London

Last month A really long while ago, I was in London. I was excited, because it was my first time to tread British soil beside the times when I was transfering to another flight at Heathrow airport. It's kind of funny that it took me so long to ever get there.

Getting around using public transportation:
Here's the website that will tell you how to get from A to B. You can use the tube or buses within London, but I only used the bus twice. Once from my friend's house to get to Camden Market - I had a nice view sitting on the upper deck - and then to get back to the airport.

That day I didn't have One Day Travel Card, so I used an Oyster Card. It's a card that you can recharge online or at automats. They want to encourage the use of paperless tickets, so if you use an Oyster Card you get cheaper fares.

If you want to travel outside of London with the train you can get an extension for your Oyster Card. There is also something called Oyster Card Travelcard.

I feel like a complete failure and loser for not being able to figure out the real difference between Oyster Card and One Day Travelcard. *sniff* (Screw them, really... I researched it on the internet, but I don't get it and nobody I asked seems to understand it either.) . Anyway, I think if you want information about Oyster Card and Travelcard it seems the Wikipedia page still explains it best. Too bad that I didn't see it before I went on vacation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_card

I arrived in the afternoon and as my friend doesn't live in London, but in a small village a bit outside - a deadly boring place according to her - I wanted to see a bit of London first before going to her place. The first question was then, where couldI leave my bag? I don't know why I assumed that all tube stations would have lockers, but I learned I was wrong. The lady who sat next to me in the plane told me that they had lockers at Victoria station and she doubted they had them elsewhere. Anyway, if you arrive from Heathrow, Victora Station, a tube and railway station, is probably the next place where you can leave your luggage. They don't have lockers, but they have a service where you can leave your luggage. It costs a shocking 8 pounds. *gulp* It's a 24 hour service, but if you only want to leave your stuff for a couple of hours you still have to pay 8 pounds.

If you walk out of Victoria Station you then have the choice between Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. I decided that it was a bit late already and that I would leave Buckingham Palace for another day (that never came...). On my way to Westminster Abbey I noticed that a) a lot of Londoners are dressed in suit and b) they all walk quite fast. Someone I know complains about the Gemütlichkeit of people here, now I know what he means. In general, I find people in London to dress better than here. And a lot of cute guys are running around. :D And a lot of Spanish people. And a lot of the people in suits are foreigners. I've noticed that in other countries like the States and now Great Britain foreigners seem to be better integrated into society and are less confined to low paid jobs. One of my friends, who is British, said that in England people are more open and willing to give you a chance to prove yourself, while in Germany without the right degree you don't get far.

On my way I saw this church. And this house. It looked so old-
fashioned and cute among all the modern buildings.

On the left hand side is a picture of Westminster Abbey. Surprisingly unspectacular to me. Not sure what I was expecting. On the other side of the street is this huge building with a flag on top of the tower. I saw a lot of people who looked touristy to me walk inside and come out. I asked one of the official looking people at the entrance what it was and if you could get a tour. She said it was the House of Parliaments and that there was no guided tour, but that you could still walk inside and have a look at the debates inside. I didn't really have any plans, so I walked inside.




That's the entrance hall inside the House of Parliaments. It's *huge*. Look at the ceiling. I listened to a debate in the House of Commons that was about the dangers of cannabis. A member of the government was arguing that the danger of cannabis was overrated and not more harmful than other legal drugs like alcohol or cigarettes. I noticed that the members of the House of Commons looked like tourists, they all showed up for the vote. At first I was wondering why there were so many tourists as the age range was amazing - really young men and really old women, the grandma type - and also because some of them had the bad dress taste of Robinson Club tourists. Totally not what I expected after I had gotten the impression that half of London was running around in business suits. They also didn't sit down, but were just walking buy. Later one of the guards told me that they were voting in two different rooms. One room was for the "Ayes" and the other one for the "Noes." The noes had it in the end, so I guess, the government guy didn't really convince anybody. The debate in the House of Lords was quite boring, more civilized. The hall here had a richer decoration. The two Houses are also distinguished colorwise. The House of Commons is decorated in green and the House of Lords is mostly red.

