My life in Vienna
the year 2000- first half -
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My life in ViennaJanuary 2000In order to say farewell to the musical Tanz der Vampire which will end on the 15th of this month, we went to the show on the 1st of January. We had booked tickets way in advance so that we had seat right-center of the first row. Really expensive but it was great to sit so close to the stage. As I had seen it already several times it was not too surprising but it was nice anyways.The next day we went to the new musical, Mozart. Like TdV the day before we had booked tickets for the first row again, again expensive but it was the first time that I could see the stage the way it was meant. The other 3 times I saw it from either hight above or on the side. It was so much nicer, the stage is just amazing. Really something to go see for yourself. The rest of the month was spent without too many complications. I helped the Uni Wien with one of their homepages and I've been to a concert from Maria Bill who was performing Edith Piaf. Really nice. February 2000Too much culture this month. The first weekend I went to München and Stuttgart with some friends. To München to help a friend move and to Stuttgart to meet one of Andy's friends and to go to the musical Beauty and the Beast. It was kind of kitschy but fun nevertheless. The next day we took the train back to Vienna again, on the way getting a little break in München to say hi to Edeltraut...
A week after we went to the
Kullise,
a small theater in Vienna, to see the a-capella group
MAIN STREET - Die Echten.
Even though I had some problems understanding all of their jokes,
it was pretty cool, new lyrics, in Viennese, on famous pop-songs.
March 2000Business life seems to be catching on again, some customer visits and more work to do.At the beginning of the month we went to Katrin's parents in Maiersdorf (Niederösterreich). It was the last weekend of snow, between 25-30 centimeters new snow when we were there. Well, take a look at the pictures p29 and p30 to see what it looked like. We spent most of the time outside, in the snow. Coming back to warm up and get some food and then we went out again. It was really nice.... At the end of the month I had to go to London for a 4 day training on a new Concert product. Interesting product but it was also great to be in London for nearly a week. Andy joined us over the weekend so we went to the musical Phantom of the Opera. Well, what can I say, everyone who has seen it loves it and so did I, it's really one of the best musicals. When in London I found a shop that sold old photo cameras. Well, actually they were specialised in old movie gear, 8mm and 16mm but they also had some second hand cameras. There I found a Kodak Brownie 2 model F camera. Since this camera takes 120 film I used it as soon as I got back to Vienna. The pictures are not great but it's just amazing that such a simple camera can still take fotos, even after 70 years. April 2000Busy Busy Busy with getting friends over. First we had Ines over for a few days. It was nice to see her and she told me a lot about the inside of the museums. She has visited more museums in her 4 days than I have in 1.5 years. I guess I have to visit more museums as well but of course, living here makes things easier so why would you go now and not next week, month or year?The second person coming over was Albert. Second time visit for him and compared to last time he was over he was pretty inactive. Just spending time at home instead of running around town. It was still great to have him over though. I was working during the day so he had the place for himself. He even went to investigate the gay nightlife in Vienna, well, aparently there is not much going on here :o) More traveling this month. One of my colleagues went to Amsterdam for a training and in order to make things cheaper for the company decided to stay over the weekend. Since Albert was in Vienna we used his place in Amsterdam. It's located so nicely in the Jordaan, close to everything. He's always complaining about the state the house is in though, well, in a way he is right. His place was built for the working class so no fancy things (apart from the wind blowing through all the time). But I'd love to stay in his place for a while whenever I would decide to live in Amsterdam again. Of course I visited some friends too, not enough but 4 days is not a lot anyways. Johanneke, thanks for everything, it was also great to see Stella again and next time we'll see each other will be just before we start cycling. Also went to my parents, well, just for a few hours since I really went there to take pictures of the flower fields. I grew up with them but there are so many nice postcards that I tried my luck as well. The light was pretty bad but some pics might have turned out nice. Take a look at the future gallery (will be p33 I think). The third visitor this month was Lukas, Katrin's brother. He's a fanatic skate boarder so during the day he was busy riding. Must be great to have two weeks holidays, maybe I should become a teacher or something, 4 months holidays a year, sounds like my kind of job :o) The easter weekend was great, a three day holiday with lots of sun. So I just couldn't resist cycling anymore so on Sunday morning I got up early, had a quick breakfast, took the bike down and cycled towards Hainburg. Of course I didn't want to do what I did in August 1999 so before I got really tired it was time to turn around and head back to Vienna. It turned out to be a good decision as the trip back was still pretty long and the rest of the day at home was spent begin terribly lazy. Wow, finally received the ordered cameras from the US. Three old Kodak Box cameras. 
