I was going to start this post with 'Austria is a land of contrasts' until I realised that what land isn't? That's like saying: Austria has people in it.
Anyway I just thought I'd give you a distorted and unjustified snapshot of why Austria confuses me, politically and economically speaking, by highlighting a bunch of stories that all ran in the same Sunday tabloid last week. And if you sit through that you can have the link to looads of pretty pictures I've been saving up.
So yeah: the newspaper. What first hit me were the stories that just don't seem like they could ever belong to a british newspaper. Firstly, the austrian finance minister in an interview saying, basically, yes, our budget deficit is again under control and below the EU limit of 3%, so we should be off emergency measures soon. Yep, got a bit hairy there for a second, but we're totally on it. Can you imagine that being true in the UK any time soon? Ok so I am simplifying a bit as Austria is relying on some new bank tax regulations making it into law to make up its budget, but still. The optimism from a politician is confusing to a British person such as I...
News 2: Austria is in the top 5 countries in the whole eurozone for growth, and has the best unemployment figures in the EU, 4%. FOUR PERCENT UNEMPLOYMENT. Whaaaaaaaat.
News 3 (front page): (Paraphrased) OMG a russian born girl won Miss Austria, this is NEWS so we can put her on the front page in underwear! Sigh.
News 4 (paraphrased): Hey Britain, remember when last week you all got completely outraged when the government suggested it might start tracking all your emails and internet traffic? Well, that is ACTUALLY A LAW in Austria. As of a couple of weeks ago, all my internet action is saved for six months by the Austrian government. I probably ought to take measures to somehow prevent this, if possible? I need to solicit technical help. In the meantime, anyone planning Oceans 11 or The Italian Job, email me at your own risk!
News 5: The 'Freedom Party of Austria' under H.C. Strache (did even that name ring alarm bells?) is again courting controversy , now being sued (by the King/prince of Marocco, no less!) for a billboard in Innsbruck that read 'Homeland-love instead of Maroccan thieves!' (catchier in original as 'love' and 'thieves' rhyme in german, 'Heimat-liebe statt marokkaner Diebe!'). This would almost be comically racist, (ie you would assume it was satire, I don't think racism is funny per se!) except that the FPOe gained 18% of the vote in 2008 national elections. That's right, Austria, one of the most economically successful and beautiful countries of europe, sadly 20% of the population vote for a party that is basically a cleverer and better looking BNP. Sigh.
Yeah, well at least the cake's good? And we aren't lead by no descendant of William of Orange. But it makes laughing at british politics from afar tricky...
And now, as promised, pictures! I have been enjoying the heck out of my walking guide to the Wienerwald, it is now cemented as my absolute favourite thing about Vienna this year. Here are two galleries of my wonderful discoveries in the woods.
Plus I finally overcame my Viennese resistance to seeing the rest of Austria and visited its second city, Graz. Graz is small, but perfectly formed. I also manged to get out into the woods round Graz too.
Got RSS working again now I think??!
Till some other time, the Tom.
Saturday 7 April 2012
Testing
For some reason google reader took a brief dislike to posting when I write something, this is what them folks in the IT business call a test post. Keep walking, nothing to see here.
Thursday 23 February 2012
Oben
In the last week or two I have managed to get out into the countryside a bit more, helped naturally by the lack of -15 degree temperatures, winds and snow...
At the weekend I made a trip once again up into the hills north of Vienna to visit what has fast become one of my favourite places in the whole Vienna area, the Leopoldsberg. Great views, far fewer people than the Kahlenberg and less cheesy piano accompaniment. Instead there are concrete viewing platforms, a lonely boarded up set of buildings surrounding a church and a gorgeous view over Vienna and the danube. I have now been up here twice at sunset, and although chilly it is certainly worth it.
Returning from the Leopoldsberg I stopped off at the Kahlenberg, which had been all but cleared of tourism by the still bitter wind and retreating sunlight. And I am hugely glad I did, for the final throes of the sunset were even more spectacular with a better view of the first peaks of the alps to the southwest. For some reason the sky above them stayed pink and orange long after the rest of the deck of clouds had turned blue-black, the wispy orange glow almost giving the impression of fires on the peaks. Utterly impossible to capture with my small (but trusty) camera, but I have got some shots to give y'all an impression of what you're missing!
