This was taken at the Votivkirche this afternoon, after which I met a colleague at the Naschmarkt where we sat outside (under heaters, granted) and drank wine, ate cheese, and caught up on six months or so of life. Really something at the end of February
Lovely word, isn’t it, “blustery”and so evocative of March and spring to come. 🙂
Quite something when you think I was skating on that river a week ago!
That was what it looked like yesterday, with the Viennese apparently vying for the gold medal for best snow creature. 😉
And this is what it looked like this afternoon already. The fate of snow in the big city …
I made it just in time. Now it is snowing so the ice quality will not be this good again this winter, but it was an amazing skate on the New Danube (rarer than on the Old Danube) today. What a city! 🙂
Years ago Vienna taught me why some people might want to wear fur coats west of Moscow, and I am being reminded now. The temperature hasn’t gone above freezing in the last week or more but yesterday, although the mercury rose a little, we were reminded how bone-chilling it can be here. The mercury has risen but so too has the wind and the humidity making the -7°C or so we had all weekend vastly preferable to the -4° we have now. It’s a very special Vienna kind of cold–and that’s from someone who grew up in New England and knows.
Just wanted to report that there was a sister march in Vienna. Apparently, about 2000 people showed up in spite of the temperature (about -7°C or approximately +20°F). We started out at Karlsplatz, looped around to Stadtpark. In the photo above, you can see that someone put a pussy hat on the gilded Johann Strauß statue there. 🙂
Am waiting to board the last plane to Vienna this evening and am interested in the information about Vienna they are showing on a screen–that there are more people buried in the main cemetery (2.5 m) than live in the city (1.8 m) and that there are over 300 balls a year. Fun to have another perspective!
Charles Dickens in his book “A Christmas Carol”described the weather when Scrooge wakes up after his encounters with the three Ghosts thus, “No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; golden sunlight, Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. O glorious, glorious! ”
We don’t often get days like this in Vienna, but today is such a day. 🙂 And it is a holiday. Double :-).
ecbinvienna 