Jane is in Vienna, visiting from Paris for two weeks because of the all saints day holiday. On Friday we went to the main entrance of the National Library to get her a library card so she could look at some pieces in the Music Reading Room. We arrived at the entrance to discover a vast array of tanks, army medical trucks, cannons, and other sorts of deadly equipment. It was not a hostile takeover, but rather part of what we believe was called sicherheitfest, or "safety festival." It was really quite striking to see all these war machines with the backdrop of a huge baroque palace. It has often been our experience to happen upon very odd parades, festivals, and the like in Europe. Maybe it's because we are walking around so much more (we have seen some odd parades in Columbus as well, such as one about "Racist Joe," a rapper who was certainly not racist), but it is probably more that Europe just has more of these things. Enjoy some pictures of us standing on tanks!
On Saturday evening we joined some new friends from the english church for dinner and drinks. First we went to an awesome Pakistani restaurant near Vienna University. The food was buffet style and the price was whatever you felt like paying (except for drinks). Seriously, you give them money for the drinks and then add on whatever you think is fair for the food you ate. The crazy thing is the food was very good. It seemed like a real hippy hangout and there were lots of stickers about protests in the bathroom.
We left there to go to a wine bar in the center of the city. On the way we talked to a student from the University who had actually just been to a protest. I don't know much about it, but basically they are protesting to be able to go to college for free for as long as they like. I'm pretty sure they can do that now, but the administration is trying to limit free college to four years. I'm not sure what I think about this particular protest, but it is getting a lot of attention here. We then found the wine bar and had a lovely time enjoying surprisingly cheap wine.
Finally, today Jane and I went to a huge climbing party at our bouldering gym. It was sponsored by La Sportiva, which is a company that makes climbing shoes. It was a really cool event with a bouldering contest, free food and shirts, free entrance, and trial shoes. We stayed there for about three hours climbing, talking to people, getting shirts, watching people who are better at climbing than I could ever hope to be, and generally wearing ourselves out climbing. We didn't stay for it, but later in the evening we could have gone to a "climax party," to wrap up the evening. It is often amusing to see how people use English phrases for things that are supposed to be cool. A shoe store near us has a "best seller" section, which actually appears to be shoes that are on clearance instead of shoes that sell the most. The website Jane uses to login for her bank says that their service is "so music," which we think means that it is great, but who knows.
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