water closet

mosquitos

You can't see them, but rest assured they're there!

You will always find the fiercest mosquitos in swamplands like this one here; I dared to stop for a few minutes to take some photos, and this picture plus a few stings which still hurt were the result.

the smallest ferris wheal of prater

Oh very well, it might not be the smallest one. But surely it is a small one.

Season's over in Vienna Prater of course. But like that, with almost no people at all walking the empty streets, Prater is very much worth a visit.

(Well, I should note that there was one place where even on this day - zero degrees Celsius, stiff northerly winds - quite some tourists frequented the famous fun fair: which was the Big Ferris Wheel place - Wiener Riesenrad - even though that one was closed too. Of course every tourist in his right mind should at least take one photo of Wiener Riesenrad; it would be scandalous not to do so, no matter what the weather is like.)

maple leaf

Today is Austria's National Holiday (Nationalfeiertag) but this here is of course the national symbol of Canada.

Make of that what you want. ;-)

ferris wheel of vienna

Riesenrad in German.

It isn't the biggest one, nor is it the oldest one, nor the most popular one in the world. There's only one thing which makes the Riesenrad special, and that is that it is ours. Even though, mostly, occupied by the many tourists visiting Vienna.

bad graffiti

I like graffiti, really I do - if they are good graffiti of course. And I can't quite see why good graffiti should be illegal. They make cities look so much more like they were 'lived in', if you get what I mean.

Bad graffiti though, that's a different matter altogether. Like that one:

Graffiti of that style and quality really should not only be forbidden but prosecuted. Heads off of that bad graffiti writers, is what I say! The Queen of Hearts of Alice's Wonderland surely would have done those away long since.

vienna ferris wheel

Finally I'll show you one of the famous landmarks of Vienna, the Riesenrad (Ferris wheel):

I know, it's not the only one in the world. And then it's nothing special, really, if it weren't described as tourist attraction in (presumably) every traveller's guide.

You'll have to pay a lot to travel the Riesenrad of Vienna while you get almost the exact same view of the slightly smaller Blümerlrad (flower wheel) which is considerably cheaper.

So you'll best forget about the Riesenrad and go for the Blümerlrad, is what I'd recommend. And what I did, too. I never ever took the Riesenrad, you know.

prater

Many a tourist walks past these figures on Calafatti Platz in the Wiener Prater (which is the local fun fair, if the name means nothing to you):

In my opinion they're rather refreshing: requisites, really, from a time long gone. Nowadays, no one regards such grotesque statues as an attraction of any kind whatsoever. And that is the reason I kind of like them.