Knitting:
First and foremost, I must admit - I was not able to buy any yarn at all! This totally pains me, *booohoooo*. :( The last day, Saturday, came and I had decided that this was going to be the day where I would not oblige myself to be a good tourist, who would visit all these cultural institutions. Instead I wanted to indulge in shopping. I find shopping in general extremely boring, because I usually go shopping when I need something and usually I don't find it. Plus oxygenfree shops, big crowds of people and long lines in front of the changing rooms - soo bad... Anyway, shopping for yarn can be more fun. It's just I first went to Staple-something Market (??) (which I confused with Camden Market). There I managed to meet up with my friend, who came with her boyfriend and who had also arranged to meet with another friend of hers. From there we went to Camden Market. My friend, being Spanish, started speaking Spanish with her Spanish friend and her British boyfriend, knowing some Spanish, but not enough to follow the stream of words that Spanish people produce when they talk, understood only a bit of it. I think he felt a bit frustrated for not being able to join in the conversation. I tried to entertain him a bit, but I think he was also thoroughly bored with the market. It's more a girls thing, I think.

So, after Camden Market we went to this little yarn shop, I knit. It's a nice shop with a lot of Malabrigo and handpainted yarn. Despite the low value of the British pound though, I found the prices for the handpainted stuff to be quite shocking. Even if they had been in Euro, I would have found them expensive. Luckily, handpainted yarn is not a must on my list. Other interesting stuff was yarn from Habu Textiles, like stainless steel yarn, and this blend of merino and possum fur in DK weight - really soft (hm, after reading more about possum fur here, I'm not so sure anymore if I really want to use it. I'm also slightly confused about the use of the term "fur" when you're talking about yarn = just hair, when it's coming from an animal.). I'm just not really the kind of person who buys expensive exotic yarn without having any kind of project in mind. There are questions like, what do you want to knit? How much do you need? Returning leftovers is not easy when you buy the yarn a couple of hundreds kilometeres away from home. And with two guys who were not overly interested in yarn my mind was just not free enough to reach any conclusion... :/ The end of the story is that I didn't buy anything from this shop. By the way, the shop doesn't carry any Rowan. I had assumed that every British yarn shop would carry Rowan yarn.

Afterwards I suggested that we go to a Pub first seeing how bored the guys looked instead of going straight ahead to the John Lewis Department Store on Oxford Street as my friend suggested (I thought after Camden Market and the other yarn shop they needed a break). She was concerned that it would close soon (it was around 6 pm). I said, "Well, that's a big department store, on Oxford Street, and today is Saturday. It's very very unlikely that they will close earlier." Yeah, RIGHT! 7.15 pm we were standing in front of a closed department store and in the window I was able to see balls of Rowan yarn! *sob* (One of my friends later explained to me that the John Lewis Department Store has this social conscience in their business concept included where you treat your staff nicely, meaning nice opening hours, fair salaries, etc. I also read in the newspaper that despite the financial crisis and some minor cuts they had still paid high bonuses to their employees.) And of course, no other department store around Oxford has a haberdashery section... That's how I managed to go to London and come back empty-handed. *sob, sob* I guess, that means I have to go back there again. And there are surely not going to be any bored non-knitters coming with me! :D

On my list of things to do in London was also going to a knitting group. It so happened that, although the three groups I had discovered had irregular meetings, all three of them had a meeting the Thursday I was in town. Serendipity strikes again! :) I decided to check out the Stitch & Bitch group. They seem to be a quite active group that do fun stuff like knit graffiti. On the left hand side is a picture of a knit graffiti I discovered in London. I confused the addresses though and in the end went to another group. They were nice, but less enthusiastic about knitting than my friends from my Sunday group are.





They have a "controlled drinking zone"! :D


Museums:
Ok, I need to go to bed now, but I really want to finish this post. The short version: British Museum is really nice, lots and lots of culture - go there. Didn't see the Natural History Museum, which I regretted, because I got told that there is a huge dinosaur skeleton in the entry hall - go there. Victora and Albert Museum is also interesting - go there. Nice sections about fashion, jewelry, etc. (I just found out they have a knitting section on their website with patterns!)My guidebook said that the museum would close at 5 pm, I think. That's just the half-truth though. At five certain sections close, but many of the interesting sections, the silver jewelry section, for example, continue to be opened. One more thing about this museum: the gift shop is great. I found it somewhat irresistible.


