Prater Break (still Saturday . . . )

Will and I agreed, as we so rarely do, that since we were having to change trains at the Prater stop, that we should ride a couple of the rides at the Prater (Vienna's amusement park). So we walked down the Hauptallee until we reached that pinnacle of Viennese kitsch, the Hochschaubahn (a wee, alpine rollercoaster from the early post-war era which is all cement and has garden gnomes and the like; Rob had a student do his thesis on it, so we found out that at one point some homeless person lived in the highest tower for nearly a year, and all sorts of other useless factoids about it). I asked Sebastian after his ride if it was too scary, and he said "NO! IT WAS AWESOME!! OOOOWESOME!" I was glad that we'd made his day. Then we let him ride the Monzabahn (above in the little green car), and Will got to ride in the bumper cars. Maddie was, like me, just plain garden-variety tired, so she opted out of a second ride. We stopped by Mr. Lee's Quick Lee chinese food and got take out for dinner. I don't know when I was so happy to take off my shoes and lie down!
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Comments

Kathryn said…
Wow.. what a day! Love your nifty photo collages! Is Sebi missing a tooth? Living vicariously through you and your adventures. We still have one more month of school here! Enjoy!
12:58 PM
Mary Ann said…
After I took off my shoes, Sarah invited me to come to a free organ concert at the Michaelerkirche which reputedly has the most beautiful organ in Vienna. I went with low expectations, not loving the more-is-better organs that I'm most familiar with, but this one was small, baroque, and truly beautiful. The organist's interpretation was almost madrigal-like in several places. Afterward, we were invited up to see the secrets of the organ, and I found out that Sarah has a long and illustrious career as an organ tuning assistant (she says "I held down the keys"). I also learned that translation from German to English is hampered by their penchant for sticking all secondary verbs at the end of the sentence. Finally, we learned that the organist played with a fanny pack, but we didn't have the nerve to ask him what he kept in it. Then I made Sarah walk come across the entire first district because I was so excited not to be corralling kidlets and pushing a stroller. I got her an eis for her troubles.
5:15 AM
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