The weekends.

It occurred to some time yesterday I guess it was, that I hadn't really uttered a peep about what we did on the weekend just past.
And since we're well on our way to the next weekend,  time is sort of running out on that one.
First of all,  I'm making a huge assumption here that anyone actually gives a rat's tiny behind,  and secondly,  sometimes the "muse",  has quite simply left the room.
I suppose that's the ultimate form of laziness,  when I can't quite bring myself to operate a keyboard,  but that's not always the issue at the heart of the matter.
(um,  it's also a good idea to have something to say...)

OK,  Saturday:  Bolstered our courage and went to the Naschmarkt.
It's just a tad too far to walk,  especially for my travelling companion (OK,  maybe for me too)  so we took the car.  Wasn't sure about the parking situation,  so I stopped at the closest Tabac just around the corner from our front door to get a "Parkschein". 

Don't you love all these links I'm shoving in here?  Saves me a heap of explanation,  let me tell you.
They're not all in English, but at least there's pictures.

Found out from the lady at the counter that the parking was free after noon from Saturday onwards.  Bought a spare Parkshein anyway.
We were exceedingly lucky in that we found a parking spot with very little trouble.  (that's right up there with seeing a solar eclipse in my estimation)  and headed into the crowd.


We seem to have a knack for going to this place when it's quite cold out,  and any of the restaurants we peered into we both crowded and smoky.  Interestingly,  one of the places had live music.  A small three man group was playing "easy listening"  or something along those lines.  I thought that was kinda neat.
Took a camera.  Took a picture.  Here it is.

In a similar situation to most any place like this in the winter months,  I'm sure it's going be simply mobbed in the summer time.   I can hardly wait!!

So that was our big outing on Saturday.  Sunday it was once again all about finding yet another church to visit for a service.
Thought we'd see what  Stephansdom had offer. 

(OK,  that link will take you a while to wade through.   I can wait)

Done?

Alrighty.

You may have gathered from the pictures and all the information,  that this place is HUGE.   Very hard to even try and capture on camera.
Here's the thing about going to a service in such a place,  since there are so many tourists,  you have to make it clear to the guy standing guard at the front of the church, (well,  behind the fenced off area that you'll notice in the last video)  that you are in fact going up to the front for the 10:15 mass.  Helps to know what time the mass is as well.   Fortunately there were no three questions to answer like,  "What's your favourite colour?"  or "How many letters did Paul write to the Corintians?"  Or "What's a "Henway"?"

We just said we were going in for a mass.

Come to find out,  a heating system had been installed back in 2000,  and even though it only gets up to around 10 degrees,  that was actually heaps better than just having heated seats.
I could still feel my feet when we left.   Didn't hurt that I wore my boots this time around.

A fine time was had by all.


Especially since there was a choir (who get to sit down!)  and we got to hear some Mozart who,  by the way,  was married in this very church.

Bet you didn't know that one did ya?

At the end of the service,  I did whip out the small camera to try and take a couple shots.
 

It also occurred to me to try and capture some of the ambience in some sort of moving picture format.

Note in the video,  that way over on the other side is the choir,  still seated.   Plus I wanted to keep recording until the organ player was finished,  but I was holding the camera over my head,  and that didn't last long.

Here ya go

And this next one will demonstrate the trouble with tourists.  How I ended up getting it in black and white is a bit of a mystery.  Probably has something to do with operating the video feature on the camera without my glasses on.

Mind you,  anyone coming out of the fenced off area without a camera is most like someone who was just at the service,  but still.  

Please go here....


Maybe tomorrow we'll talk about the driving license situation.

Stay tuned.