(Last) Weekend's Wanderings

This post has been a long time in the making because I was having a lot of trouble uploading the photos, and what's a post without photos? Sorry for the wait, but hopefully it'll be worth it. One quick thing I thought I'd mention; you can click on any of the photos to see a larger version.

As I mentioned so long ago, on Saturday I went to the Life Ball a huge AIDs fundraiser. To escape my pungent room(mate) I decided to eat lunch on the way down. I grabbed a sandwich and ate on a bench in the Museums Quarter in front of one of the (Art?) Museums. It's really cool because there's another one facing it like a mirror image, perfectly identical.After I finished, I waited for my friends in front of the Parliament Buildings, and, at Megan's request, took more photos of the architecture. The photo below shows the mosaics which run around the top 20ft or so of the entrance.
The next two photos are pictures of the giant fountain out front, I should take photos with people in them so you can understand how huge these things are. The cherubs below would be over 6 feet tall, and they're small in comparison to the other people on the fountain in the picture below.
There are four bronze statues out front that I'm sure symbolize something, but to me they look like guys punching horses... Anyone have any ideas?
This is a FAXI, that's a short form of Fahrrad taxi (meaning bike taxi in German), just walked by it and thought it looked cool.
Here's the only decent picture of the Life Ball stage that I got. I eventually worked my way right up to the red carpet, but all my pictures auto-focused on random things like the head of the bald guy in front of me, as opposed the people dressed in the crazy costumes. The first two hours of the event is just a red-carpet procession so everyone who bought the less expensive (still about $120 CAD) "Style" tickets can show off their crazy costumes. The theme this year was "Once Upon a Time" and the costumes ranged from elaborate renaissance ball gowns to people dressed as Tinkerbell wearing thongs, wings, and body-paint. I wish I could find some decent pictures online, but no luck. The highlight of the evening was the last 15min of the procession when all the celebrities entered. People went crazy for what was apparently the creme of the crop of Central European celebrities and politicians. The only people I recognized were the President of Austria and Sharon Stone.
When the procession was finished, there was an hour long concert, but as I was way at the back, and everything was in German, I decided to head home. On the way back I passed the Hofburg and decided to get you guys a night picture. This is one of those things that you really have to see in person, very impressive at night, and no tourists!
On Sunday I decided to take the U-Bahn back to Schönbrunn, the Summer Palace where I went to the classical music concert last Thursday. When you're looking at these pictures keep in mind that this was built as the private summer residence for the Austrian Royal family, and was never intended to be open to the public. This was someone's backyard.

If you enter (for free) and walk to the right, you enter through the rose gardens and come upon the Palm House, which is a Victorian greenhouse filled with tropical plants. There was an entrance fee, so I saved that tour for another day.
The riveted iron structure reminded me of the Eiffel Tower. It was the perfect mix of architectural design and Victorian structural engineering.Behind the Palm House was the Japanese Garden. It's odd to think that when this garden was planned, Japan was still the secretive Orient, making this even more impressive.
The different gardens are connected by these wide paths with giant hedges on either side to separate them, and focus your gaze. At the end of this path you can see the Palace. To give you an idea of how giant this place is, when I took this picture I was already about 1/2 way down the path, and behind me was an entire (formerly private) zoo.
The backs of the 70 foot hedge walls were even more interesting than the fronts. Most of them were only a few feet thick, resulting in giant perfectly flat trees with a thick un-interrupted wall of leaves on only one side. I guess with enough money and a hundred years of pruning you can do pretty much anything.
This is the main fountain which you see from the Palace, and is again larger and more detailed than you could ever imagine.You can walk up behind the fountain and look through back towards the Palace.
I know every other picture on here is closeups of marble fountains, but they amaze me. The woman in this photo was around 25ft tall, but looked more life-like than some people I've met.
On top of the hill behind the fountain there is the "Gloriette", to gain a sense of its size, you can see people leaning on the railing. From the front of the Gloriette you can see the Palace, the majority of the gardens and a large portion of the city, from the back you can see nothing but the acres of Royal hunting grounds which have been maintained despite the fact that this is in the middle of the outer city.
I walked down from the Gloriette snapped another photo of the lower gardens and ventured to the left gardens.This is the pigeon roost which I found at the center of a little maze of hedges. There aren't any birds because it's being renovated, but I thought it looked really cool.
Apparently all nineteenth century Palaces worth living in had fake Roman ruins. I sat here on a bench, ate my lunch, and finished Treasure Island.Around the corner from the ruins was this giant fountain topped with a obelisk resting on the backs of four golden turtles. One interesting note, the hieroglyphs on the front as pre-Rosetta Stone and therefore completely meaningless.
In all, I wandered around this "back-yard" for over 5 hours, leaving the Labyrinth, Zoo, Citrus House, Desert House, and Palm House for another day. You can also pay admission to tour the interior of the Palace and the Carriage House or go see a play (live actor or marionette) in one of the multiple theatres on the grounds.

A new Canadian IAETSE intern arrived in Vienna Sunday night. As all grocery stores were closed on Sunday, and on Monday (another holiday), I gave him a tour of the city and we ate out for every meal ($$$). We found a great inexpensive Italian restaurant run by Viennese Turks, they had the Wedding Singer dubbed over in German playing on the TV, except all the songs (the best part) were still in English.

This week at work I actually got to do something, so it went by quickly. One of my tasks over the next year will be to perform all of the argon atmosphere glove-box work for our experiments. It was a bit frustrating at first, but has become very interesting and fun. I'm not allowed to take photos inside the labs, but this is a picture of a similar glove box from Google. When you start working, you turn on the vacuum pump and push your hands in. On the side you can see the cylindrical entrance/exit air lock. Before anything goes in you have to seal both ends, pull a vacuum for 2min then re-pressurize with argon gas and then repeat twice more. This is to prevent the water or oxygen content from rising over ~3 parts per million (~0.0003%) and ruining everything stored inside. The oxygen and water controls are so strict that you can't even bring oven-dried paper into the box because it holds too much air and moisture.
Hopefully this post was detailed enough to make-up for the long wait. Please remember to add a quick comment, it's nice to know who's following my adventures.