(no subject)
I chose the hottest weekend of the year to show Vienna to our intern, R.. she's from germany and had never been before, so I took her to visit my sister and do some sightseeing. some, ha!
it was quite a weekend. we started with a tour of the naschmarkt and karlsplatz and then ended up in museumquarter for a drink on friday night.
on saturday we went to see the national library's state room. it's a baroque room with thousands of leather bound volumes. really impressive. they had a 4 in one ticket for other museums of the national library, so on the same morning we went to see the library's globe collection, the papyrus collection and the esperanto museum. I really loved the esperanto museum. It's a small museum that covers not only esperanto but also other artificial languages, like volapük and klingon. they even had a bit about the influence of other languages on german.
what i loved most: long before modern language purists there were people trying to keep the language clean from foreign influence and invented german words to replace foreign words for things we didn't have a german word for yet. One example they had was "Zug" - the German word for train. Its roots are from traction and it was invented to avoid them foreign words polluting our language. I love these weird little facts about languages. Is there a popular science book on linguistics you can recommend, nanagukris ?
We also had a look at their main reading room and for the sake of completeness, had to check out the main public library, obviously.
I've read a lot about the libraries future lately and most of it was pessimistic. Those who are not pessimist, are the ones with their fingers in their ears singing "we won't become obsolete, we have databases, and know stuff". There's a lot of worry that with the shift to ebooks public libraries will not exist much longer because ebooks can't be bought, they can only be licensed and publishers are unlikely to grant library licenses we can work with and extract as much use as we can from a print resource.
Both the national library and the main public library were busy on Saturday morning and noon. It made me really happy to see them both filled with people reading, playing, working on desks with piles of books next to and a computer in front of them. Libraries might still have use: a quiet, smoke free place where you can work and not have to consume.
We finished Saturday with a barbecue at my friend's place where despite the candles, flares, anti bug spray and my anti-mosquito iPhone app the mosquitoes ate us alive.
We continued our culture programme on Sunday and went to see an exhibition on the democratisation of design, an IKEA exhibition, to be exact at the Imperial Furniture Collection. I think it's the first time I approved of corporate sponsorship in a museum. The exhibition was great. It showed what ideas, political movements, design movements etc. influenced the company, the development of a design idea over the course of the years and it even had a bit on IKEA naming conventions.
What really blew my mind was the typical IKEA living room next to the typical Austrian living room. I should mention that I grew up on IKEA so whenever I need a piece of furniture it barely even occurs to me to look somewhere else. I like how their furniture looks.
The typical IKEA living room consists of the best selling IKEA furniture and looks bright, tidy, comfy and has clear lines and enough space. I liked it. Next to it, the typical Austrian Living room managed to fascinate me, amuse me and creep me out all at the same time. It looked EXACTLY like what would happen if you took all Austrian living rooms and made an average. They hit the nail on the head. From the beechwood look laminate floor, to the (beechwood) wall unit, to the curtains to the typical couch table with the tv magazine and the white lace cloth on which the three remote controls are aligned. It basically looked like any middle class living room and it looked like something I never want to grow up to be like.
My sister and I found it very amusing and agreed we'd never want a living room like that, ever. We also recognised so many people's rooms in there, it was scary. When R. asked what's so bad about the wall unit, I had difficulty to explain that I don't actually think the wall unit is horrible in itself. Whoever wants to put a wall to wall closet in their room (and fill it with the nice glasses that only ever get taken out twice a year and not with books!) I don't mind at all. The whole living room just was stifling middle class boredom, getting everything just so, and doing stuff because what will the neighbours think otherwise? all rolled into one big beechwood piece of oppression.
What I didn't get at all was why you weren't allowed to take pictures. They sell the furniture in their stores, why on earth not photograph them? I think I would have liked a picture of my personal middle class nightmare as a reminder of how I never want to become.
