schneefink | Entries tagged with vienna

Quoting DD: "If you had told me after the first episode how much I would come to enjoy this series I would have laughed in your face."
I wasn't as skeptical in the beginning but I too did not expect to enjoy this as much as I do.

( 1x07 )

Only one more episode this season!

We also watched the "Origins" animated shorts, and I thought those were meant to give more background worldbuilding information but instead I'm just more confused, especially about the timeline of the breaking etc. I think I'll just wait to see what the show tells us.

This evening there's a "sea of lights" planned in Vienna's first district as a memorial to those who died of COVID and as a show of support to those working in medical/nursing professions. Originally I planned to go, but with reports of how infectious the new variant is I feel less comfortable - yes the demonstration itself is supposed to be distanced but I'd have to get there via public transport. I'm not entirely sure how much of that is an excuse, after all I do take public transport to work five times a week (though not during rush hours, at least.) I both hope and don't that there'll be many people there - it's important to show that those idiots doing weekly protests every Saturday are the minority, but every large gathering is a risk.
Instead, I'll probably put a candle in my window and try to meet the deadline for a uni project I have barely started that's due tomorrow instead of on Wednesday as I'd thought. And maybe in the afternoon I'll find the time to take a short walk in the sunshine, I could use that. I would like to have an extra weekend day, please. This week I've woken up twice in the middle of the night dreaming of unfinished projects and that's very rare for me and very annoying, I'm barely getting enough sleep as it is.

I waited for nearly an hour in the cold today and then marched with the anti-government protest (also expressing solidarity with the metal workers' union in their yearly fight about wages) for almost two hours. I'm tired, but it felt good: there were several thousand people marching and chanting, and the weekly Thursday protests give me hope. Yes, they're nowhere near as big as they were in 2000 because so much bad stuff has become normalized, but they're happening, now also in other cities, and after almost two months the number of participants seems to be growing. Yes, the political direction Austria is currently on is terrible and the right-wing populists are very good at propaganda, but they haven't won yet.

Me, several times each month: I really should rec more fanworks.
Also me, almost every month: does not rec more fanworks.
Have some from the "various" pile: 2 Yuri!!! on Ice, 1 Critical Role, 2 Naruto fics.

The Hero Who Travelled to Faerie in Search of a Bride by

mongoose_bite (Yuri!!! on Ice)
30k, Yuri Plisetsky/Otabek Altin (background Victor/Yuuri), fantasy AU
Summary: The king is dead and in accordance with the custom all worthy aspirants to the crown must set out in search of a bride deserving of the throne. For one soldier, distinguished in battle, it was not enough to seek a princess among the neighbouring kingdoms, because for many years his heart had pulled him towards the distant spires and violet hills of Faerie, a land forbidden to mortals, for so few return...
Why I like it: The atmosphere is beautiful, the romance is very sweet, and I can almost remember the illustrations even though there are none.

hood & glove by

Fahye (Yuri!!! on Ice)
12k, Yuri Plisetsky/Otabek Altin (background Victor/Yuuri), fantasy AU
With gorgeous art by

hawberries
Summary: "I don't mess with the fae," Otabek says.
"I'm not asking you to mess with them," JJ flat-out lies.
Why I like it: More fae! Like in the fic above, I love the worldbuilding here, where fae are tricky and Faerie has its own rules. Also like in the fic above, I like the competent main characters, the slow romance and the atmosphere.

this sudden burst of sunlight by

Attila (Critical Role)
44k, Gilmore/Vax & Keyleth/Kash (background Zahra/Vex), post-ep44, fake dating
Summary: Vax and Kash get drunk and pretend to date. It's all Scanlan's fault.
Why I like it: Isn't it usually the people who pretend to date who end up together? Not here. Vox Machina are ridiculous and also hilarious. And when there are feelings they are all horribly confused, but it works out in the end, to the great relief of everyone who puts up with them and/or loves them.

history has its eyes on you by

tasalmalin (Naruto)
128k, gen (background Minato/Kushina and Kakashi/Gai), time-travel fix-it
Summary: This five-part series is a Kakashi-centric time travel fix-it. It starts out pretty dark, but the real heart of the story is one of healing, and there are happy endings on the horizon.
Why I like it: This series has pretty much everything I love about time travel fix-it stories. It goes from dark angst to fluff and earns it. It also has Naruto-specific elements that I really like, like trauma and therapy, and several things that are spoilers.

An Invincible Summer by

ShanaStoryteller (Naruto)
136k, mostly gen (some Naruto/Sasuke), canon-divergent fix-it AU
Summary: When Naruto is five, he's gutted by a drunken civilian and presumed dead.
Six months later a girl with ash pale hair and dark blue eyes enters the Academy.
Why I like it: Long, drawn-out, cheerful fix-it fic is a beautiful thing. Featuring genderfluid!Naruto, who cares if s/he is overpowered, certainly not me. I also loved the Hyuuga subplot.

Coming hopefully soon: Hockey RPF recs, NiF recs, and a "fics that made me cry" special edition.

Today I went to the Natural History Museum in Vienna and it's so great, so many beautiful pieces (example: flower of iron (not actually iron.)) Sadly in many rooms, especially the mineralogy ones, there is not as much information about the exhibits as I would like, but even just looking at them is amazing. The museum is not far from my new job (where I will start on Monday!) and I have an annual ticket, I could just drop by for a quick visit after work whenever I want.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/193719.html

When I wasn't distracted by thinking about D&D today, I went into the catacombs below St. Stephen's Cathedral. It was slightly less impressive than I remembered from the last time I was there, about fifteen years ago, but still pretty cool. First all the coffins of the bishops and dukes etc. I learned that for quite some time Austria's emperors were buried in three pieces: their heart in a silver urn in the crypt below St. Augustin's, the rest of their organs in a copper urn below St. Stephen's, and their embalmed bodies in the Imperial Crypt below the Capuchin Church.

