Photoblog - Vienna (Nightlife)

It seems like a long time ago, but it was just last Winter when Frau A and I visited Vienna for the weekend.  We saw Schoenbrunn Palace and ice skating around the Town Hall... but kept busy in the evenings too.

One of the main reasons for the trip was to see the show "Ich war noch niemals in New York".  In the spirit of "jukebox musicals" like Mamma Mia! (Abba) and Movin' Out (Billy Joel), this production features the songs of Udo Juergens.  Juergens is one of the most popular, successful, and beloved schlager singers.  (He's up top in our schlager post.)  He has sold over 100 million records and still sells out concert halls in his mid-70s today.  And yes, he won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1966.

The title means "I've never been to New York" -- in the story, an older couple aren't feeling "alive" anymore and therefore make a spontaneous decision to take a cruise ship to the Big Apple for the first time. (Notice the heart-shaped life preserver and rope in the banner.)  Although the story was a bit predictable, it was satisfying and Juergen's catchy tunes got everyone clapping and singing along.  And love & happiness prevail in the end.  Just like it should be.

The hotel was not far from the Bahnhof, so there were plenty of late-night options nearby.  So on another evening we checked out the nearby billiards bar, called "Köö - The Great Entertainer", on the second floor above some clothing stores & coffee shop.

 

The first order of business was to try the local beer, called Gösser.  It's a lot like the Munich helles, and in fact the styles are often combined for beer competitions into a group called VOM - Vienna, Oktoberfest, and Märzen (March) styles.  In the official BJCP Beer Style Guidelines it's called European Amber Lager.  Frau A and I love 'em -- a little less hoppy/bitter and crisp but richer and smoother than a pils.

There is a smoking ban in Munich now, so the haze and smells of the bar here were quite a surprise.  But together with the loud music and crack of caroming balls at the tables, it really felt like a pool hall.

The tables were all full (or reserved for hours) so we moved to the dart boards.  Warning:  do NOT be fooled by her quiet demeanor, long flowing hair, and friendly smile.  Frau A is a hustler and will beat you at darts.  She won all three of the first games again me.  I thought a second beer would change things - no luck.  She took 2 of the next 3.  Ouch.

The great thing about Vienna is that there are so many things to see in daylight, and just as many things to do at night.  We're hoping to return this summer and hang out with a colleague of mine who lives there (but works in the Munich office, staying Monday-Wednesday).  Stay tuned.

Tafelspitz - Adventures in Austrian Cooking

We’ve enjoyed quite a variety of Austrian food, both here in Bavaria and on trips to Vienna.  And, in southern Bavaria and northern Austria, there can be a bit of an overlap… kaiserschmarm, schnitzel…are they Bavarian or Austrian??? It quite depends on who you ask, and I’m not going to touch that controversial question! 

But there are a few dishes we can all agree are classic Viennese.  Wienerschnitzel, of course tops the list, as the name simply means “Vienna-style Schnitzel”.  And there’s one you might not have heard of outside of the German-speaking world - Tafelspitz.

On a side note, Tafelspitz is one of those dishes that you would not order off of the English menu in Germany or Austria.  The translation just sounds perfectly terrible, as unfortunately do many translations of German dishes. Tafelspitz will most likely be described on the English menu as “Boiled beef tritip” or “Boiled silverside of beef.” Not so appetizing a description, but you would really be missing out not to try it.

First, it’s basically a beef brisket cut, not some strange piece of animal…I use the tafelspitz cut to make brisket tacos and it's becoming a favorite cut. Second, while it is boiled, it is not rubbery and nasty. Quite the opposite…tafelspitz comes out like a perfect slow cooked piece of roast – flavorful and falls apart with the touch of a fork. You can see below how the meat would just crumble into shreds. Yum! 

  

It’s also a dish that can be served both as the authentic, multi-course dinner – really more of an experience than just a meal – or as a simple, hearty homemade dinner. It all depends on how authentic you want to be and how much time you’re willing to invest.

We tried our hand at making Tafelspitz this weekend and it was quite a tasty surprise. Whenever I cook something like this (or brisket tacos, pork shoulder, or goulasch…) I’m always a bit afraid I’ll get a big rubbery hunk of meat rather than fine shreds. And usually I'm shocked (in a good way) with the results.  I think my wonderful giant Le Crueset pot helps things out - I usually turn the stove down to the lowest level, cover it and leave it for hours to get perfect results.