Sorry about that little beechwood induced rant up there. I'm all about spruce and birch ;-)
Our weekend wasn't over yet, after the 4th museum in two days we went to lake neusiedl with my friend P. We were swimming in the lake, explaining to R. how the lake is a wildlife sanctuary for birds when we heard someone point and laugh at something moving in the water. Because of their reaction I first thought it was a prank, but it turned out it was an honest to god snake, swimming in a straight line, with its head out of the water, heading directly for the shore. I had no fucking idea there are snakes that can swim in Austria. R. was pretty sure it was a grass snake, so while I was surprised and freaked out, I wasn't really worried. I should mention that there is only a single kind of poisonous snake in all of Austria. And it's not deadly.
it was quite a weekend. we started with a tour of the naschmarkt and karlsplatz and then ended up in museumquarter for a drink on friday night.
on saturday we went to see the national library's state room. it's a baroque room with thousands of leather bound volumes. really impressive. they had a 4 in one ticket for other museums of the national library, so on the same morning we went to see the library's globe collection, the papyrus collection and the esperanto museum. I really loved the esperanto museum. It's a small museum that covers not only esperanto but also other artificial languages, like volapük and klingon. they even had a bit about the influence of other languages on german.
what i loved most: long before modern language purists there were people trying to keep the language clean from foreign influence and invented german words to replace foreign words for things we didn't have a german word for yet. One example they had was "Zug" - the German word for train. Its roots are from traction and it was invented to avoid them foreign words polluting our language. I love these weird little facts about languages. Is there a popular science book on linguistics you can recommend, nanagukris ?
We also had a look at their main reading room and for the sake of completeness, had to check out the main public library, obviously.
I've read a lot about the libraries future lately and most of it was pessimistic. Those who are not pessimist, are the ones with their fingers in their ears singing "we won't become obsolete, we have databases, and know stuff". There's a lot of worry that with the shift to ebooks public libraries will not exist much longer because ebooks can't be bought, they can only be licensed and publishers are unlikely to grant library licenses we can work with and extract as much use as we can from a print resource.
Both the national library and the main public library were busy on Saturday morning and noon. It made me really happy to see them both filled with people reading, playing, working on desks with piles of books next to and a computer in front of them. Libraries might still have use: a quiet, smoke free place where you can work and not have to consume.
We finished Saturday with a barbecue at my friend's place where despite the candles, flares, anti bug spray and my anti-mosquito iPhone app the mosquitoes ate us alive.
We continued our culture programme on Sunday and went to see an exhibition on the democratisation of design, an IKEA exhibition, to be exact at the Imperial Furniture Collection. I think it's the first time I approved of corporate sponsorship in a museum. The exhibition was great. It showed what ideas, political movements, design movements etc. influenced the company, the development of a design idea over the course of the years and it even had a bit on IKEA naming conventions.
What really blew my mind was the typical IKEA living room next to the typical Austrian living room. I should mention that I grew up on IKEA so whenever I need a piece of furniture it barely even occurs to me to look somewhere else. I like how their furniture looks.
The typical IKEA living room consists of the best selling IKEA furniture and looks bright, tidy, comfy and has clear lines and enough space. I liked it. Next to it, the typical Austrian Living room managed to fascinate me, amuse me and creep me out all at the same time. It looked EXACTLY like what would happen if you took all Austrian living rooms and made an average. They hit the nail on the head. From the beechwood look laminate floor, to the (beechwood) wall unit, to the curtains to the typical couch table with the tv magazine and the white lace cloth on which the three remote controls are aligned. It basically looked like any middle class living room and it looked like something I never want to grow up to be like.
My sister and I found it very amusing and agreed we'd never want a living room like that, ever. We also recognised so many people's rooms in there, it was scary. When R. asked what's so bad about the wall unit, I had difficulty to explain that I don't actually think the wall unit is horrible in itself. Whoever wants to put a wall to wall closet in their room (and fill it with the nice glasses that only ever get taken out twice a year and not with books!) I don't mind at all. The whole living room just was stifling middle class boredom, getting everything just so, and doing stuff because what will the neighbours think otherwise? all rolled into one big beechwood piece of oppression.
What I didn't get at all was why you weren't allowed to take pictures. They sell the furniture in their stores, why on earth not photograph them? I think I would have liked a picture of my personal middle class nightmare as a reminder of how I never want to become.
Sorry about that little beechwood induced rant up there. I'm all about spruce and birch ;-)
Our weekend wasn't over yet, after the 4th museum in two days we went to lake neusiedl with my friend P. We were swimming in the lake, explaining to R. how the lake is a wildlife sanctuary for birds when we heard someone point and laugh at something moving in the water. Because of their reaction I first thought it was a prank, but it turned out it was an honest to god snake, swimming in a straight line, with its head out of the water, heading directly for the shore. I had no fucking idea there are snakes that can swim in Austria. R. was pretty sure it was a grass snake, so while I was surprised and freaked out, I wasn't really worried. I should mention that there is only a single kind of poisonous snake in all of Austria. And it's not deadly.