The Palace Down the Street

This weekend Rob has a conference. Of course he does, because it's a four day weekend and we don't have any classes. This particular conference is a working group that has been going on since 1998, and it has an uncanny sense of timing. It is always scheduled for the same week as our family reunion/child's birth/anniversary/you-fill-in-the-blank. So this time around it means that I am on duty with four kids in Wien when I would just as soon go exploring the Neusiedlersee or the Schneeberg or somewhere else.
Rob knows how I feel about this, so he got Shelley to watch the kids during the first session of the conference. I went out looking for a peaceful place to read my book, and I thought of this: the Lichtenstein Palace which, though you'd never know by looking, is just a block down from our snazzy mirrored neighborhood train station. I wandered around taking pictures until I found a bench with this great view (the big picture). I sat down and started into this book that I was really excited about finishing. I had been sitting there not five minutes when two hesitant women asked if they could sit down. I said "sure" and went back to reading. They didn't want to sit down. They wanted to talk to me. About religion. Oh crap. My karma comes back to bite me in the behind! They were two South Koreans who wanted to teach me about my Heavenly Mother and we didn't get very far because a. I'm a believer, b. they were using a completely different version of the Bible and c. it started to rain. I was chastened, and wondered how many people I had contacted on my mission who were paying for a babysitter to preserve their sanity while their husbands were off talking about themes of Confession and Judgment. Ugh.
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Anonymous said…
Beautiful pictures. What book are you trying to finish?
2:14 PM
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