Last day and night in Vienna

Well luckily the rain held off for the bulk of today so I didn't get wet, however that isn't to say that the sun came out as it was overcast and cloudy every day and it will show in all the photos { or at least it would if the poxy camera and laptop would work together as they are suppose to! }.

It is always nice to know that my blog readers are enjoying themselves, so if anyone has any CONSTRUCTIVE, or even neutral, comments then I would love to hear them, but if you have any negative ones then please keep them to yourselves, lol.

Using google analytics I can see that I have a nice few readers in London and Chatham as well as a few on the west coast of USA, but strangely even though I have over 100 internet friends in about 40 countries not all of them have even viewed my blog once in the last month, as Argentina, Costa Rica, Brazil and Japan all show up as zero hits, so tut tut to those few who are either too busy to read my blog, and for those who are not allowed I pity you and hope that we can keep in touch in other ways.

I have found that Vienna is very much like Prague in that the historical buildings are everywhere and so common that after awhile you almost become blinded to their beauty and it is only the truly magnificent ones that catch your eye.

Having said that, I spend a good few hours with my backs to walls so that I could get as full a photo of key buildings as I could, and I found that often they were right behind me, and at times it almost felt as is I was going round the city backwards.

The good news is that many years ago the city fathers decided that they would not allow any sleazy brothels, massage parlours or nightclubs in the city centre, so if you want that kind of thing you have to go near the outer ring roads that circle the city, but what it does have is a very tasteful sex shops selling all kinds of goodies for men and women.


{Just for the record. as I went along on the overground tube network I counted at least ten along the same road, all pretty shabby looking, all right next to the entrances/exits and nearby them in one direction or another was also a hotel, so feel free to draw your own conclusions!}

When I first saw the shop directly outside the tube stop I paused and doubted whether to go in, until I saw a teenage daughter led by her mother go inside, and that sort of convinced me that if they were allowed to go inside without any finger pointing then surely I, a single guy, would not be out of place.

The first thing that hit me was that the salespeople were all women, but not all busts and lipstick but respectable middle aged women who were wearing decent length clothes and modest make-up.

The next thing I noticed was that neither of the saleswomen spoke any English which led me to believe that the place was mainly for locals and not tourists.

Being brightly lit they were not at all camera shy and on the way out I saw a couple being eagerly led by the guy and the girl was not objecting or struggling in the slightest.

From this moment on I can only assume that this was what a Ann Summers shop is like, and now that I have been here nothing much could hold any fear for me now.

When the rain did finally show up I had timed it perfectly as I have chosen to watch the new Vin Diesel film "Babylon A.D." at 5pm in an English speaking cinema, that was pokey and small and smelled off gone off popcorn from the outside, but once in the theatre itself the smell subsided.

The film was pretty much a post apocalyptic sci-fi where the world had gone to the dogs, to a crazy religion and where bombs going off in inner cities was pretty much the norm.

It was good to see Vin back in action, but the camera work and script wasn't amazing and it wouldn't be on my DVD to buy collectoin as after you watch it once it has littl repeat value.

Back at my hostel I was just bashing this out and trying in vein to get the stupid machine and camera to work when the nice American woman next to me suggested just inserting the card directly into the machine.

Well, being totally honest, the first thing she suggested was launching it against the wall, but once the joke wore off she then was helpful, and I felt like a bit of a moron with this stranger telling me how to use my own laptop. But then hey, it is still a new thing for me, and I have only been keeping to the basics til I really got the hang of it.

Anyhoo ... heres a few of them photos I mentioned.