Heat engulfs the city of Vienna.
Ozone comes with the heat and both drives you crazy, if you stay in the city proper. Most people go swimming, or flee to the contry side, or hide themselves in air conditioned flats (or cars).
As far as I'm concerned, I enjoy riding my bike on such days, the national park of the Danube swamplands being one of my preferred destinations. Part of it, the so-called Lobau, lies within the city limits of Vienna itself.
But not today. Today, I've got a flat tyre on my bike. Well, no big deal I thought, just go and repair it - or even better, in this heat, don't bother and buy a new one. You know what, I soon learned that I've got a flat tyre on my car, too. So now I'm sitting in my flat (no air conditioning, unfortunately), demoralised to the point that I'm unable to do something about it.
This is how this blog got started in the first place. Confined to my own four walls on a hot summer day I was unable to do anything else than create this blog which may grow like weeds in the near future.
So, if you enjoy this, good for you. If you don't, blame it on two flat tyres, will you? Or, more properly, on the greenhouse effect responsible for the increasingly hot summers which kill any initiative to move at all beyond thirty-five degrees centigrade or, alternatively, ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit which is about exactly the same in American money.
As for today's picture, it was taken in the Lobau some weeks ago when it was almost as hot as today. Probably these swamplands some day will be more like a dry steppe; they certainly almost look like one already.