Of course the Wienerwald is nothing, hill-wise, in comparison with the real alps. Luckily we had a research group seminar scheduled at my professors house right at the end of an alpine valley. Two and a half days of research discussion, beer, food, sledging (I mean proper down an icy track from high on the mountain sledging too) and snowball fights. Pretty OK for a start to the week! And now I actually know what my colleagues are working on in a bit more detail, which is always nice. This time the sun was shining brightly and it was ideal conditions for even my camera to achieve its best results. So if you are curious what an average snow depth of greater than 1.5 metres looks like, click on!
Bis bald,
Der Tom
At the weekend I made a trip once again up into the hills north of Vienna to visit what has fast become one of my favourite places in the whole Vienna area, the Leopoldsberg. Great views, far fewer people than the Kahlenberg and less cheesy piano accompaniment. Instead there are concrete viewing platforms, a lonely boarded up set of buildings surrounding a church and a gorgeous view over Vienna and the danube. I have now been up here twice at sunset, and although chilly it is certainly worth it.
Returning from the Leopoldsberg I stopped off at the Kahlenberg, which had been all but cleared of tourism by the still bitter wind and retreating sunlight. And I am hugely glad I did, for the final throes of the sunset were even more spectacular with a better view of the first peaks of the alps to the southwest. For some reason the sky above them stayed pink and orange long after the rest of the deck of clouds had turned blue-black, the wispy orange glow almost giving the impression of fires on the peaks. Utterly impossible to capture with my small (but trusty) camera, but I have got some shots to give y'all an impression of what you're missing!
Of course the Wienerwald is nothing, hill-wise, in comparison with the real alps. Luckily we had a research group seminar scheduled at my professors house right at the end of an alpine valley. Two and a half days of research discussion, beer, food, sledging (I mean proper down an icy track from high on the mountain sledging too) and snowball fights. Pretty OK for a start to the week! And now I actually know what my colleagues are working on in a bit more detail, which is always nice. This time the sun was shining brightly and it was ideal conditions for even my camera to achieve its best results. So if you are curious what an average snow depth of greater than 1.5 metres looks like, click on!
Bis bald,
Der Tom
Friday 10 February 2012
Der Alltag
That means 'daily routine' or 'day to day stuff' or something like that. I use this word because much of what I have been doing for the last month and a half has been pretty routine, and not really worth writing about. I do of course live in Vienna, so that doesn't mean it isn't really fantastic, it's just that I've either written about most of the things I have been doing before, or I would just be telling you what I said while hanging around in whatever cafe/bar I happened to be in that night, and what I had to drink... Of course if that is what my audience desires... Well, if that's what my audience desires I will get a twitter account in disgust and tweet boring/jealousy causing things about how pleasant my life is.
On the work front I have a few more exams than recently but mostly things are progressing as before, ie I keep looking at things and thinking about them and enjoying very much that it is my job to try and figure stuff out. I submitted an abstract to the EGU conference in Vienna, so if that gets accepted I will have my first official poster at a conference, which will be really cool!
One thing I did do which was absolutely excellent and I haven't mentioned before was to go to the Magritte exhibition at the Albertina (oh and I also bought a ticket for THE WHOLE YEAR for only €30, so I can go back in the museum whenever I want without worrying about how long I go for etc etc).
The Magritte exhibition had over 250 paintings all by the same man, so inevitably the big thing I learned was how many more styles and paintings Magritte had made than the traditional few you always see with the men with apple faces. There were a huge number of different approaches to Magritte's central idea of words and things and pictures of things not all being the same, united by his easily recognisable very clean and well painted style.
It was especially good to have lots of pages from Magritte's letters and writings to explain a bit of the philosophy behind what he was interested in, even though after a while thinking too hard about to what extent a painting of a piece of cheese (entitled 'this is a piece of cheese' and always displayed under a cheese bell) is or isn't a piece of cheese due to the way it has been presented does tend to make your head hurt.
One of the best paintings was this masterpiece of surrealism (follow the link for a larger one!!)
