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!