This is the second of 4 challenge weeks.
Want to read the first Week? The daily new location challenge: Week 1
I use this challenge to bring change and more joy in my life, overcome laziness and be a little bit more touristy in my own city, like I am constantly on vacation. Mainly it is just about visiting at least one new location in Vienna (Austria) per day and it should be as diverse as possible.
After the first week I realized two things. Firstly, it is hard taking the time to go somewhere and write about it every day, but it is more fun than studying - whoops.
On the other hand, I have gotten really great feedback from my friends who corrected my English and told me their viewpoints. During this process, I discovered that I have even taught some new cultural and historical backgrounds to friends who live here and I should use the oppurtunity to tell this community more interesting facts about my home place, Vienna.
So here is the next week:
8th Day (Monday, 16th April 2018)
I studied a bit with a really great friend, Gerome, and asked him, if he knows a nice place to go, where I have not already been and he suggested the Café Bunkerei in the Augarten.
This park is the most popular for its pair of FLAK-towers, which served for air-defense in WW2.
Those 55m & 51m high towers (codename “Peter”) with 2m thick concrete walls are seperated in:
There are two other pairs in Vienna and they all are located around the St. Stephen's Cathedral in the center of Vienna.
Also see THESE photos from a group of explorers, called "Die 78er" , who took some shots of the Interior. Wow!
G-tower in the Augarten
I would have liked to visit the towers, but they are not open to public, so we just went to the café and I ate a seasonal soup with ramson/wild garlic (I don’t know what you English people call that stuff). The food tasted great, sadly the ambiente was pretty cold and we did not really feel welcome there in regards to the other customers there. Propably because we are not rich. So FUCK that place.
In the next picture you see the bicycle fanatic Gerome, who currently loves his chilled-out bicycle (recently with lights and brakes!!)
Now he doesn’t have to escape from the police anymore.
Gerome @ Café Bunkerei
9th Day (Tuesday, 17th April 2018)
There is this thing with the Australian Pub in Vienna. Everybody seems to must eat fried grasshoppers at least one time. I have never done it. Exactly! See for yourself:
Totally excited me eating a grasshopper
We got those little fellows with their two eyes looking at me and I definitely was not ready to do this. My girlfriend just said that I should not shit my pants as she already ate her second piece without hesitation. It was hard convincing myself, but soon I also ate those fries with eyes (so proud of that joke). It tasted ok, but I don’t think that I will eat that again, because it is a little bit strange to have grilled little arms and wings in your mouth.
10th Day (Wednesday, 18th April 2018)
OK. Enough. No more restaurants and cafés for you! Like I said in the first week, I don’t want to start a food blog. I am already the proud camera guy of one. Btw, you should definitely check out Peace, Joy And Pancakes. Unfortunately we do it in German, but you can check out the generated English subtitles on our Youtube channel, if you are interested, but they are really dumb.
The guy who is baking and doing funny stuff is my room mate Gabriel and we started to do this one and a half years ago as we moved in together. At first we just did cooking videos with our own style - check out the intros where we presented the ingredients - and after some time we wanted to try different things like The Apple, a parody of the perfect dinner or introduce some local craftspeople to the internet world. What is it like to see this and have no clue what he is saying?
Good, enough self-advertising.
I am really proud that I did the challenge in the beginning of the day because I am always a little bit procrastinating. With the motor bike and my girlfriend, I went to the Baumgartner Höhe. It is a huge hospital facility with an even bigger park around it. It starts with the Am Steinhof Church:
Am Steinhof Church
We also discovered the Ruinenvilla. It is forbidden to go inside, so sadly it is not possible to climb above the fence, see all the grafittis and be a witness of the 19th century. It is also an absolute no-go to go down in the basement and enjoy the untamed wildness and atmosphere of such an old building. We would definitely not do this.
Ruinenvilla in the Dehnepark
11th Day (Thursday, 19th April 2018)
Last year I heard of the Chili-Factory. It is a local shop, specialized in products containing chili. It ranges from chili chips and noodles to some really hot sauces that will blow your mind. I got a pack of chili noodles and really hot roasted peanuts.
Chili-factory in Vienna
After that I went to the Café Francais at the Schottentor to meet two friends. It is nothing new, but I have to mention their awesome Club-Sandwich, which is awesome. I love it!