May 2000A new country to my list of visited countries was added this month. When some people at the BT partner in Sweden quit their jobs, some knowledge regarding the old x.25 network was lost. Since there are not so many courses ont his product scheduled they asked me to train their staff. I had done this already in GCSC Amsterdam some time ago but in order to make it a real trouble shooting oriented training I developed an entire new training. So yeah, I spent over a week in Stockholm, training the people (which they were really happy with) and of course to do some sight seeing and taking lots of pictures while there. The results are on the photo pages.The places I liked best for pictures were Gamla Stan and the Millesgården. Gamla Stan, or The old town has narrow streets and the colours are great, orange-ish yellow and dark red so great for pictures. Extremely touristy so I decided to wake up early on a sunday morning and to go out to take pictures. Have a look at the results for yourself. The Millesgården is the former house of sculpturist Carl Milles. The living areas themselves are quite nice, the indoor exhibition is not bad either but the sculptures are just amazing. Unfortunately I couldn't find many pictures on the internet but now there are. I think I shot over 30 pictures from the sculptures alone. They are so great. The main shapes are soft, smooth lines but have lots of detail upon closer look. When I got the pictures back I wished I had bought a book at the museum to get to know some of the meanings and backgrounds of his work. The working area of Milles is filled up with marble sculptures and studies. Unfortunately the light was very harsh. The weather was really nice so that I really enjoyed being in Stockholm, the Swedes already told me that Stockholm is excellent with this kind of weather but that it's mostly not as good. So yeah the photos don't always work out well. Another thing is that the pictures are only 2 dimensional, one of the problems with photography. The real thing is so much better. Imagine a 4 meter high concrete pilar with a 2 meter tall sculpture on it. That is the case with the Hand of God. On picture it's pretty small, well, you can see that it was taken from far below but when you see it real life it's so much more impressive. So for the people who haven't seen it yet, go see it when you get the chance to go to Stockholm. For the people who have already seen it, you might notice that there are no pictures of any of the fountains. Call it a personal thing, whenever there is a fountain, I get distracted and instantly don't like it anymore. The Stockholm section on photo.net does show details of the fountains however and they don't look too bad but still not my thing. Recommended things from the people I met in Stockholm were Skanssen and to do a boat tour in the evening. Since the light was so harsh and I kept postponing the boat tour I'll need to do it next time around. I missed Skanssen as well since it was too warm to walk around all the time so I went to Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde. Well, the exhibition was not really what I liked, the building was not that special but the garden is great. You can sit, on the busy waterfront, in the sun or in the garden in the shade of some trees and there is this great sculpture as well. It's a young girl, sitting on her knees, head bent and a frog on the ground between her knees. Haven't scanned in the pix yet but I will add this one to this story. One of my favourite sculptures! For more info on Stockholm you can visit the official tourist information pages. 