Called 'Time transfixed' what I and my gallery companion Ash both really like about this picture is that all of the shadows etc are perfect. If a train really did extrude out of the wall of your fireplace, this is how it would look. It just hangs there, being a train and looking completely real and nonchalant but at the same time totally impossible. Cool!
The other type of magritte painting that I didn't really know about before were the various huge birds/bird sillhouettes with the trademark magritte clouds, floating over a stormier grey sea and sky. Again, I have put a small image here but it is definitely worth it to look at it bigger, the original is huge)
It is hard to say exactly what I find so great about these, but it is something to do with the truly dreamlike quality of the image. A huge bird shape floats in the sky, looking at the same time flat due to the fact it is a silhouette, and in other parts of the image seeming like an actual giant dream bird. I especially like how the blue sky where the bird shape is also looks almost like a gateway, and the bluish light shines onto the waves where the 'tail' meets the horizon and makes them a slightly different colour. Once again it feels like if (in a dream or wherever) you did see a giant cloud-bird-gateway-silhouette over a beautiful grey stormy sky, this is how it would look.
There were way too many individual painings to go into much detail about them here, suffice to say I am grateful for the opportunity to see so many images in one place and get the overview of all the different things Magritte painted that would be difficult to get seeing a few pictures at a time in one gallery after another.
Keep warm out there! (Oh yes I didn't mention it got down to minus 15 but now it is sitting steady at a night time temperature of about minus 7 with snow on the ground...)
Der Tom
On the work front I have a few more exams than recently but mostly things are progressing as before, ie I keep looking at things and thinking about them and enjoying very much that it is my job to try and figure stuff out. I submitted an abstract to the EGU conference in Vienna, so if that gets accepted I will have my first official poster at a conference, which will be really cool!
One thing I did do which was absolutely excellent and I haven't mentioned before was to go to the Magritte exhibition at the Albertina (oh and I also bought a ticket for THE WHOLE YEAR for only €30, so I can go back in the museum whenever I want without worrying about how long I go for etc etc).
The Magritte exhibition had over 250 paintings all by the same man, so inevitably the big thing I learned was how many more styles and paintings Magritte had made than the traditional few you always see with the men with apple faces. There were a huge number of different approaches to Magritte's central idea of words and things and pictures of things not all being the same, united by his easily recognisable very clean and well painted style.
It was especially good to have lots of pages from Magritte's letters and writings to explain a bit of the philosophy behind what he was interested in, even though after a while thinking too hard about to what extent a painting of a piece of cheese (entitled 'this is a piece of cheese' and always displayed under a cheese bell) is or isn't a piece of cheese due to the way it has been presented does tend to make your head hurt.
One of the best paintings was this masterpiece of surrealism (follow the link for a larger one!!)
Called 'Time transfixed' what I and my gallery companion Ash both really like about this picture is that all of the shadows etc are perfect. If a train really did extrude out of the wall of your fireplace, this is how it would look. It just hangs there, being a train and looking completely real and nonchalant but at the same time totally impossible. Cool!
The other type of magritte painting that I didn't really know about before were the various huge birds/bird sillhouettes with the trademark magritte clouds, floating over a stormier grey sea and sky. Again, I have put a small image here but it is definitely worth it to look at it bigger, the original is huge)
It is hard to say exactly what I find so great about these, but it is something to do with the truly dreamlike quality of the image. A huge bird shape floats in the sky, looking at the same time flat due to the fact it is a silhouette, and in other parts of the image seeming like an actual giant dream bird. I especially like how the blue sky where the bird shape is also looks almost like a gateway, and the bluish light shines onto the waves where the 'tail' meets the horizon and makes them a slightly different colour. Once again it feels like if (in a dream or wherever) you did see a giant cloud-bird-gateway-silhouette over a beautiful grey stormy sky, this is how it would look.
There were way too many individual painings to go into much detail about them here, suffice to say I am grateful for the opportunity to see so many images in one place and get the overview of all the different things Magritte painted that would be difficult to get seeing a few pictures at a time in one gallery after another.
Keep warm out there! (Oh yes I didn't mention it got down to minus 15 but now it is sitting steady at a night time temperature of about minus 7 with snow on the ground...)
Der Tom
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