The Life Ball

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Life Ball is the largest AIDS charity event in the world. It's held at the Rathaus every year, and there is a huge parade of attendees dressed in all sorts of wild costumes. There are 2 types of tickets: the expensive ticket where you wear normal evening attire, and the "less expensive" (still very costly) ticket where you are required to dress in some sort of costume. There are apparently regulations for the costumes, but I think these regulations have to do with not being too conservative, not the other way around! People line the Ring by the Rathaus to watch the parade of costumed people into the Ball. The pictures here are just an example of some of the types of costumes that people wear to this event.

The Europe Concert at Schönbrunn

Every year there is a free concert (Europa-Konzert) at Schönbrunn Palace to kick off the weekend for the Life Ball, the largest single AIDS charity event in the world. The concert is held in the rear of the palace, and the Vienna Philharmonic plays on an outdoor stage. There were supposed to be an estimated 50-70,000 people attending, but I didn't bother to lookup the final count. I met Tobi there late in the afternoon, and he had been camped out there with some of his friends for several hours. Like the Times Square New Year's celebration, the actual concert is much better if you watch it on television, although it was still fun to be there. The first picture is taken from the top of the hill behind the palace, where we started the concert. They had a live ballet for some of the music, which was in that area (2nd picture). For the end of the concert though, we moved down towards the palace so we could hear a bit better. The program can be found HERE, although they did not list the many Johann Strauss encores that were performed at the end. Unfortunately and surprisingly, they did not end with the Blue Danube Waltz. I almost forgot to mention that Bill Clinton was attending the concert to receive a $1 million check for some AIDS charity work he is doing, although I didn't get to see him myself.

A few pics from our party...

Alright, I got the pictures from our party and I'm willing to put a few of them online. The two people you have seen in other pictures are Ted (to the left in the 1st) and my roommate Tobi (to the right in the 2nd). As I mentioned, this was a combination birthday party for Tobi and our housewarming party, although it came much later than planned! The other people pictured attend the University with Tobi. We also finally got to meet our neighbor after 3 months.

I know that I have been really bad about posting in the blog after such a good start, and I got out of the habit of posting when I didn't have my camera for a while. I'm going to try and be much better about updating this in the coming weeks.

More Vienna at Night and Wine Taverns

I went with a few friends to a wine tavern on Saturday night and took a few pictures on the way. Here are two pictures I took on the way to the Shottentor train station, where we met. The first is the Votivkirche and the second is the Rathaus. I've taken pictures of both buildings before, but I thought the view this particular evening was quite beautiful.











I didn't think to take any pictures when we were at the wine tavern unfortunately. It was raining, and I simply forgot, and I actually just remembered that I had them on my camera now. We ended up going to one of the more touristy wine taverns in the 19th district in the Grinzing area, mainly because it was not too far from the train station, and priority 1 was getting out of the rain. The wine taverns open up in the spring and start serving last year's wine, and I hope to check out some different places in the coming months.

We met some interesting characters at the wine tavern. The first was a man who was about to get married. Apparently, there are a whole bunch of things that he was required to do at his "bachelor party," one of which was to tell some random people the pros and cons of marriage. Lucky us, we were the random people! It was pretty funny, at least the parts of it that I was able to understand. We also met a bunch of middle-aged men from Cologne when we were leaving, all of which also got on the same Strassenbahn that we did. I hopped off earlier than the rest to catch the U-Bahn back home, and these same people ended up on the U-Bahn with me. They must have been there for a while, because the gentleman I was talking to was too drunk to remember that I had just been talking to him 20 minutes earlier at the wine tavern and on the Strassenbahn!

I took it easy this past weekend though. We had a belated birthday party for my roommate, Tobi, which was also a REALLY belated housewarming party. This was on Monday, since Tuesday was a holiday here (May 1st). The party was good and all my friends are still talking to me, so all is well! Tobi took some pictures that I will soon have a copy of, but they are available by request only with the exception of my mother! (just joking Mom) :)

Hiking to the Vienna Woods

That's not a grammatical error! I hiked "to" the Vienna Woods today. Unfortunately it had been raining earlier this morning, so the ground was still wet. I was in major need of some outdoors time though, so I decided to hike at least "to" the Vienna Woods and check out some of what was around. I came across a sign for the Wiener Wein Weg (Vienna Wine Trail) which I will have to check out later once the weather is not so wet. This is on the outskirts of the 19th district of Vienna, but the Vienna Woods are actually about 1000 sq km. Only a portion of it is actually in Vienna. There are hiking and biking trails all over the place which I intend to take advantage of in the coming weeks, and the views were spectacular. This is the highest point in the city of Vienna, and is also the start of the Alps (foothills). The last picture is nothing special, just a house that I liked which overlooked the valley in the previous pictures.