OK, so in my mental map of Vienna, the city is a wheel. The first district is a hubcap, and right at the center of the hubcap is St. Stephen's cathedral, or the Stefansdom, nicknamed Steffl. Rob maintains that when you go to a city, you must pay homage to the center of town, and in this town, Steffl is it. We've climbed the stairs to the tower multiple times, but Sebi had yet to do it on his own (he was one in 2005, and I stayed down with him in 2006 when we were here for about ten minutes on our grand tour of German-speaking Europe; Maddie and Will went last week with the students, and Sebastian had been itching to go ever since).
In a propitious coincidence, our former student, Kelli was in town, flying back from Tanzania and waiting until her cruise starts in Rome. Kelli was here in 2002 with us, and was known well by the staff of the national library as the woman who listened to Garth Brooks while perusing the microfilms. Now she's in medical school and getting a masters in global health on the side. Kelli is, when she's not saving the world or sleeping off the saving of the world, game for most anything (not unlike Sarah, which fact we took great advantage of), and so it was that she and the kids and Rob went downtown. Here they are in the Volksgarten, which has all of its roses abloom right now. There is also a picture of the Plague Column and the Hofburg (the emperor's city palace).
And here we have Sebi conquering the Stefansturm. He went all the way up. He didn't ask for help. He wasn't scared. Only a little coming down. He heard the stories about the tower being used to spot fires in Vienna, and as a lookout for the coming of the Turks (who came a lot back when Steffl was the highest thing around). And as they were coming back down, the bells began to ring. A nice welcome down to earth again.
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