The Viennese are a little aloof, this happens when you rule Europe for several hundred years, but it isn’t a bad kind of aloof it’s just that the people aren’t super-American friendly. Imagine what the world will be like in another 20 years where everyone has spent 40 years on Facebook, listening to their favorite … More Vienna: Keeping Things like 1780 since 1941
Today we will be examining a manhole cover from the city of Vienna, Austria. In the United States, Vienna is primarily known as the place that produces those little sausages that come in cans. (I did not see any of these sausages while in Vienna, but there was an attempt to get me to eat … More An Inaccurate Guide to European Manhole Cover Art: Vienna
I sat down with myself, as I often do, in a chair in front of my computer and asked myself a few of the questions people have asked me since returning from TSOJ. This will be my final blog entry for a few months because I have a couple secret writing projects I am working … More TSOJ: An Interview with Myself
Traveling is a disease that only has one cure, more traveling. While I enjoyed my time in Vienna I came away from Vienna knowing that three days were not enough to fully see the city, but here are a few observations about a city that I will have to return to on my next trip … More TSOJ: Final Thoughts on Vienna
Vienna has some interesting church history, but like most history it is too complicated for me to really understand so let me condense it down a bit for you: The Hapsburg Dynasty was pretty much Catholic and therefore everybody in the Austrian Empire was pretty much Catholic. The Hapsburg Dynasty lasted 800 years and in … More TSOJ: A Trinity of Vienna’s Cathedrals, and Why is Siegfried’s sword so small?
On my final day in Vienna I had some serious choices to make, had I been able to travel back in time and reorganize my trip I would have added a day to Vienna and taken a day away from Munich. (Not that Munich isn’t a great city, it just isn’t Vienna.) The number one … More TSOJ: Vienna’s Belvedere
Before most bike tours start there is a tiny tutorial about how to use the bikes, the bike rules in the city, and how to avoid getting killed on the bike tour, but not with Walter (pronounced Valter for those of you who speak English properly.) Walter simply asked if we all had bikes, looked … More TSOJ: A Vienna Bike Tour with The Terminator
About 20 minutes into my walking tour of Vienna, I began to think that my tour guide was making stuff up. Not the big stuff about the Hapsburg Dynasty and their 800 years of rule, but the little stuff that only someone a PhD in Austrian History would know. The first “white” lie happened when … More TSOJ: Vienna Has Excellent Drinking Water, or Does It?
I have never been to an Opera. I have never really wanted to go to the Opera because you have to dress up a lot more than I want to, and I really don’t know enough about the operas to enjoy them, but when I found out that I could attend an opera for free … More TSOJ: A Night at the Opera…I put on pants for this?
Top Ten things I am looking forward to during The Summer of Jon 10. Eating three hotdogs each day while in Iceland at Bæjarins beztu pylsur. 9. A full day at the Blue Lagoon. (Slippers and robe included.) 8. Seeing Munch’s The Scream. 7. Spending some time … More Let The Summer of Jon Begin: Top Ten
South of the Strait 