Vienna: City of Art and Archtecture

Vienna is the answer to the question: "What would happen if Rome and Paris had a baby and it was raised by a disciplined German nanny?"

After spending some 'quality time with Nathan, Ka, and Livia, I went out to explore the city. Wow!!! Paris does not have shit on Vienna! This might be the most ornate place I have been to yet! I do not think that words could give an accurate account of the city and its art/architecture. So there are an extreme amount of photos attached to this post. I basically just walked a bit down the street from Nathan & Ka's place. To give you an idea, you can't walk thirty meters in Vienna without encountering a Garden, a statue, a fountain, or an ornately beautiful building with freezes, gargoyles, statues on the roofs etc. This little expedition took me to the Rathaus (federal building), the Parliament building, and the area around the university of Vienna.

One note about the Viennese: They are not German! However they do show a few Teutonic characteristics. One of these is the complete following of social constructions such as traffic laws. It is very common to see crowds of Viennese standing at crosswalk, with no cars in sight from any direction. They will wait like this until the light indicates they can go! I also did not see a single jaywalker in the entire time I was here. This was quite refreshing. In Oman, people wander across the streets, at any time, any place, with little or no rhyme or reason. It was nice to see something like pedestrian traffic carried out like the internal mechanisms of a fine Swiss-watch. Quite a departure from the chaotic game of 'pedestrian Frogger' that takes place in most places of the middle east (Ok, that was actually a LeRouxism).

In the evening, I want to a poetry reading at a Cafe called Cafe Kafka (I know right, awesome name). That was pretty cool. I however, was a bad little beatnik, because I kept falling asleep. This had nothing to do with the poets or the poetry, I was just worn out from travel. After the reading, we walked home through the red-light district of Vienna (interesting)! Tomorrow is another day!