That “fun” thing.

It’s a fairly normal Friday here in Wienerland,  so I may have to improvise just a tad.

First of all,  since it’s June the first,  the “boys” downstairs are setting out their Schanigarten.    They’ve had a team of guys doing the grunt work all morning.  Anyone who has been in the Armed Forces knows what a GRUNT is of course,  right?   You won’t find that in any on line dictionary,  so I suppose I had better fill you in.  It’s a not so very politically correct term that refers to the guys who do the slugging,  or a “General Retard Unfit for Normal Training”.

I first learned that term from one of my older brothers(they’re all older,  btw!)  who,  when he first joined the Canadian Air Force back in the dark ages,  thought a really nice “safe” job would be as a Radar Tech,  only to find out that when he went over to Germany with his young family in the 70s and was stationed at Baden-Söllingen,  every Tom, Dick and Serge (there were some French guys too)  was a Radar Tech,   and they all ended up doing the usual grunt work like starting up and fuelling up the CF-104 Starfighter.  Otherwise known as the Widow-Maker.

He did lose some of his hearing in spite of wearing both ear plugs as well as ear defenders.  Them suckers is loud.

 

So,  here’s what they had at this point.

When I went to the store around noon time they had all the umbrellas up,  with the railing and such,  but it was just starting to rain,  so a picture was out of the question.  Besides which,  I was carrying 24 cans of beer.  That’s 12 litres kids. 

I’m going to miss those half litre cans….

 

Now,  before we get to the “fun” in funicular (which was the only way I could remember how to spell it by the way),  I just want to include this little snippet for your amusement.   It’s been hitting the internet in certain places apparently.

 

 

For as long as it stays up,  there’s an article here from the English version of one of the local news sites.

Life in Absurdistan

The title is mine.  If you read the article,  you’ll notice that for some strange reason,  the writer has switched three Euros to two Pounds.  I think they need a better editor,  and I don’t mean me.

 

So the story goes that this young family that had come down from Germany for a brief stay,  had thought it would be great sport to buy a fish at the store,  somehow hook it onto one of the fishing poles that their kids were using, so as to make it look like he had caught a fish.  Well,  the hubby got arrested.  He didn’t have the proper permit to have a line in the water.   Doesn’t matter if you catch anything it seems.  So that title above says,  “Fish posse,  World laughs over Austrian Trout.   Austria’s authorities are chasing a father over a three Euro trout”.  

*groan*

Reminds me of the little story of the young lady out in the boat reading a book.  Her significant other had come in from fishing,  left all his equipment behind and she thought she’d row out,  drop the hook and read for a while.  The “authorities” came by and were going to charge her with fishing without a licence.  She didn’t understand how that could be,  at which point this “authority” pointed out that she had “all the equipment”,  so she must be fishing.   She said that would be all fine and dandy, except that she’d then have to accuse him of rape,  since he did have “all the equipment”  after all.   He very quickly left her to read her book.   

Not sure if you’ve heard that one.  More of a tall tale than anything I’m sure.

 

 

On to the funicular.    You’ll recall that we took the one in Ljubljana up to the castle?   I think this one is a little longer,  since it’s just over a half kilometre long,  with more than one car,  and they pass each other at a junction that’s about midway up to the half way point.   Seems to me the one in Ljubljana only goes up about 70 metres or so,  but I wouldn’t swear to it.

 

 

No big deal really,  except I’m getting the impression that there are funicular railways all over the hilly bits of Europe. 

 

This (below) is at the half way point where we got off,  since we wanted to sit and have a view of the city.   The sound you hear is the cable that is running the whole time.  Of course,  at some point about thirty seconds in,  the camera didn’t know what to focus on.  And since I can’t see,  I couldn’t really tell at the time.  *sigh*

 

 

Still had to climb a few steps to get to the restaurant.

Here’s your view.

It’s from one of these front row seats.  They never stayed empty long.

There are far better videos on YouTube,  showing the passing area.   You might like to mute this one below,  since the chatter of the passengers is a bit annoying.

Well, at least I think so.

 

 

This embedding video stuff is fun,  innit?

 

Just hope you have the bandwidth.  No help there.

 

Oh,  and the price to go up the funicular?   Dirt cheap!  Seems to me it was something like 24 Kč each.  That’s something like a buck twenty.  The kicker was,  we went to buy our return tickets after we had had our coffee and the ticket machine was busted. Gah!

I fully expected there to be some surly ticket checking person waiting for the lot of us at the bottom,  and I was prepared to argue my case,  but there wasn’t anyone.    It was late Saturday afternoon,  and the funicular was mobbed,  so I think it could very easily have turned into a lynch mob.  That whole Velvet Revolution thing wasn’t all that long ago.  Trying to check tickets as everyone was squeezing out the door would have created a bit of a scene.

 

Of course,  you’re bound to see at least one protest. 

 

 

Somehow it wouldn’t seem like a European city without at least one. 

Can anyone read Czech?  I sure can’t.   They’re on a hunger strike,  but the sign where that’s written (fourth from left) is in English.  I cheated.

 

 

 

Tomorrow I might throw up a bone or two.

 

Have a fine weekend wherever you are.

 

Thanks for stopping in.

 

 

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