Hey friends.
So it turns out I’m in Austria, which –as you may or may not be aware — is not located in the United States. It’s not even in China, despite what the title/tagline of the blog may lead you to believe. Pretty confusing, I know, but bear with me. Basically what’s happening here is that several years ago I made an agreement with myself to record any out-of-country trips that I took from then onward, which is how the China match was ultimately born. I had initially started playing with the idea when I went to visit Connor in Japan in 2007 and realized upon arrival just how many memories of my 2002 trip to the same had faded dramatically, which I found irritating because that one was of the coolest vacations I’ve ever taken. I ended up documenting 2007 Japan through a couple facebook photo albums of Japanese oddities I’d encountered which I then tagged predominantly with sarcastic quips – basically the exact same format as the photoblogs I’ve posted here over the last past year. This worked well enough but I was still emailing big chunks of backstory to go with the pictures to anyone who wanted to hear them. Eventually it became difficult to remember who had been told what, so by the time my first China trip came along I rolled the backstory and the photos together into this blog to keep everything centralized and clear. So I’m gonna put Austria (and future trips) here too, dammit. And yeah, I definitely had to use 250 words to justify that.
Concerning the actual Austria-related part of this post: you may recall that I was always a big proponent of pen-and-paper blogging on the subways of Beijing, but I don’t think I ever posted pictures of any of the rough drafts. Well, today I gave it a shot on an Austrian bus. Check it out:
Airplanes, forts, Jack’s birthday, cake, music, lots of bees*, dinner at a cafe, sleepy really early.
Just kidding. I only wish my handwriting was that good. This is actually copyrighted material belonging to my little brother Jack, who I found scribbling it out on a notepad before bed tonight. He did this with no prompting from me or even our parents, as far as I can tell. Now it’s worth pointing out that if you read the sixth item on Jack’s list as “beer” instead of “bees,” you get a 3rd-person account of Jack throwing a raging 14th birthday party at an Austrian café and passing out early instead of the relatively-less-exciting tale that you’re about to get from me, so on that disappointing note you should probably stop reading now.
UNLESS YOU WANT TO SEE DER AWESOME GERMAN HAIRCUTS THAT IS
Oh my god I am going to rock this quarter-mullet so hard ASAP.
Alright actually come to think of it that last bit of Jack’s reporting was more accurate than I had previously thought so I’ll tell today’s story tomorrow and instead leave you with four pictures – the fort from the outside, the city from the top, and then two scenes in the city that can be seen from the top-o-fort picture.
Here's the fort. I'd tell you its name if it weren't in German...
...which makes me laugh too hard to type every time I attempt. German is the most ridiculous goddamn language on the planet. More on this later. Anyway for the next two pictures, use the golden sphere at 6o'clock for reference
I don't know exactly what this is but it was awesome. It's a really lively city; I'm a big fan so far.