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So I am living here in Vienna along the banks of the Danube, or the Donau, whatever you like to call it. Danube, New Danube, Old Danube Deutsch: Donau, Neue Donau, Alte Donau (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Topography of Europe, with Danube marked red (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Vienna is a great city, according to the recent results of the Mercer Quality of Living survey. But the Danube river is an under appreciated part of that quality of life. It has been greatly improved where it flows through Vienna. Vienna has the Danube Canal that curves through the city center and meets up with the river proper in the south east of the city. Additionally, the Austro-Hungarian government in the 19th century had the forethought to gouge a protective floodplain which would be further developed in the 80s to become the new Danube, leaving a 21 km long thread of an island, the Donauinsel, to split the old path off from the new flood stage path of the Danube. This narrow but very long island is essentially one single park which runs down the length of the city. It’s fantastic. Perfect for bike rides, swimming, concerts, running with your staghound, or anything else that requires open green space. But wait! There’s more! One section of the river is completely closed off and forms the old Danube, a man-made oxbow lake, which is also a public space but this one has private tennis courts, water slides, playgrounds, canoes, paddle boats, parks and some cute little garden houses all along it’s shores. This is where it seems most of Vienna goes when the weather gets hot. It is a big enough lake that I sometimes think it could support the entire population of the city if it chose to sunbath all at once. These are the two largest outdoor attractions within the Vienna city limits for water lovers. ...

Bank Austria, sometimes. But not today.

Did a lot of walking yesterday. Perhaps I am spending too much time walking but it is the best way to pass the time while listening to an audiobook. I just finished listening to Norman Mailer’s “The Castle in the Forest”. “Der Waldschloss” was a term used in this fictional account, at the very least, by some of the jewish prisoners at some concentration camp during World War II. It was meant to be ironic. To say their home in the woods was not a prison but a castle was an attempt at preserving a bit of humor after having had all other luxuries taken from them. ...

ESO publication statistics compared to other observatories (Photo credit: European Southern Observatory) So I woke up this morning to find this article sitting in my queue purporting to have raw data indicating that as the population of a county increased so did the percentage of votes in the primary GOP election that were directed to Mitt Romney. The authors of the article are basically pointing out that this anomalous behavior favoring a single candidate is characteristic of a form of voter fraud called vote-flipping. Please send feedback if you have some insight into this kind of statistical analysis or voter fraud. ...

Had a great time helping out with the exhibit at Gallerie Steiner when Zeev came to Vienna. He is a lot of fun to work with and it turned out to be a good idea that he brought his friend Armando to help with the setup the day before. We had a pretty good turn out. Visit before the show ends November 5th. Contact me if you are interested in any of the prints in other formats or framed. http://www.gallery-steiner.com/ http://www.ramielzeev.com/ ...

Oktoberfest Tent in the Prater. Dirndls dirndls everywhere. Behind me there were multiple passed out beer-lovers and it was barely four in the afternoon!

My friends Vala and Leon visited Thailand and brought back this Thai BBQ device in which a bowl of coals has a spaghetti strainer type lid placed on top of it and then the gutter is filled with pork broth, noodles and veggies. Then pork strips are grilled and mix with the soup. Nice compact way of cooking everything in a very small space right on the table!

This cool vintage Austrian military truck was parked in front of my apartment today. Reminded me of the WWII T17 staghound armored car named after my dog. Although it really is nothing like them. Afer a quick Google search I still do not know exactly what make or model of truck this is, and I did not bother to look real close to see a name on it.

Meagan and I stumbled upon this great stencil graffiti in the bridge over the Donaukanal coming back from the Prater park on Sunday.

Neu Grafitti in Landestrasse Haltestelle. “Fuck The Pain. Good Karma.”