Time off in Austria

Well, actually just an afternoon.

Our first stop in this country was Linz where we played a show at KAPU. This is one of those great European venues that feed you, understand you, love you, and give you a nice warm bed to sleep in - all without going outside or halting alcohol consumption. The artist apartment was cluttered with the ghosts of previous guests who communicated through their markings on the walls.



Linz was pretty the way you'd expect an old European city situated along the banks of the Danube River to be. In the antique shops we noticed more miniatures! I couldn't help but think that these were very adult artifacts people at one time collected to imagine an ostentatious life that was out of reach in reality. At this realization, I remembered the Philip K. Dick book I began reading off of someone's bookshelf back in England, The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch where the unlucky inhabitants of the future world use miniature mis-en-scenes and narcotics to imagine a world other than thier own.




This became slightly more plausible when we next visited Vienna, a very ostentatious city indeed.

It was, however, a really lovely day and my hangover had finally passed so our friend Kerr took us for a long walk through the city.





Sadly, it was a Monday and museums were closed so we couldn't get up close to any products from the city's famous sons - Gustav Klimt & Egon Schiele (I pretty badly wanted to see the latter's city/landscapes.)

As crazily ornate as most buildings are, the Viennese are an austere folk and besides the massive bronze statues of Goethe and men on horses, this was my favorite.