In Wien: "It's ups and downs you know, ups and downs" (but mostly ups)

I walked past a thermometer on the side of a building today. It said 20 degrees.

Heute I was supposed to meet with my coordinator and sort out actually maybe studying some courses at some point. To this end I set out to walk to the geology department of the university, located in a different and less central part of Vienna, but not much farther removed from my house than the main campus. My route took me back through the Augarten, where I paused to photograph my favourite flak tower once again in the beautiful late afternoon sunlight.

Still cool. I cannot help but imagine that had the war gone differently, the scene in the Augarten 60+ years later would not probably have been so different from today, save that the concrete behemoth would be a sparkly monument to victory rather than a graffiti covered, too expensive to demolish ruin.

Buoyed up by the weather, I entered the geology department via a torturous route through a door in an underground car park as all the maps of the campus (shared with the Wirtschaftsuniversitaet) were confusing and half erased. I was immediately struck by the sheer awesome size of the building, 5 stories and very long, connected by one giant open space with light streaming in from the glass roof onto rocks and dinosaur skeletons. And the view from the 5th floor over all of Vienna was an extra treat, especially as there were nice little groups of desks to work at while gazing over it. It made me weirdly happy to see even from a distance people who were definitely geologists, I think I miss the 'geologist' mindset more than the 'english person' mindset at present.

Had I not just discovered that my geology department was located in some form of modernist geology palace, finally reaching the office of my Koordinator and finding that he was just leaving to (I think) administer an exam, despite having specifically told me his meeting hours on the phone last week, would have made me a little angry. Luckily though, I was in a good frame of mind, so I was merely polite and organised a meeting for tomorrow at 12.

LOOK AT THE GEOLOGY PALACE! Complete with pterosaur. Didn't take photos of it all (there is way more) as I felt a bit self conscious wandering around with my camera like weirdo tourist in my own department.

The Wirtschaftsuniversitaet is conveniently located next to an incineration plant (Muellverbrennungsanlage or rubbish-burning-place) which would normally suck. Luckily this is Vienna, city of really cool stuff, so it is a super amazing architectural wonder by the legendary architect somebody Hundertwasser. Below is a lovely view of the main chimney shining proudly in the sun, with hills behind.