Tuesday: German Class & Bike Ride

We got a couple of new people in class today. Actually, people who were enrolled but missed yesterday's class.

A young woman from Slovakia, a young man from Iran, and a young man from Nigeria.

And I learned my Polish buddy, Darek, might leave class to move up to the higher level class. No sense studying stuff you already more or less know...

There's a guy my age or a few years old from Cuba. I'd love to hear his story sometime...
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Guess what happened today? Sunshine. No rain. As I write this it's about 5:30 PM in Vienna and it's a comfortable 78 F.

Meantime it's 10:30 AM in Oklahoma and it's already 100 fuckin' degrees. Maybe it's time to sell my house and just give up on that place altogether, if this is what we can expect from future summers...

We took a bike ride along the Danube after I got home from school. Pleasant day for a bike ride, with no wind to fight (another reason to wonder how Oklahoma manages to hold onto its people...)

 "I have found swans' opinion of me is influenced by whether or not I have bread."

Line stolen from the late great Mitch Hedberg, and altered from the original "ducks."

A Buddhist temple on the banks of the Danube.

Close up of a hydrofoil crew preparing to enter a lock on the Danube.

Looks like a space craft to me...

People enjoying the sun and water along the Danube.
Some version of this pic was repeated hundreds of times along our bike route.

A guy being towed by an overhead cable. There were about ten guys doing this.

The U.N. City on the other side of the Danube.
Enlarge the pick and notice the hills at the far left in the far distance.
Those hills are just behind B's house.

One of the reasons I enjoy Vienna is because there are plenty of public spaces to enjoy for free. You can walk or skate or ride along the Danube, stop to take a picnic or go fishing, lay out in the sun reading a book, etc. Parks and public paths abound. It's called "Lebensqualitat," or "quality of life."