Flakturm, the Library and a Corkscrew

Many of you had questions after yesterday's post about why Bill's furniture hadn't yet arrived in Vienna if he's been here since January. I owe you a little mea culpa on this point, because the fact is, the furniture hasn't been sent yet. It's all still in storage at their place back in the states. I think they were waiting until they'd found a place here -- which makes sense -- and now it's just a matter of working out the logistics of getting it shipped.

Above you'll see one of the Nazi air-raid defense towers in the Augarten, the park adjacent to Bill's flat. These towers come in a couple of different styles and are called flakturm. We took a walk through the park yesterday morning and came right to the base of the structures, which are truly massive and intimidatingly ugly -- a fitting metaphor for Nazism itself. That's partly why the towers are still here -- as a memorial to the horrors of that era. They're also so big and dense that demolishing them would cost a fortune, so they remain, scrawled with graffiti like the message above: "Never Again!"

Bill and I haven't quite figured out the purpose of the structure's features, like those big sets of iron girders that protrude from the sides. There's an article about the flakturm here that I intend to read and maybe that will be explained.

Our walk took us through the park and along the canal that runs toward the Danube. There were lots of interesting graffiti pieces and stickers en route -- as I told Bill, "If I start photographing this graffiti we'll be here all day!" But I couldn't resist a closer look at a few favorite pieces.

I see these stickers (above) around Bill's neighborhood and I have no idea what they mean. Half fox, half raccoon? A metaphor for European and North American cooperation, maybe?

This creature is lowering a box labeled "your opinion" into a skip (dumpster) labeled "did not ask for it."

I took this with blogger Bug in mind, because I know she likes her penguins.

We walked along the canal, which gradually became less urban and more of a green corridor, all the way to Vienna's futuristic and whimsical recycling plant, a quirky building with a big tower and colorful decorations on the sides.

Then we caught the underground toward the city center, where we went to the central library. Years ago I'd read a piece in the Washington Post about an exhibit there of the quirky items that the librarians had found in returned books. I thought this was a genius idea, having found a lot of weird bookmarks myself at the school library where I worked. Of course that exhibit was no longer on display (I did ask!) but Bill and I spent some time browsing the library anyway, and figuring out the system for locating English-language books (of which there are many). Bill checked out three books and then we made our way to lunch at a Mexican place in Nestroyplatz, named after Johann Nestroy, who I wrote about yesterday.

From there we walked back to his flat. I was intrigued by the mosaic on this otherwise rather bland apartment building along the way. There's a plaque on the building explaining that the original houses there were destroyed during World War II and the modern structure was erected in the early '60s with government funding. The mural is dated 1965. I like the way it progresses from Old Vienna on the left to a beehived woman and James Bond-looking guy in front of a sportscar on the right.

We spent the afternoon at Bill's flat, relaxing and reading. I read blogs but I didn't comment -- it's a long story but my system here makes commenting a bit cumbersome.

Here's a little video showing the view from his balcony:

We went to the grocery store, which is called Spar, in the evening and picked up some stuff for a modest dinner. I bought a bottle of red wine which we then couldn't open because Bill doesn't have a corkscrew. I went back to Spar for one but of course they were out of stock, so I simply bought a second bottle of wine with a screw top. If I happen to locate a corkscrew elsewhere I'll give it to Bill as a housewarming gift!

Last night we watched the movie "Earthquake" because Bill told me he'd never seen a '70s disaster movie. He's never seen "The Poseidon Adventure" or "The Towering Inferno" or "The Hindenburg" or "Airport" or "The Swarm." How is this possible?! "Earthquake" is the one I had most readily available, because of course I've purchased it to stream online, so we watched that. I'm not sure he was impressed. Well, there's no accounting for taste. 😂