Vienna Day 8th- Budapest Day 45: Death and Goodbyes

pic left: view from the "middle"

pic right: little old lady twins at the train station



The hostel was alive with noise early in the morning so I decided to wake up early and see a few sites before leaving Vienna for Budapest. While eating breakfast at the Hostel's dining room I got to know my roommate of 1 night pretty well.

He is Phil from Australia and will be traveling in Europe for the next 6 weeks and is on his way to Budapest today. He only stopped in Vienna for one night and didn't see anything around town at all. He decide to tagged along and travel with me to Budapest but first we went to St. Stephen and climbed the center tower (only allowed in the middle 22 out of 45 stories) it was some workout but the pay off view was amazing. I wonder what it would like to be on the very top.

I than took a tour under the Cathedral in the catacombs. It's a 25 mins tour of the old and creepy, saw tons of sculls, coffins and dead bodies. Sculls and bones stacked up from the ground up to the ceiling, jars with body organs, ancient coffins with real dead bodies from the 12 century, even a well with bodies of people died from the Plague loved the experience too bad no photos were allowed. We got on the train and it was good traveling with someone and it was a breeze!

We arrived in Budapest and I helped him with finding a hostel, direction and Budapest advices and went seprate ways. I have returned to the Medosz hotel and it's like I have never left. It felt like home which is a little bit scary.. and I really want to come home to LA at this point. I saw Beata and exchanged goodbyes and some warm words.

I met up with my friend Sandor for a drink in a lounge and suddenly a pouring rain with horrifying winds blowing through the city followed by a half an hour of hail. Budapest is always surprising! After meeting with Sandor, I went to Attila's restaurant to say goodbye and a little snack. It was wonderful to have a least a little bit of time to say goodbye to some friends.

Vienna day 6 / Budapest Day 24- June 18th: Day of the Dead

Today is my last day in Vienna and I want to maximized my time here by visiting as many culture institution as possible. It was a rude awakening by those Canadian college frat boys in the morning; apparently they didn't sleep at all and partied all night. The ear plug did me very little good.

My eyes were puffy and emotions bitchy and I wanted to murder somebody....I decided to go to the national library to see the History of Torture and it was a perfect matched for my mood that morning. The old national library is phnominal and it really gave me a grand impression what opulent life styles the Viennese have lived in the past few hundred years. The show was wonderful too. It's a show about pain, suffering, torment, cannibalism, death and injustice in history but all these things have a silver lining of hope and how humanity overcame such obstacles. I never knew death can be so inspiring!

I walked around Volksgarden area and decided why not let's spend some more money on Death; it's the theme of the day! What would be more dead than a 3500 year old Mummy!!!!! It's the King Tut show!When it first came to LA in 1970's it was a smash hit. I wanted too see what the fuss was all about and all I can say was wow!!!!!

I was expecting some dried mummies, some artifacts but what I found was beautiful priceless art and artifacts and more beautiful than I can ever imagined (no actual mummies in the show). At the end of the exhibit there is a quote: “----people of Egypt thought they had erased King Tut from history and Egyptians believe all the kings and pherrors live when their names are remembered and for King Tut was once again reborn and when his tomb was discovered he indeed archived immortality” I was very moved and I didn't need any mummies to impress me.

It was a good time meddling with death all morning and I decided some shopping would lighten up the day so I did that.. saw some really good sales and got some wonderful thing.
I have finally returned to Budapest in the evening and it was a long trip because how slow the train traveled; I went to bed.

Day 1, 2& 3 in Vienna June 13, 14 and 15th- Reflections

If there is such thing as a perfect world Vienna would be one; cultural, clean, beautiful, historic, and wonderful art scenes. everything thing that people dream about. I really love Vienna as a tourist just like how I love San Francisco as a tourist; at the first glance both cities are picturesque but the perfection of Vienna scares me a bit. Like many Americans dream of having that perfect white picked fenced yard, 2.5 kids, a dog and 2 mini vans. It might be someone else's reality but it's all too unreal to me. My first 2 days here have been wonderful!


Unlike in Budapest I no longer have to allocate time to schedule for peeing before being in public for a prolong period of time, public toilets are free and the Austrians are obsessed with cleaning. There are people and street washing trucks constantly cleaning washing the street all hours of the day. It seem like it's a impossible task but the city looks amazingly clean the cleanest metropolitan cities I have visited. People are so orderly here and I feel completely safe and there is no such thing as over charging here. It feels like i am in mega Mulberry st... that's what's so fake about it.
Can people be so perfect? can perfection exist?

I like Los Angeles and New York because it feels real but here not so much, this feels like Disneyland. I spent 5 hours at the Ludwig museum one day and viewed a wonderful special exhibition called "bad painting, good art" I really enjoyed it, i found it very humorist and understood the artists messages or the lack of.

It's a 9 story museum the architecture itself its ok and the interior was lacking other than the connecting catwalks. First floor was my last stop (entry level is on 5th floor) and now I really understand where the term "basement art" came from, Shocking!!!!!

I have never seen art like this in a major institution, photos of killing dogs and use its body parts as art and bodies on people's private parts.... ewww. videos of people eating, peeing and pooping at the same time (with zoom on the pooping part)... videos of self cutting and bleeding allover the place... photo of pretend death with animal body parts. All done in the 50-60's vienna no special effects, all real.

I don't think I have this much pressure and negative emotions viewing art. It's faces of death video! I did get the underlining message from the art works. It showed a tremendous amount of anger, social unjust, confusion and a strong desire and hopelessness to move away from the tradition and classical art form Vienna is known for. It's a painful message for the world to see but I am glad its documented.


I think this is why the perfection of Vienna scares me... The museum visit was symbolic: everything is nearly perfect until you reach the besement and for now I want Vienna to stay perfect in my memory so this time I won't venture down the basement.