Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Wien ...


On to Vienna, for more culture, cafes and caffeine ...


Spent the majority of my time searching out the elegant cafes that were the storied favorites of Klimt, Hitler, Beethoven, Freud, Trotsky, and my grandparents ...



After an afternoon waiting in line, standing room tickets for Beethoven's Fidelio at the Staatsoper ... better than the otherwise-120 + euro price of admission ... the simple pleasures of feeling cheap and out of place ...



A tram trip out to the Zentralfriedhof to see the grave of Falco (the man with the genius to ask WHAT IF Mozart had been a member of an 80's biker gang) as well as the graves of Brahms, Beethoven, the Strauss clan and 2.5 million other non-musicians ...



And no Vienna trip / reinactment would have been complete without a late night screening of an original print of the Carol Reed/Graham Greene/Orson Wells classic The Third Man in a small theatre off the Ringstrasse ... definitely a highlight, and certainly worth the trademark Anton Karas tune stuck in my head all the way to Bratislava !

2 comments:

Andrew said...

what an interesting grave...

Anonymous said...

Ey Neil,

I don't know if you remember me but we met at a party in Leuven - right on the floor where our mutual Polish friends lived. I told you I was a medical student - with a philosophical interruption - and that I was planning on taking the USMLE step 1 and 2. Well, I'm scheduling both exams
for october and I was wondering if you are still willing to give me the Q&A-database you had on you pc. I think I can really use the practice since medical school in Belgium is never examinated in MCQ-form.

Are you still in Leuven? If you are, I can go by your house with a cd-rom and burn the information digitally. If you're not in the neighboorhood, maybe you could send me the information. I will pay for the shipping costs of course, you just have to give me your european bank account?.

I hope you're still around, maybe we can have a drink one of these days

Hope you're doing fine and enjoying your 'sabattical' year off!

Friendly yours,
steve


ps
coordinates:
Blijde inkomststraat 32 (03.24)
3000 Leuven
Belgium

steve_velleman@hotmail.com