The Wachau grand tour

It's been a whirlwind few weeks of lots of visits, so much that I sometimes get the feeling that my german is still recovering and maybe my english is still a bit more mumbly than usual (mumbly = normal for the viewers at home). Today we get a selection of photos from my parents' visit. As they make up a high percentage of the readership of this blog, detailing everything we did seems mildly perverse, but what what would a 'web log' be without the logging?

In the Wachau 1

I will pick one trip to describe in detail, as that's the one I have photos of. In addition to that though, we of course did and consumed plenty of things, including going to the zoo! It was way better than the last time I went, the nice weather had brought the animals out and we saw nearly everything. Highlights include the giraffes (it is so easy to forget how IMPROBABLE they look in real life!), the orang-utans and the polar bears in their new enclosure, including fantastic views of them diving and swimming. Yes, those are the polar bears which were catapulted to infamy around the same time when they ate a free-living zoo peacock. Oh and on the friday night we looked in a bunch of churches for the Lange Nacht der Kirchen and even got to hear a concert of proper old instruments, the theorbo and the viola de gamba!

In the Wachau 2

Although Vienna is of course a beautiful city with near infinite power to fascinate and provide sugary snacks in equal measure, it was agreed we would take a trip out of the city to give a taste of the rest of the country and its even more relaxed way of life. The decision was made to travel to the cliff and vine lined world heritage area of the Wachau, along the banks of the Danube about an hour to the West of Vienna. Through complete fluke, I managed to buy us the ticket which included a rail journey to one town (Melk), entry to their world famous Abbey, a trip down the river to the second town (Krems) and then a train home. A pretty good deal, even if I only realised what I had bought while perusing the ticket in the train!

Inside the church...

Melk abbey really is magnificent, enough to charm even a jaded catholic church viewer such as myself. The monastery is situated imposingly above the town and about 1/3 as large as it. Inside it is huge with vast corridoors stretching out all over the place. The exhibition was very well done, going in a much more spiritual direction than I feel we would have taken in the UK. Especially amazing were the 10th or 11th century portable altar and a 800+ year old sculpture of christ on the cross. Oh and the midday service in the vast church complete with organ was a real eye opener. The effect on someone from the 18th century must have been even larger!

1200 year old Jesus

A fascinating and macabre story is that of the Abbey's patron saint, St Koloman. An irish pilgrim in 1012 (according to tradition the son of an Irish king) was suspected of spying by the locals and murdered. However, out of remorse or some other motivation (the legend goes that the dead elder tree he was hanging on began to grow and flower again and his body did not rot) he was made a saint just a few years later!

Duernstein

Afterwards it was time for a leisurely voyage along the Danube. The Wachau is known for its dramatic cliffs, terraced hills overflowing with vines, and romantic perching castles. It really is a wonder and definitely great to see either by boat or by bike. We even sailed past Duernstein, the place where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned, which boasts a ridiculous and impressive blue ornate church tower which features in the photo gallery.

Hope you enjoy the selected snaps!

Der Tom

5 days in & around Glasgow

I finally took a mini holiday this year! The destination was actually decided mostly because I wanted to go and see the band Neutral Milk Hotel. I won't bother much in trying to describe Neutral Milk Hotel for the uninitiated, suffice to say they made a cult album (in the sense that there is definitely an almost religious fervour about it that has developed over the years) in the late 1990s, then disbanded as their frontman went off to be a bit of a recluse. I don't think anyone ever expected them to play live ever again, especially not after nearly 15 years! I wasn't going to bother with the scrum of getting London tickets so I went straight away for Glasgow, which had the advantage of containing a very good friend. Serendipitously I discovered after booking my flights that two further friends had moved up to Glasgow and in with her!

2/3 of the friends I came to visit, through a random stained glass pane in their palace.

5 days was a bit short really, I didn't quite have the time to bed fully back into British mode. I was also thrown off by the weather, which was actually warmer than the weather I left in Vienna as we had a miserable streak just before I went away. With the built in assumption that Glasgow would be an arctic wilderness firmly fixed in my head, I was overdressed for the weather most of the time... I need to get my act together, I don't want to lose my blessed British gift of rain-tolerance!

Glasgow Uni...

I did manage to pack the 5 days full of exciting things though. Frankly, I would have been content with sitting the whole time in the palatial and vast flat I was staying in (seriously, it took me a while to realise that in my room there were PILLARS built in to the edge of the bay window area and echoed on the fireplace). And in fact we often did our best to make this dream a reality, but there were interruptions to wander through the many green parks of Glasgow, a party where I picked up a free Neal Stephenson book, cinema event of the year (ahem) Godzilla, and yet more wandering, including a trip to the model town of New Lanark, just down from the falls of Clyde. Here you can see not only waterfalls and large stone buildings that make up the old model mill community of New Lanark, but also close ups of Peregrine falcons nesting on the river cliffs. No eggs seem to have made it this year sadly, but one falcon was obligingly sitting on the ledge and gave amazing, BBC wildlife documentary quality views through a borrowed telescope at the viewing point.

The gig was interesting. When you have such a personal relationship with a single album, it can be difficult for a live band to add anything to your experience. Some of the songs on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea have just sort of reached the point where they are so iconic for me that whenever the song starts happening the whole thing plays itself out in my head. It was amazing to experience them in the presence of 1000s of others, but the versions of the songs weren't necessarily better. However, there were some incredible moments, and in a weird way, the gig just made me appreciate the band more. They really are just a big, wonderful mess, like a band falling down a flight of stairs but with way more rhythm than that implies. And more raoucous, crazy brass. And Jeff Mangum, the lead singer, well! Some people can't handle NMH due to his nasal voice, of course for me it is a huge attraction. I was thrilled to discover that if anything, his voice is more unique, droning and penetrating than it even comes across in the recordings! Some of the best live moments came when there was just this droning voice circling and circling, singing those chant-like and hallucinatory lyrics. The crowd sang along a lot, but there were points where everybody just trailed off, absolutely unable to make the same kind of noises that Jeff Mangum could...

The photos are up in the usual place!

Der Tom

PS on my return to Wien, found out that NMH will play here too in August! Utterly unheard of but quite welcome :-)

Un petit morceau

This post has nothing to with France or french, the phrase just jumped out at me while I was looking for a title. May was the month of many visitings, on my part and on the part of family and friends. That picture backlog will slowly bubble its way to the surface over time, as these things seem to do. For now, you get yet another 'yet another gallery of Bisamberg photos'. What can I say? It isn't the furthest or the highest walk, and it doesn't even have the single best view, but it is just such a nice walk to go on when the sun is shining and the plants are out! And there's that wonderful combination of sweeping fields with the city looming in the distance. And you might see a Ziesel (saw one for half a second on this trip).

Although I didn't bother taking pictures of the actual festival, the occasion for this Bisamberg walk was to coincide with a Stammersdorf wine festival. I say 'a' as the place has multiple throughout the year, this one being called the 'Mailuefterl' which I can only assume alludes to the airing out and cleaning out of the cellars in May to make room for the wines to come, as well as welcoming back the sun (who has nonetheless contrived to be an unpredictable companion of late!).

So yes, more Bisamberg, I have tried to make sure there are some new angles this time! Especially the ones of the clouds over the Stammersdorfer wine fields came out pretty alright, I reckon!

Der Tom