Back, obviously. I got back a week and a half ago. I've been busy, sorta. This is the calm before the storm. By next weekend I will hate this place because it will be hot and everyone will be cranky or still drunk and moving out. Lazy as May term is, I'll be happy to be done with this year. It will be a little bit like a bad dream. Next year looks good, frankly. If I don't die in Ethiopia next year will rock the rucksack. Speaking of which, there were bombings in Addis Ababa the other day and my father is still dragging his feet on the tix.
BAU here. I've been really tired recently, which I take as a good sign. I've been coming in every day around noon. I deposited a bunch of money today in order to finally pay of my credit card bill. Bonds mature. I always forget this, so it's a lovely surprised when I find I'm holding more money than I know. I have another grad review in about an hour.
I don't really feel like telling all the stories from Eastern Europe so I'll put random pictures up here and maybe toss a two-word explanation for each in after. I don't want any bitching about it. Shutterfly accidentally deleted about 2.5 hours worth of work the other day so I'm about done with it.
Here goes. I'll just do Vienna today.
This is the Hotel Deutschmeister. We stayed here in Vienna. The staff were flippant.
This...is a cathedral I don't know the name of. It was just a block from our hotel. We thought it was St. Stephensdome and kept trying to navigate our way around the city using it as a landmark. We became distressed when things made no sense. Then we took a tour down the Danube that left us at St. Stephensdome. As we walked around we kept remarking on how we'd never seen that side of the roof before and where did that park go? Turns out the maps didn't make sense for a reason. This one, in spite of its enormosity (yeah) was barely on the map at all.
This is mostly what Vienna looks like. Long, high-walled streets. It's lovely. I wouldn't mind living there for a time. I love the cafe culture. Here, yet more architecture and street shots.
Mom leaned into this one. Btw if you go to Vienna, don't bother looking for all those gardens on the map. "Garten" apparently means "park" to them. My poor mother went in search of so many gartens.
HUNTERT-WASSER HAUS!
So this is the entryway, this entire complex is low-income housing the Austrian government commissioned a local artist to design. As you can see the walkways undulate.
The lines demark each individual apartment. They're all different colors with varying siding. The skylights are ellipses and the floors are uneven and water runs in strange ways and everything about the interiors are innovative and amazing. I could go on for hours about this place but I'll save that rant for another time.
There are trees growing out of the roof.
People live in them so you can't enter but if I ever build a house I'm fashioning the interiors after this place.
Yup. Stuff. This whole thing has been pretty random, in case you didn't notice.
This is the inside of St. Stephensdome. Here's a better look:
All three of the major cathedrals in Austria have embalmed parts of the Hapsburgs. The crypts of this one has all of their internal organs in copper kettles. It's really very strange. That area was recently renovated but below that area, in the dank and bitter cold, are the true crypts...
This was actually the only picture that came out. A few centuries ago a plague hit the city and was presumed to be coming from the dead. So they dug up the graveyards and reinterred the bones in crypts beneath St. Stephensdome. They forced the prisoners to stack the bodies, hundreds of thousands of them, in careful rows and then sealed them off room by room. When they ran short on prisoners they started filling mass-grave pits. Walking through you can look down and see piles of bones many meters high. I wish I'd gotten a shot of the stacks of bones, 40 people high. There were a lot of interesting forays like this but alas I'm out of time. I have to run to a grad review now but feel free to check out the rest of the pics on www.sinenox.shutterfly.com, I'll organize them eventually.
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