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A memory (and some poetry) from quite a while ago

29 Jan
A very grainy photo from my first ever mobile phone

My Facebook memories just reminded me of an exchange with colleagues in January 2010 that gave me great pleasure.

First post
I had to work late yesterday and missed going skating. So this morning I went for a walk even though it was snowing pretty heavily.

This haiku is the result (in German first):
Viel Schnee ist heute
In Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark
Aber wenig Leut’

… which translates into English more or less like this:
Lots of snow today
In Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark
Very few people

Later
As I was waiting for the tram to make its way back into Vienna I sent it by text message to friends and colleagues. One of my colleagues challenged me to write a limerick and I came up with this (long tram ride!):

Eliza went out in the snow
She had nowhere else to go
She slipped on the ice
Said something not nice
And now when she goes she goes slow. 🙂

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Wiener Wasser (Vienna [tap] water)

13 Jan

I’ve written about it before, but it’s a topic that just keeps cropping up. The tap water in (most districts in) Vienna comes from the mountains and is wonderful, not only safe to drink but also delicious. (My Viennese father used to say with pride, “We flush our toilets with the water other people buy in supermarkets.”)

Even some of our closest neighbors, the Germans, who can certainly drink their own tap water without any worries, aren’t in on the secret, as this story from today’s Kurier shows. When Dirk Stermann, German TV personality and longtime resident of Vienna, met the parents of his then girlfriend at dinner in a restaurant, he ordered still mineral water. The girlfriend’s father, apparently an otherwise quiet sort of man, shouted, “We don’t drink that here!”

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Neue Donau this afternoon

19 Nov

With some interesting bird life I couldn’t get in the photo. Ducks and swans I’m used to but today I saw a goose and, from a distance, two birds who looked like cormorants. Exciting. 🙂

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Street Life in Vienna (a series of postcards)

8 Aug

I think it was on the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) site that I first saw a mention of a series of postcards showing everyday life on the streets of Vienna in 1905 / 1906. It is part of an exhibition at the Wien Museum (in one of their temporary quarters on Felderstraße) about postcards in general of Vienna.

What is special about this particular series? Postcards, of course, usually show us the important sights of a city — the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Tower Bridge in London, Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, and Stephansdom in Vienna, to name a very few. The black-and-white postcards in the series referred to are in the form of snapshots and show people, often engaged in manual labor, going about their everday business. As the article (link below) from the Wien Museum’s magazine tells us the subjects of the photos are people who are offering their wares or services (for example as porters) on the streets and in the squares of the city, are driving vehicles or pulling carts or riding on public transportation or bikes, taking care of horses, cleaning up messes, working in public gardens, cleaning lanterns, working on building sites, maintaining tram tracks, strolling, striding, standing, cowering, sitting, sleeping, getting into mischief — and taking photographs. (my translation of part of the article) They give a real, one could say unvarnished, sense of life in Vienna at that time, which is precious to me.

I’ll want to be sure to make it to the exhibition “Grossstadt im Kleinformat” (“Big City / Small Format”), on until 24 September 2023.

The article from the Wien Museum specifically on this series (in German and showing some of the images): https://magazin.wienmuseum.at/fotopostkarten-wiener-strassenleben

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The linden trees are at it again

12 Jun

In fact, they’ve been at it for the last 10 days or so, but I’ve been so busy trying to make my little dog comfortable that I haven’t thought to post.

A few mornings ago, though, he needed to go out at about 4:30. In that queer light of dawn, when it is still dark but you can start to see without streetlights, we headed to the nearest park. As we approached, the scent of the lindens and the songs of ecstatic birds washed over me and gave me joy.

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Vienna City Marathon 2023

23 Apr

Today was the 40th anniversary of the Vienna City Marathon, although not the 40th race. (In 2020 the marathon was inexplicably 😉 canceled.) I wish I had time to really write about it and soak it up as in other years, but I am surfing a very big wave of work at the moment and nursing a sick dog so will have to keep it short.

Highlights: two course records were broken — for the men and for Austrian women, the former very clearly by Samwel Mailu of Kenya, who said it was a really big moment in his career, the latter by one (1!) second.

Julia Mayer, first Austrian woman today, said she was only able to dig deeper on the last 200 meters and so break the record because the fans were so supportive. Andreas Vojta, first Austrian man, who ran a much slower race than he had planned, also mentioned how the crowds helped him keep going in a race that at the 23-kilometer mark he realized wasn’t going to get any more comfortable. :-/ Full marks for bravery, if you ask me.

The ORF did better than last year. They interviewed the two first women this year, not just the men.

And now, with regret, I have to turn you over to other sources for more information. The marathon organizers are on Twitter and report highlights in German and English: #ViennaCityMarathon And I am pretty you can find out more on sport.orf.at

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Votivkirche – some photos

21 Apr

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Votivkirche

19 Apr

I was just standing at Schottentor and realized that for the first time in many years (10? 15? More?) we can see both towers (spires?) of the Votiv Church. They’ve been encased in scaffolding and swathed in advertising while they were being cleaned, which, as you can tell, took a very long time. Beautiful!!! 😊

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The Volksgarten has just turned 200

2 Mar

I saw a story on the ORF website this morning that the Volksgarten in Vienna, famous, among other things, for its stunning rose garden, came into being 200 years ago yesterday. It was the first garden in Austria to be designed and created by an emperor specifically for the people. (The emperor at the time was Franz I, great-nephew of Empress Maria Theresia.)

For several years, I apartment sat for friends of my family’s. It was a 200m2 flat in a distinguished old building (took two days to clean those traditional double windows!) right behind the Parliament in Vienna. The Volksgarten was less than a five-minute walk away and I sat there often.

Two other vivid memories: riding past on the tram and seeing the Lippizaners grazing in the Volksgarten (the Hofburg caught fire in 1992 and the horses were led to safety in the park) and sitting on a bench in the rose garden not quite a year ago having gone to Josef-Meinrad-Platz to test my way out of quarantine. I got there only to find that the computers were down and no testing was taking place. It was the first time I had been out of the apartment in over a week, and it was wonderful.

More (in German): https://wien.orf.at/stories/3196759/

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Snow

22 Jan

We woke up to snow yesterday and it has been snowing off and on since then. Beautiful. 😊

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