June 2000After all the traveling it was time for a real holiday. This year's trip was going to be sportive so I decided to cycle my bike from my parents' place to Vienna. A trip of 1600 kilometers which I did with my friend Stella. The detailed info will come on it's own page later on this week but I can tell you that we made it in 16 days. So an avergae of 100 km/day. The weather during the last week was really bad for cycling though, temparatures of well over 30° and one day even 36°! (nearly 100° Fahrenheid!). Of course we were cycling up and downhill for 10 days before we joined the Donau Radweg in Regensburg and did the last 500 km via the easiest way, a flat bikepath along the Donau.After coming back to Vienna we had nearly a week to relax before going back to work again. It was warm but not as warm as during cycling so we did lots of cultural things, Zentralfriedhof, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Belvedere and so on. It was great to see Katrin again as well, you get so used to having each other around all the time that you often take it for granted but after not having seen each other for nearly 3 weeks... July 2000I did it, I've finally quit my job. After a long time contemplating and deciding when to leave I had a talk with my manager early July, just after we moved offices. For most people it didn't come as a surprise, it was pretty obvious that I was not too happy here so yeah, it was time to take the step. The official date will be end of august but since there ae many things to hand over it might take a bit longer. The plan is to go traveling till November to see a bit of Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic and then, before the winter starts, to have a new job. So everyone, I'm available. I will stay in Vienna though so job offers from anywhere else will be turned down (I've had some coming from the Netherlands, some pretty interesting ones as well but no, Vienna it will be for the time being).Katrin left on the 11th of July to Tanzania and took lots of things with her so my place is pretty empty, a good time to clean it, which I did. Finally a bookcase was bought and put in my living room so the kitchen cupboards are empty again, my place is getting more and more packed with stuff, well, it's still very empty compared to other people's homes but compared to what it was a year ago it's full, new plants, new pictures, a lot of stuff but it's still nice, still enough space to move around. In the evening I go often to the cinema. Since it's summer (time of year wise, not weather wise) there are lots of movie festivals going on. Unfortunately it's too cold for the open air cinemas but there is a cinema close to my place with nice movies and one close to the office with nice movies. The first movie I went to see on the Stadtkino summer festival was The Big Lebowski. It's somehow typical hollywood with the flat characters but the movie is so funny. I haven't laughed so much for years. The Dude is so cool. I'm afraid I'll get a movie overdose again this year, just like last year when I went to see a few movies a week, sometimes even two in one evening. Definitely too much to be healthy :o) August 2000The day that I'll be in between jobs is getting closer so I've been planning my September holidays. It's just great to go through all the tourguides I have, to check the internet, to look at the nice photo books. But finally I have more or less decided where the train should take me to: Hallstatt. It's supposed to be the most scenic spot around Salzburg and since it will be a photo and hiking trip what better place to start. Well, there might be better places but tell me afterwards, not now. Looking forward to this trip. So yeah, what will I be doing there anyway? The only thing I know is that I'll get there by train, pitch up my tent at the local campsite and start hikingthe next day. There are plenty of tracks so maybe for two days, maybe three, maybe more, who knows? Depending on how it goes, what the weather is like, wel, you'll see it in a few months time on this page. After Hallstatt I'll go to Tirol to visit someone and might go hiking there for a few days as well, also supposed to be a nice area.This month I've received a new toy, my first TLR camera. It's an old Yashica D with apparently the best lenses made for this model. I guess it's made late 70s but I might be wrong. Anyway, according to the people on Photo.net the version I have, with 80mm/f2.8 taking lens and 4-element 80mm/f3.5 Yashinon lens, is supposed to be the best model. Ebay can be great. Anyway, I now own 2 Canon 600 series, 4 old Kodak box cameras, 1 Yashica D and a Yashica A and Kodak 2 model F box camera are on their way. For the moment I have completed my collection, or maybe, just maybe, I might add a nice Voigtländer Folding camera later. :o) I've taken photos off all the cameras now so the camera's will be on my pages soon. Just three more days till I've left DIS. Looking forward to go hiking from the Hallstätter See to the Millstätter See soon. The only problem with having quit my job is that my home office will have to go back and I won't have a scanner anymore. Telnet access to update my page has been arranged so I can still update everyone but unfortunately scanning in pictures from my hiking trip will become more difficult. Well, I'll find a way. At least I will still have the chance to see them first. Actually, I might try the Kodak PictureCD service they offer here. It's not too expensive and for web publishing the pictures will be good enough. Hhhhmmm, well, you'll see it... |