Guess what that is. It's an antique comic! Click on the picture to see a larger version.


A moai, a stone statue from the Easter Island. He's just awesome. I like big statues.



That one reminds me of one of the ghosts in Chihiros Reise ins Zauberland (Spirited Away)


I like the frescos.


The Stone of Rosetta. With the aid of this stone, it was possible for Champollion to decipher the hieroglyphs. I remember this guy's name so well, because when I was an intern in Egypt, there was a street named after him and in this street there was a shop where you could get really good kushari.


A tapestry in the Victoria and Albert Museum.


View from the south bank of the river Thames.




The Tate Modern Gallery is located here. I find the installation in the Turbine Hall to be really great. I really loved that one. You can join free tours. I joined one that was called vortex and something. I like to get explanations to the pictures, although sometimes afterwards I still don't understand what makes them so great. Sometimes the explanation is as weird as the picture.



I didn't see the big dinosaur skeleton in the Natural History Museum, but I found a really cute smaller one here.


I'd say London is worth a visit - go there! :)

Vienna is calling!

Being forced to take the rest of my annual leave from last year before the end of March I asked my friend Hasan, who lives in Vienna, if I could visit him. He was busy, but said it was ok. So, off I was for Vienna on Easter! Yay! :)

Vienna:


















Karlskirche:
The Karlskirche is supposed to be the most beautiful baroque church in Vienna, but that is not the reason why I liked it so much and feel the need to tell you about it. No, the reason why it excites me is the panorama lift that takes you to vertiginous heights to give you a really great view of the fresco paintings on the ceiling (also over the city, but with all the security wire netting occluding and limiting the view it was not really worth it). Usually, a normal visitor will never have the opportunity to see these paintings at such a close distance, but here the scaffolds that had been used for previous restoration works had been preserved to take visitors upstairs (not sure how long they will stay though, seems like they have been around for a while though).




The lift takes you to a platform, from there you have to take stairs (they look the same as the stairs in the first picture ) to reach the top. Let me just tell you, if you're not a fan of heights and standing on a scaffold that surely was stable more or less, but well, not as stable as a nice stone staircase, you would also get the butterflies...


"Running and jumping is dangerous! Shouting is uncool!" Yeah, totally uncool. :D The sign also says that only a maximum of 10 persons is allowed. It also said something about "only under supervision," which everybody seemed to happily ignore. I'll be honest - I was scared shitless at this height. Crazy tourists who happily in their ignorance walked up and down the stairs to the top! Nobody here who cared about the maximum of 10 person! And where was this supervision guy?? In the end I decided to be a sheep and just go with the others, peer pressure you know, didn't want to stick out as the hysterical tourist, and I mean, who has ever heard of a scaffold breaking down under an overload of tourists in an Austrian church, right? Anyway, on my way to the top I was rewarded with a really nice view of the ceiling. If the pictures are blurry, it's because I didn't use a flasha and because my hands were shaking more than usual due whenever someone walked by and caused the scaffold to shake (I was DYING every time inside, I kid you not. :D). There were two information points where you could listen to your audio guide, but I simply didn't feel calm enough to take up any information. I only wanted to get to the top and then downstairs to solid ground as soon as possible. I listened to the information when I was downstairs and I regretted that I missed some interesting tidbits, but it was ok.




A short video that I made with my digital camera, the quality is therefore not that great.






She has this mischievious look on her face. I found the expressions on many faces to be quite interesting, you rarely get to see them with all the details.








Under the top. If I'm not mistaken painting the Holy Spirit in the middle of the ceiling is not uncommon in churches.

Ok, I'll say it (false modesty is so boring), I felt damn proud that I had continued to the top. :D


Kunsthistorisches Museum:

www.khm.at


Exhibition of works of Arcimboldo at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

"The artist was born in Milan where he started his career by working on designs for windows for the city’s cathedral. He worked in his hometown, specialising mainly in religious paintings, before being called to Vienna in 1562 by Maximilian, the eldest son of the Emperor Ferdinand I. For the next twenty-five years he served as court painter to the Emperor Maximilian II and his son, the Emperor Rudolf II, both in Vienna and in Prague, before returning to Milan in 1587."

