Vienna - City of Tiny Lights

Big thank yous go out to Berenice and Magnus (from Vienna) for making last night a great one! Berenice has been posting comments on Magnus' pictures at 23hq.com (Bere, please post link!) and so she introduced us.

I got some great shots of Schoenborn Palace yesterday, and I'm working on getting tickets to see Mozart tonight, so don't worry, I am getting a good mix of culture here.

Magnus and I met last night at Karlsplatz, a major transit centre here in Vienna. I said I'd be wearing a blue raincoat, he said he'd have an exploding umbrella. We agreed to meet in this huge expanse of territory, and somehow found each other. Headed over to the venue to find we were about 2 hours early, so he took me on a breakneck pace walking tour of the city, mostly of the museums. He suggested the Leopold Museum, so that will be the one I go to in addition to the Freud museum.

Had a drink, checked out his workspace, and then back to the venue. A bar was setup in the basement of Konzerthaus, along with a room with about 50 chairs, a set of decks and a guitar. Two men dressed as pirates were the hosts for the program, called Taugshow. Taug, as I understand it, is to really dig something here in Vienna. It's part of a larger event called Paraflows '06 that's going on now. They did it in English for the first time, which was great for me, as my German is pretty bad.

Their guests included such eclectic guests as Lauren Hill's personal shopper and a man from New Zealand who is working on a project to create self-replicating machines. The monologue (or dialogue) between the two hosts and the audience at the beginning focused on typos in email (or eNail, they quipped), and was pretty damn witty at times.

The musical act was also well-placed and well received. I have to get all the names straight, and I'll post a link to the main site later.

I'm off to the brunch they're hosting for Paraflows now, and I have to probably go to the venue to score those Mozart tix and it looks like rain. Should be an interesting day, if not a dry one, here in Vienna.