Sunday Photo Hunt

I call it a "photo hunt" because the main purpose is to just ride around / walk around looking for things to shoot.

 Old buildings like this, unrestored, are unusual in Vienna.
Ordinarily they're snatched up and renovated.

Details of the balcony.

A subway station (closed) designed by famed architect Otto Wagner.

Close-up of a roof detail of a 4 or 5 story building.

I was sitting in the shady courtyard of Cafe Rudigerhof.

A duck meditating at a pond in the Stadtpark.

The caption more or less writes itself.
A statue in the Stadtpark.

Graffiti that seems to make sense.

And now, people whose souls I captured, starting with some of Vienna's finest sleepyheads:

"And I love to live so pleasantly
Live this life of luxury
Lazing on a Sunday afternoon
In the summertime..."
SUNDAY AFTERNOON by The Kinks

A woman in a subway train.

This woman was meditating in the Stadtpark.
Eyes closed, hands on her lap, the whole deal.

Then she became enlightened, and was awake.

A woman taking a break from being a mommy.

Uh.......dwarfs.

B had a surprise for me when we visited Mirabel Palace in Salzburg, but she wisely saved it until we arrived on the grounds---

---there's a beautiful park ringed by statues of dwarfs.

Here's a comment from a travel site about this bizarre place: "The Zwerglgarten (Dwarves' Garden) is a small place in a corner of Mirabell Garden and very popular with children, but also with other visitors. There are about fifteen dwarves, they are about 1,20m - 1,40m tall and depict professions of daily life: A gardener, a salesman, a tradesman...

"There had originally been 28 dwarves, made for Ludwig I, king of Bayern, but he found them so disagreeable [emphasis mine] that he wanted them to be destroyed. They were scattered to the four winds, but fortunately about half of them could be found again and are now on dislay here. They are made of marble and look very funny and quaint. A nice photo opportunity!"

It took me a few minutes to steel myself to cross the little bridge to the garden but once I convinced myself "they're just statutes...just statues..." I calmed down enough to take these pics:

Well, they're just statues.

But you know, such creatures exist in the wild, and they are crafty. Dangerous. Powerful.

Especially if they have palindromic names, like Bob, Otto, Anna, or Ada.

Beware the Smalls. You've been warned.

Salzburg

Friday, we were up early (6 AM!) for a drive to Salzburg with the folks.

Actually, the folks were driving to nearby Strasswalchen to visit the graves of B's mother's family---her cousin was a famous mountain climber, a very unusual thing for a woman in those days, when women were expected to raise a family and be a housewife. Tante Erni died in a mountaineering accident in 1970 at the age of 34.

The folks stayed behind to visit friends. B and I hopped a train to Salzburg. We spent about five hours roaming around. Below, some of what we saw.

The almost-invisible man: sculpture in Salzburg.

 A "frozen" street performer who seems to float.

The Salzburg Festival is going on now. Result: big crowds.

The guy who owns Red Bull (an Austrian) also owns the Afro Cafe in Salzburg.
We ate lunch there. Nice setting, decent food.

There was a guy named Mozart who was some kind of big deal in the music world.
This is the building where he was born. Enlarge the pic and note Japanese tourists looking out the window. A lot of Japanese people love classical music and visit Austria.

 High above town is Hohensalzburg Castle.
We walked up there but didn't go inside; too expensive.
Instead we roamed through the woods nearby, eventually working our way back down.

In the woods, a huge water valve as "art."
Not sure what it came out of; maybe the city water works?

Another view of town from above.

 He kicked off his US presidential campaign in Salzburg.

 The gardens at Mirabel Palace.

Fountain in the Mirabel gardens.

More of the same.

A building adjacent to the main train station, Salzburg.

It had been a beautiful, sunny day.
But it rained on the way home.
Payoff: several nice rainbows.
I don't like the electric wires in the shot, but you take what you can get at 85 MPH.