it's basically all I'm using from now until the next rainy day. Hooray for VIENNA!