The exhibition was interesting. I still felt captivated by Arcimboldo's works and skills although the vegetable and fruit composite heads are so known. He painted the flowers, plants, animals that compose the heads with a scientific accuracy that is praiseworthy in itself, but to put them together in such imaginative ways to create faces is ingenious. Get an audio guide (which is not for free, but nevertheless makes the whole tour through the museum more interesting and enlightening).

The museum also exhibited some photos of Bernard Pras, who created his own version of composite heads. He uses 3-dimensional objects located in space to create faces, which can be comprehended best when captured in a 2-dimensional form such as a photo. Take a look at his website, www.pras-bernard.com, I assure you, it's worth it.


Donau City:
Home of apartments, offices, and various UNO institutions in the Vienna International Centre (UNO City). The United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV), one of the four main headquarters of the UN worldwide (the others can be found in New York (that I have already visited with my mom years ago, we took a guided tour there), Geneva and Nairobi), is also located in UNO City.






Passing the Mexikokirche on our way to Donau City.




Sightseeing in Vienna:
Vienna is surrounded by a main street called "der Ring", which is seamed by many of the interesting buildings and tourist attractions that you will find in Vienna such as the Karlskirche, the Museumsquartier with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Naturhistorisches Museum, Leopoldmuseum, Burgtheater, City Hall, Staatsoper, etc.

I haven't been able to visit all of them from within. These are snapshots that I took from outside.

Burgtheater

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgtheater

Stephansdom

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephansdom

Gothic cathedral in the center of Vienna.

City Hall


Österreichische Staatsoper (Austrian State Opera)


At the Opernring in front of the Hotel Sacher. End of Kärnter Straße, close to the Naschmarkt.

Located in the center:
Hofburg


"Hofburg Imperial Palace is a palace in Vienna, Austria, which has housed some of the most powerful people in Austrian history, including the Habsburg dynasty, rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It currently serves as the official residence of the President of Austria. It was the Habsburg's principal winter residence, while Schönbrunn Palace was their preferred summer residence."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofburg

A bit outside:
Schloss Schönbrunn




"Schönbrunn Palace (German: Schloss Schönbrunn [ʃøːnˈbʁʊn]) in Vienna is one of the most important cultural monuments in Austria and since the 1860s has also been one of the major tourist attractions in Vienna. The palace and gardens illustrate the tastes, interests and aspirations of successive Habsburg monarchs."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss_Sch%C3%B6nbrunn

I had a talk yesterday with a friend of mine who is French and she said Schloss Schönbrunn is so great inside. The French castle are all empty inside - many thanks to the French revolution - and she loved that here most was still intact. I also assume that many of the older buildings in Vienna are so well preserved as it didn't get bombed as much as German cities during WW2. If you visit Bamberg you can see how different German cities actually might look like.

Hundertwasserhaus

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertwasserhaus

Accoding to my friend Hasan it's only tourists who visit this house, everybody else in Vienna thinks it's ugly.

Him: "Don't visit this."
Me: "But I want to! How can I not visit this when I am in Vienna and it's not even far from here?"
Him: "It's ugly. Don't visit it."
Me: "But, I want to."
Him: "It's ugly. Don't."

Of course, I went. :D

Gasometer

"A gasometer, or gas-holder, is a large container where natural gas or town gas is stored near atmospheric pressure at ambient temperatures.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasometer

The Gasometers in Vienna now house offices, shopping malls and apartments.

Me: "There's a shopping mall inside, right?"
Him: "Yes, but it's not worth it to visit inside, but you're not going to listen to me anyway..."

That's right, :D but I didn't have the time to see it from inside.



Hasan and I met a couple of years ago in Egypt, lost contact for a while and about two years (?) ago picked up contact again. In the meantime he had started a business with imported juices from Egypt - www.alijuus.com. I like the idea that he sells fresh juices that are made without any kind of additives or preservatives. Oh, and they taste really good, too! My roommates really loved it. He also recently started a business corporation with Sekem, an organisation founded by Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish that is based on the anthroposophic teachings of Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf schools, biodynamic agriculture, does that ring something to you?). I'm skeptical of the anthroposophical teachings (I remember a friend, who was an intern at a biodynamic farm, telling me about stirring fertilizer at moonlight clockwise, then anticlockwise, the clockwise again, something like that...), but I like the holistic approach to sustainable human development and farming.