And I also captioned a funny scene: They seem to have little pigeon issues there and this one was close to jump around in the meal of a woman, as the waiter quickly came and tried to get it out of there. I was a bit slow with the camera because I was laughing so hard.
Waiter getting rid of the pigeon head
On my way home I got into a demo against Kickl who is Secretary of the Interior in Austria and part of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which is not so freedom as it sounds.
The next paragraph is about the current Austrian government and my opinion about it. Skip, if not interested.
It was an unlucky election for open-minded people. This party showed its populism, its unprofessionalism and they have often lied really badly, eg. here is a list of the recorded lies of the FPÖ leader, Heinz Christian (HC) Strache. In my opinion they really profit from the hate and traditionalism, which they communicate and belive me, they always try to be anti. So they’ve got many votes from workers and people who are in love with the Austrian culture and history and don't want to change it (in a globalized super-fast changing world :/ ), but the party makes political decisions, which support rich people instead. Unfortunately they’ve got elected in this legislative period with the Austrian People’s Party, which already happened in 2000. If you’ve ever heard that then you maybe also heard that it ended in "one of Europe’s biggest financial scandals" - Wall Street Journal.
In this last 4 months we also had some problematic happenings “from allegations of an FPÖ-driven purge at a domestic intelligence agency to unexpectedly stiff opposition to the government’s plans to allow smoking in bars and restaurants.” I really wondered why the fuck a Malaysian news agency wrote this well-described article, before I found the same one on USNews, which sounds more plausible to me.
Random thoughts:
Have you ever wondered what this funny letters (äöüß) mean in German?
Let me know in the comments, what you thought! Here is a little explanation.
12th Day (Friday, 20th April 2018)
I had no idea what I should do that day and I thought I will end up in a random restaurant or bar again, but a friend called me pretty upsetly and asked me, if I can help her to move in a new appartment. So directly after my lecture I boarded to her and sweat my ass off looking forward to lifting heavy things and carrying them up and down staircases. I was so happy to hear that neither in her old nor in her new appartment was an elevator. The best thing about moving to another flat is that you can save the fitness appointment and seriously, you really sleep like a baby after this hassle.
Raphi in her new appartment
Anyway, I helped transporting things from one appartment to another, which I have never visited before and in return I got some Sushi in a new cheap, but nice Japanese restaurant.
STRIKE!
13th Day (Saturday, 21st April 2018)
Once I moved in my own flat with my room mates I got a room with a new installed wooden sliding door. I often thought about what I can do with it..
until NOW:
Door with coloured mountains, but still not finished
Where did I go that day? Banana Longboarding hosted a wonderful slide jam on a new longboard freeride track called “Slippery Sniper Snake” (sliding is the key word for freeride). If you have still no clue what this is all about then you should certainly watch my all time favourite freeride video of Liam Morgan.
We were about 15 people and it was a small curvy line, which was quite challenging, but a lot of fun. I am looking forward to seeing their video of that day!
14th Day (Sunday, 22nd April 2018)
For lunch I convinced my friends to go in a Austrian restaurant (“Wirtshaus”). Plan failed - it was closed. The next restaurant was a fancy-pancy Wirtshaus. They told us that they don’t serve food before 3pm. I think they did this because I wore goa-pants because people were eating. That reminded me of the visit at the Bunkerei on Monday, although those people seemed to be unfriendly for no apparent reason. Good. Let’s visit Wieden Bräu. One place I know! Sometimes you are just really happy to go to familiar restaurants with tasty home-made beer and delicious food. After all we found out that they have an outside area to sit in the sun and enjoy the Schnitzel (new location, bitches!)
In my research on Monday I also was really interested in the WW2 flak towers and I learned where all six towers are located. I still was not completely confident about the newly discovered Schnitzel garden, however we visited the Auerbergpark, where two of the towers were located, which we all have never seen. There is also the big (G-) combat tower, where the Museum of Applied Art and the renamed MAK-tower were already established until the facility was closed back in 2011, due to technical deficiencies and security problems. Still pretty handsome and cultural, that huge block.
G-tower in the Arenbergpark
The other L-tower had some other plans. It should be used for a big data center by the IT-company Danube. Still no realisation because of the same reasons. Thanks ORF for the infos!
L-tower in the Arenbergpark
Can somebody please tell me what this means?
Afterwards we passed the Schwarzenbergplatz with its gorgeous water fountain and we discovered an outdoor exhibition - a labyrinth made out of 400 plants - and did a little longboard race through it.
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