Back into Pop!

After my September exile in the land of Haydn symphonies I always find it a bit difficulty to find my way back into my usual popular-music-listening habits.
But I stumbled across this on the airwaves on my way back from a short hit-and-run-trip into Vienna, and it screams "Pop!" (and also "We're not very original in our naming but PROBABLY ARE SO IN A POST-MODERN IRONIC WAY, HAHA!")



Slightly generic, ephemeral, teenage, unintellectual and not at all new. But ever so feel-good! Alright!

I've got nothing new to tell you.
For no real reason, I'm in a bit of a gloomy mood these days, and am largely holding myself over water with the help of reading and looking at beautiful pictures. I want to live in a sinister room full of books, like so:


(stolen from tumblr)


Good things will come of the start of the winter term next week, taking up permanent residence in Vienna again, painting one of my walls blue and slowly but surely working on the decrease of days between the now and the trip to France. I am a little pathetic, but there you go.

Forest!

A picture of me taken in the woodland twilight (strictly no sparkling!) of last Sunday's afternoon walk with Lisa:

We had planned to go looking for mushrooms, but all we found was moss, acorns and a few very toxic-looking fungi, which we took with us for scientific examination. We decided that they were probably not good for eating, and instead had delicious plum cake and tea.
Somehow Sundays seem more valuable and precious when you've spent the whole week under the yoke of strictly organised working hours. At university, you occasionally forget what weekend means for most of the rest of the population. Quite interesting!

And here a couple of photos of the sheep we met on our way into the woods. I like sheep. We weren't sure if the colourful smaller animal wasn't maybe a shoat (geep?). Apparently some people doubt that such a thing can even exist, but I am quite positive it does. I love hybrids!

Pictures of where I work ... White Staircase

I figured it was about time that I posted some impressions of the place where I'm currently working, in other words, the place that is to blame for the utter lack of posts that has recently dominated this blog.

It's the third September that I spend working at the Esterházy palace in Eisenstadt, as a tour guide, tourist-information-cum-gift-shop employee and doer of everything that needs to be done. The place is so familiar now that I hardly see its beauty any more, but beauty is to be found there, even - or should I say especially - in those places that you don't see glaring down from every other postcard in the shop.

The pictures that I want to post today were taken in the White Staircase, situated in the north-east corner of the palace, the part that faces the park and most noticably bears the traces of the neo-classical renovation and extension that was begun in the early 19th century. Around this time, people had grown tired of the garish colours and affected flourishes of the baroque style, and longed for plain shapes and pure colours - or, in the case of the White Staircase, for a composition of delicate shades of white.

Even stripped of its original function and context - the staircase leads up the 3 floors to the rooms that today serve as the offices of the palace management - with its simple purity, it has an impressive and awe-inspiring effect on the unsuspecting but attentive visitor.

I'm afraid more in a similar vein is probably to follow during the rest of September until I can escape the social seclusion of this provincial town and reclaim my normal life in Vienna.