I learned how to play poker (but not how to win...), I smoked (cigarettes and other stuff passively, ewww) more than ever before, I learned that guys supposedly don't like nice women, I found out that you can meet someone again after five years and it really just seems like no time has passed. And that someone can be quite grumpy but surprisingly still be your friend (he thinks knitting is extremely uncool, he hates being nice, he hates other car drivers, he hates posed photos, hence a fake one with us together, HA :D). He's a moody bitch, but I still like him. He's a doll. :D

Wiener Kaffeehaustradition:
Of course, I had to visit a couple of cafés and see what it's all about the Wiener Kaffeehaustradition.

Café Central: Very elegant with live piano music, but it was full and I didn't feel like waiting, so I moved on to the next café.

Café Hawelka: I ate their famous Buchteln, they are made of yeast dough, usually filled with plum butter, but mine came with poppy seed, which I'm not really that fond of, so dry and the seeds always get stuck between your teeth. The waiter was arrogant, but I was assured by various people that it's their job to be arrogant, that's also why they wear suits, so don't take offense. The café was full with people and the air was thick with smoke. Somehow I think Leonhard Cohen would have loved it here. I had not been aware that this café had such an interesting history of visitors (Friedensreich Hundertwasser, André Heller, Elias Canetti, Henry Miller, Arthur Miller und Andy Warhol, came for a visit whenever they were in Vienna), I just knew it was famous, but had no clue why. It also seems that the walls are decorated with many works of the visitors, which I also didn't notice or maybe they have changed the decoration. My tourist guide obviously failed me here, but you can find more information about the café on their website, albeit only in German www.hawelka.at

Café Prückel: A café with a long history at the "Ring".The waiters here were nicer. I had Apfelstrudel and Palatschinken (very thin pancakes). My friend Hasan said it was Jugendstil, but I thought it had a 60ies touch. I struck up a conversation with a guy, Patrick, from there and he told me that people do indeed spend lots and lots of time in cafés to drink their coffee and read the newspapers (they even had German ones here) or work (like him), which means if you are a single tourist in Vienna, go to a café and just bother an innocent Viennese guest with your questions, because they will have a lot of time for you and nothing better to do anyway. :D Ok, try to to find someone who is not working. :D www.prueckel.at


At the Café Prückel.

I had also already entered the Café Demel (they're the ones who had a quarrel with the Café Sacher about the correct preparation of the Sachertorte and the use of the term "Original". They lost and now are only allowed to sell "Sachertorte" like any other café, but not "Original Sachertorte".) to eat Sachertorte, but I had eaten so much before and didn't want to stuff myself with cake just for the sake of eating it, I also wanted to take pictures of the pastry cooks working behind the scenes and as the batteries of my cameras needed to be recharged I decided to go back later, but I didn't find the time to do so. Next time. :)

Couldn't find any restaurant/café that had Marillenknödel. :(

Conclusion:Vienna is worth a visit. The city is beautiful and there is a lot to see and to discover, I still haven't seen everything, not a single castle from inside. And the cafés are good places to meet people.

Tourist guide: "Wien" by Doris Mair (Merian). I recommend this book. It has a lot of information on everything - museums, castles, restaurants, bars, shops, cafés, public swimming pools, cinemas, theaters, etc. and lots and lots of background information.It also has a foldable map that shows all the interesting tourist spots and six tour cards with different themes (bar tour, coffeehouse tour, composer tour, etc.). I got told by a German couple that this one is better than the one from Baedeker, which they had, as it contains information about bars, public swimming pools, etc. (I actually wanted to go to a swimming pool, but I forgot my swimsuit. I got told that Vienna has some beautiful swimming pools.)

I got home with the "Mitfahrzentrale" - www.mfz.de It's a website that organizes car sharing between strangers. It's a pretty cost efficient and more ecological way of traveling as you share your car and the costs for gas with others, a win-win situation for everybody involved. I was able to get back from Vienna for 19 €! Awesome. Much cheaper than with the train (would have cost 72 € with an Austrian ticket and a bit less with a German ticket). I definitely need to try this out more often.

That was a really long post. I think I can take a break now until next year. :D