A 15 page epic poem about squirrels...

...is what I promised Tim would be my next blog entry. I wonder if he will be disappointed?

Having arrived after the first lot of Erasmus students (all here a month ago for german courses) but before the second round of freshers-esque speed-befriending events, I actually don't know very many people here. So at the moment I'm spending a looot of time not doing very much at all. This was nice for a while, but now i've finished reading two whole new webcomics, all 600 pages of Best New SF 22 are gone and I'm close to finishing the last season of 30 Rock, I am starting to get a little bored.

It's all very well going to see sights, but some of the sights I'd like to save for later when I have people to see them with, and you can't spend the entire day and night sightseeing. Well I can't anyway. So sometimes I feel like I am wasting my days, although other times I see it as a nice rest.

In the spirit of relaxation I decided to go for a lovely walk in the sunshine today. It is genuinely still summer here, as warm as it ever is in England at any time of year. The destination for my walk was the Donauinsel, a really long, really thin island separating two strands of the extremely wide and straight man made channel which directs most of the Danube to the East of Vienna. It was amazing, because it is basically a really thin but seemingly infinite park, strolling along it you feel you should keep going to see what is at the end, but, it never stops... It is a paradise for sunbathing, barbecuing, dog walking and going pretty fast on/ using your wheeled contraption of choice. Because you can only get onto it from some reasonably scarce bridges it has a nice wild and deserted feel, grass growing between concrete and graffiti on the benches sort of thing. There is so much anarchist graffiti around, I am not sure what to think about all the graffiti saying 'no to sexism' and 'down with racism'. Should I be impressed? Or do people just write it because they think that's what anarchist graffiti kids ought to do? Better than SHIT in ten foot high letters, anyway, though there is plenty of that sort of thing too.


Here we see an example of how sunny it is, and how long and hyponotically straight the island is. (this is looking north from a footbridge, with the island to your left)

My walk was great until I atempted to cross the river back to mainland Vienna and ended up walking through an area that was just building sites until I reached the bottom of the Prater, another huge park just south of my house. It is a bit bigger than the inner city london parks, with a lot of woodland, a bit like the Tiergarten in Berlin. Looks like a nice place to go on sunny days, all shade and rolling grassy bits. But by this time I was very tired and quite hot, as I can't tolerate temperatures over 15 degrees for too long. The photo below sort of conveys the length of the park, I could see this view to vanishing point in both directions for a good while.


Got home, grilled some Bratwurst (no seriously) and now I have a headache because I am completely evolved for UK temperatures. I will be a wreck come June next year...