The House I Want

Quick: read the post below this one first!
Done that? Okay, read on.
Up on the cliffs above even the Museum of Modern Art, there are some fancy houses. And here's the one I will live in when my bestseller is published:


Why in particular, you ask? Well, after taking the above picture, I simply turned 180 degrees and took this (which is a long way of saying, "because of the view"):


Here's the side view. Make sure you enlarge so you can see the strange ball-thingie on top of the tower.


Now, the neighbours may have a more ostentatious house (/castle) but it's not red, and it looks draughty:

Up on the cliffs

See these cliffs?


It turns out that on top of them is the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art (which, because I don't structure the order of my posts as cleverly as Jami, you will probably just have read about). This morning I determined to go and check it out. The first thing you do is get in a lift at the bottom. The ride is very short, but they still provide a TV for your entertainment during the ride:



When I got to the top, the museum hadn't opened yet. The restaurant was open, but because I'd already eaten (thank you, Heart of Joy) I decided to wander around a bit. And boy, what views. And people live up here too (see post above).



And you know I couldn't resist a couple of panoramas:

A sheepish admission

Okay, so I now realize that my camera can't actually read my mind. Turns out there's this little wheel on the top of it that has various settings, but that gets knocked every time I put it into its case, and one of the settings takes three photos and lines them up. It actually includes the leftmost (if you're going left-to-right) part of one photo at the right side of the next so you can line them up as you take them. So all that happened that one time (see below) was that I'd bumped the wheel to that setting. Oh well, perhaps it's just as well that machines aren't telepathic yet. On the positive side, I can now do it as often as I like! So I went a little crazy with it, as you can see. (Oh, and it actually says "stitching pictures together" - I'm not sure if that's a surgical or craft-y metaphor, but I like it.)

Snowy day

Well, I'm back in the Heart of Joy for breakfast and internet access. And to report that the sleet turned to snow. I spent yesterday morning walking around in it (as the pictures below attest) but gave in in the afternoon and attended the sessions at the conference. Not snowing today though...

Strange local fauna

Austria is indeed a magical land, as you can see from these exhibits in the (amazing, huge) science museum:




I like the contrast between the biggest and smallest beetles here. The smallest is at the end of the arrow at the bottom:

Clever Camera

I was taking a series of pictures with the thought that I could somehow edit them into a panorama, and my camera did it for me! Somehow it recognized my intentions (apparently Kodak now has mind-reading technology) and I saw this message "merging pictures now" and this appeared:


Like a bad wig, you can see the join, but still, pretty impressive. (Click to enlarge, as you can do with any of the pictures.) However, I'm a bit alarmed by the implications. For one thing, it doesn't appear to have saved the originals separately, so if I didn't want them merged, I'd be out of luck. But it's never happened before or since, so perhaps it's the magic of Salzburg at work...

Dangerous windows

When Jami studied for a year in Germany, she came away impressed more than anything with the amazing multi-directional windows. Well, they haven't changed:

More sights of Salzburg

As it's extra grey and dreary today here in Salzburg (so much for the Sound of Music weather), you'll probably have to make do with pictures I took yesterday. They're mostly from the shopping part of the old town of Salzburg, after I finally found it (I have anti-pigeon syndrome). Here's one for the tots:


A big cake-y building of some sort:


More picturesque backstreets, with less picturesque shoppers:


This makes me think of The Cat Returns. Adventure lurks up one of these alleys (no fnarr fnarrs please).

Mozart even sells fruit and veg:


It's just so adorably quaint! How do you solve a problem like Maria?


The next two are opposite each other on the street just down from the hotel:




Talking of Austria's non-classical music heritage:


Less quaint - the explanation is in the following picture:


As I type this in "The Heart of Joy" (a nice Hari Krishna-esque veggie restaurant round the corner from the hotel, which, unlike the hotel, has free wi-fi) I see that it is sleeting steadily outside. Maybe today is a day for actually attending a couple of talks...