wien, österreich.

so vienna definitely takes the cake.



the palaces are a little more regal, the bike lanes are a little wider, the people a little friendlier, the architecture a little more impressive... vienna's got the oldest zoo and the oldest ferris wheel in the world. the zoo was really cool, we saw some very, uh, interesting things.


stayed up all night the first night, then walked about the city at six in the morning... everything was so quiet, it was real nice. checked out some parks, napped under some trees, hit up an amusement park and a couple of palaces, a few restaurants, a botanical garden, a couple of churches, a zoo, various metro lines, a revolving cafe up on a tower (with an amazing view of the city) and the longest nap ever once we finally got to our beds. good thing, too, because we had a night train and a second class sleeper car is no party.


i'm definitely gonna have to go into sculpture you know, so i can sculpt myself a nice ol' fountain like the huge one we saw at the palace belvedere. except mine'll have a roll out water slide and it will be too cool for school. you'll see.



one of the coolest things was going to this museum centered on the work of hundertwasser, an artist with a very cool philosophy who undertook a good amount of architectural projects... houses with rolling, hilly floors or built into the ground with grass roofs, trees growing out of windows... interesting guy, very creative. he was a big environmentalist.


"the straight line leads to the downfall of mankind. but the straight line has become an absolute tyranny. the straight line is something cowardly drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling; it is the line which does not exist in nature... any design undertaken with the straight line will be stillborn. today we are witnessing the triumph of rationalist knowhow and yet, at the same time, we find ourselves confronted with emptiness. an aesthetic void, desert of uniformity, criminal sterility, loss of creative power. even creativity is prefabricated. we have become impotent. we are no longer able to create. that is our real illiteracy." (i dug the guy.)