September 2004 Archives

This is the place I got diner last night and lunch a couple of days ago. My german is so bad that I think I ordered a dog sandwich instead of chicken. I pronounced huner as hunert... that must be why the guy that made my sandwich laughed.

A kiosk by the train station when I catch the tram in the mornings. Our president isn't very popular over here.

Yet another public transportation photo. I oughta do a whole series of these.

A street in the center of the city, I can't remember what the name is but if'n you really want to know I could tell you. I came here looking for a casino, more about that below.

More from my walk around the old city. Looking at this photo and the next are what made me realize that my digi camera is on it's last legs.

Captions to be coming later, if'n I get around to it. I've finally come to the conclusion that my digi cam is just way to old and kinda sucks. The night pix are blury and...
...well whatever. It's a poor workman who blames his tools. So here are a few more pixs.

I tried to play poker last night but the 'real' cardroom was about a 30 euro ride each way and the casino in town requires a tie and jacket (which I didn't bring and wouldn't have anyway just to play poker in Vienna). I played some video poker and won 20euros, so I guess that was cool enough (better than I do at home).

I'm leaving for Amsterdam tomorrow and think I should be a little more inspired once I get to Holland, we'll see tho.

Gotta go to another talk.

The conference is taking place at the Volksgarten Diskothek which is located on the grounds of the imperial palace. If I were to walk straight out the front door of the buiding, this is what I would see, that's Europe for ya. I think it's a very odd place to have a conference for an open source content management system, normally it is a dance club, so the talks take place in the dance hall section of the facility. It has that kinda musty bar smell, which oddly brings me back to my days as a bartender.

I'm admittedly a computer nerd but boy howdy am I outta my element here. When you look around the room during a talk it is a sea of laptops (mostly running linux) with half the people coding plone sites while the speaker is presenting. Some guy just took a picture of me writing this post... I think it was because of the Dr. Zaius and Atari stickers on my laptop, but maybe it was because of my dashing good looks.

I was talking to some dude from Vienna during one of the breaks and he said that half of the building was built sometime in the mid 19th century and the other half was built in the 50s.

Computers and nerds where royalty once danced. I guess somehow it makes sense...
...I guess.

Captions will be coming later. So far Vienna is just so-so, don't get me wrong I like it just fine and I'm having a great time, but it's kinda slow and seems more like a place I would want to visit when I'm closer to retirement.

I'm getting kinda bored w/taking pictures of European streets and old buildings. I've also noticed that I have a strange fascination w/public transit anywhere I visit, hence all the photos of the trams (let's just say I took a lot more than I've put up here).

My German sucks, but I seem to be picking up enough to not piss people off, either that or I scare them!

That's it for now.