I am well, despite a continued inability to find out how the monkey got there. I'm still going to lectures and otherwise carrying out the important homeostasis activities required in order to stay functional. Rock learning is excellent, especially the subject of the formation of the Alps. I cannot wait to get out into the mountains and poke all the rocks we've been learning about with a stick. I wonder though, if Austrian geologists end up way better field and structural geologists due to having to get their heads round this whole alps thing whilst we are swanning around the comparatively simple Dorset...
In other geology news I have provisionally sold my soul to Dr Ian Wood, and my MSci Project next year will be something along the lines of 'Isobaric equations of state and thermal expansion in Pyroxenes', If you don't know what that is, don't worry, you've got about 1 year of me doing it to find out, no rush! Basically the bit that I would mention in bars to impress people is that I get to play with a big expensive X-Ray laser machine.
Mirva came to visit this week, but as she was taking extra classes at the university there wasn't a whole lot of time for sightseeing. Still, (we didn't want to disappoint you blog-ites, naturally), we did manage to get out on a long meander around the Prater and take a trip to the massive Zentralfriedhof (Cemetery). The walk around the Prater was nothing remarkable until we turned off the main path and discovered a weird area of perfectly regular little streets with small picture-postcard houses, all looking thoroughly out of place in Vienna, where nobody lives in anything that is not a flat. It turned out to be some sort of uniquely germanic thing called a 'Kleingarten', which is translated in dictionaries as 'allotment' but appears to have more emphasis on living and social aspects than our own purely agricultural version. It was perfectly quiet and walled off from external interference by woods on one side, littered with community noticeboards and little plaques, with a big earth bank shielding it from the road on the other side. A very mysterious little area, which I imagine is either a cooperative and friendly paradise or a horribly claustrophobic community of snobs. Perhaps both. I would like to visit the Gasthaus there one day and see what it's like inside.
The trip to the Friedhof was made on a warm but grey Sunday. The aim for the day was to locate Beethoven's grave, which wasn't as easy as you might expect given the paucity of signage. However, that can be forgiven because after all it is a place of rest (The suffix Fried- means peace) not a tourist attraction. The Cemetery is really big, though I'm not sure how it compares with the bigger London ones. As this is another country after all, the style of graves and especially the names are all pleasantly different. Huge numbers of imposing monoliths where long long family lines are interred, and of course a lot of Jewish graves too. Especially honoured people are located in the central region of the cemetery amongst the Ehrengraeber or 'honoured graves', and there were plenty of very beautiful gravestones and interesting characters to be seen. The Jugendstil Church in the middle of the place is absolutely huge and an awesome example of the style, a refreshing change of pace from the other chapels and churches in this part of the continent.
Good old Ludwig Boltzmann, with his formulae on his tobstone! Way to go!
Brahms and Strauss. Can you tell who liked to write frivolous waltzes??
Beethoven
Blue!
Architecture.Well, that's about it, I'll be back soon with tales from sunny Finland. In the meantime, if you are bored you can check out the rest of the cemetery photos and some others here.
Der Tom.
Boltzmann looks severly serious,
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