Then the area that used to be a common cemetery, but they had to stop using it after forty years because the smell of the decomposing bodies became so bad that they couldn't even use the church anymore. During that time they buried thousands of bodies there, stacking the coffins up to the ceiling in large rooms that they then bricked up. Every once in a while they had criminals come down and open the coffins, clean the bones, and staple them up like firewood to create more space for new coffins.

Last the plague pit, where they just threw in the bodies because there were too many dead to bury them properly. It was weird to think of an underground cemetery having two floors.

There was also this weird moment of "whoa, these are real bones." Some almost intact skeletons, some wild heaps of bones, a very densely stacked wall of bones with some skulls in it. Real bones of real people, very cool feeling of history becoming more tangible.

At the end of the tour our guide recommended that we don't use the exit - uh, what? - because it was pouring outside, so we left via the entrance. When we'd entered the church half an hour earlier it was very hot and humid, but we hadn't expected heavy rain until the evening. St. Stephen's square was basically empty. I knew I was going to be wet anyway; if my sandals hadn't become so slippery when wet that I was afraid to break my ankles, I would have danced in the square just for fun.

Right now I want to visit all the other crypts and catacombs in the city, plus some of the more notable cemeteries. I probably won't get around to many for some time, but still. Catacombs are cool.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/169517.html

Vienna currently has a majority voting system, and also thanks to that the socialist party SPÖ has been in power for the past several decades. Only at the last election they only got 49 of a hundred seats, so they entered a coalition with the Green party.

The Green party thinks the majority voting system gives the SPÖ an unfair advantage and wants to change it. SPÖ isn't happy about it, and they can't agree on a compromise. The Green party announces that they'll try to change the voting system with the help of the two opposition parties. SPÖ isn't happy about that at all.

And then suddenly one delegate in the Viennese parliament switches from the Green party to the SPÖ, and the opposition + Green party don't have a majority anymore for their voting system change.

It's such a perfect example for how politics is all about power, even though it should be (and is) frustrating I can't help but grin every time I think about it.

So far neither the SPÖ nor the Green party have cancelled the coalition, though both say they feel betrayed by their partner. Next election is planned for October. We'll see.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/116428.html

A few days ago I happened to see two lines in small print in the newspaper saying that Vienna's women's hockey team is up 1-0 in the best of three championship final. I'd planned to go to one of their games for a long time now, but somehow never got around to it (also their schedule is confusing because they play in several different leagues and sometimes mix teams etc.) But the second, and potentially last, final game was on Saturday, I knew the time and place, and entry was free. So I called DD, recruited a friend who's never been to a hockey game before, she brought her sister, and we went to the game.

At first I thought we were in the wrong hall. There was almost nobody there! The same hall that usually has several thousand fans when the men's team (the Vienna Capitals) plays, with 7000 seats. All in all there were maybe 200 people there, and someone later told us that usually during the season it's a lot less. I was pretty shocked by that. I figured that there was a difference in attendance, but not that it was this large! I get angry when I think about it.

The game itself was great. My hockey newbie friends, who at first had thought it was strange when I told them shifts are only about 40 seconds, were very surprised how fast it was. No bodychecks allowed, but I didn't miss them and almost kinda liked it, good for the flow of the game. They weren't as fast or accurate as NHL players, of course, especially the accuracy was notable. But the difference to the EBEL (Austrian+other countries' men's league) is much lower. The main difference, it seemed to us, was that their shots were notably less hard. I don't know why they even tried to shoot on goal from the outside, didn't seem very promising to me. They only had three forward lines and two D pairs, no wonder that toward the end of the game they seemed a bit tired. The Vienna team, the EHV Sabres, came out slow and sloppy after the intermissions, but fortunately rallied. They made a few stupid mistakes, missed a few good chances, business as usual. The game was 0-0 after two periods, then 1-0 Salzburg, but it ended 2-1 Vienna, with a very pretty GWG. That meant Vienna won the championship! \o/
(Of course only the men's championship banner hangs in the rafters. Even though the Sabres won several championships the past few years.)

Live games are great. I'm usually pretty vocal, commenting and cursing and arms in the air when we score, much more so than my friends, but they thought it was cool so I didn't feel self-conscious about it. (Even less of a problem in games with several thousand fans.) The women's season is over, but the Caps are still playing in the EBEL semi-finals, and we said we'd go to a game if they make it to the finals. But next season we're definitely going to more Sabres games! Apparently all of their games are free. And we'll have to try and get a few more people to come with us, there should be so many more.

Crossposts: http://schneefink.livejournal.com/116061.html

On Monday aunt E. I went to the zoo. I hadn't been in ages, I almost forgot how fantastic the Schönbrunn zoo is. Now they have commentary for every public feeding about the animals, it's very interesting. We saw two different penguin feedings - they're so cute! Unfortunately the polar bears are currently out of town because they're rebuilding that part.

( Some pictures under the cut )

Yesterday we went to the museum of art history and visited the Kunstkammer (art chamber) that only reopened in March and that I'd never seen before. It's amazing. So much pretty stuff! I especially loved the bowls and cups cut from colorful stone, and also the crystal carafes, and the gold automatons, and everything else.

( Some pictures under the cut )