There are various recipes out there, all with conflicting info. So we cobbled together our own simple home version from about 10 other recipes and made a few simplifications. We wanted tasty food, not hours in the kitchen.

So here’s how to make authentic Tafelspitz, as well as how to make a simpler version at home.

For the real deal, visit Plachutta in Vienna, and be sure to make a reservation.  While it is one of those restaurants that all the guidebooks recommend, it’s one that is also authentic and loved by many residents as well. Don’t skip it just because it’s famous – it really is great food and worth a visit.

First, the Ingredients:  

     

Authentic (feeds 4-6)	Simplified (serves 2)
2 kg Tafelspitz (in 1 piece if possible)	500g Tafelspitz
750g beef bones (cut and with marrow)	3L beef broth
4-5 L water
3 carrots	3 small carrots
1-2 parsnips	1 parsnip
2 large onions	2 medium onions
few stalks flat parsley	few stalks flat parsley
2 leeks	1 leek
1 small celery root	1/4 celery root (or small one)
3 bay leaves	2 bay leaves
1 Tbsp black peppercorns	16 black peppercorns
2 juniper berries	10 red peppercorns (optional)
chopped chives (decoration)

In Germany, you'll find something wonderful in the produce section.  It's called Suppengrün ("Soup Vegetables"), and is the bundle of veggies you need to make soup broth. So, it includes already for you, the main ingredients. And you don't have to buy a whole, huge celery root that you won't fully use.

 

Parsnips ("Pastinak" in German) were an ingredient I'd not used before. Interestingly, the ladies at the checkout counter were not familar with them either, so I explained that they were sort of like a huge white carrot. Which, OF COURSE, made us put them side by side to test out that unproven thought. From the cross section, they definitely look like a carrot relative. The taste is similar, though the parsnip has a more subtle carrot taste and a slightly spicy aroma. And they're a little harder to bite than a carrot. But the taste is very mild. Parsnips cooked will take on the flavor of whatever you are using to cook them.

 

Preparing Tafelspitz:
And now the preparation: Though it's a fairly simple dish to make, it needs 3-6 hours to actually cook.

Authentic (feeds 4-6)	Simplified (serves 2)
Cut onions in half (do not peel) and fry cut side down until slightly blackened.
Fill pot with water	Bring broth to a boil, add all ingredients except for carrots and parsnip (or any others you plan to eat)
Wash bones and meat, place in water
Add more water to cover meat if needed
Add peppercorns, bay leaves, and berries and bring to boil
Reduce to low, cover, and simmer 3-4 hours	Reduce to low, cover, and simmer 2 hours
Periodically skim foam if it develops
Add remaining vegetables and cook 1-2 more hours covered until meat is soft

At the end of the cooking, you'll have a pot looking like this: 

While the tafelspitz is in the last stages of cooking, you'll want to make the sauce(s) and any sides you plan to serve.

Typical side dishes include potatoes (boiled, or a style similar to hash browns), creamed spinach, and vegetables. We opted for veggies from the soup and tried the potatoes.  For the potatoes, you should boil and peel the potatoes in advance (the previousl day is best). Then grate them into shreds.  Finely slice onions in oil until soft. Then add the grated potatoes, season with salt, and fry until crispy.

Unless you have a desire to be super authentic, I recommend you buy the preshredded potatoes. Here you can buy excellent readymade potato pancakes (Schlemmermeyer kiosks and stores have them here) or prepackaged Rosti (shredded, oiled, seasoned, and ready to cook).  In the US, I would just get some of the frozen hash brown potatoes.

There are a variety of sauce recipes out there, but the two most common (and traditional) are the chive sauce and an apple-horseradish sauce. As I hate eggs and creamy sauces, you'll see the apple-horseradish one here. It's a really nice, light and subtle sauce. Probably it should be ground a little finer than we did, but still it will be more a salsa type of sauce than a creamy, smooth sauce.  

Chive Sauce	Apple Horseradish Sauce ("Apfelkren")
2 raw egg yolks	1 Granny Smith apple, peeled & cored
3 hardboiled egg yolks	1/2 cup shredded fresh horseradish
100g bread (remove crust)	juice of 1 lemon
200 mL milk	cider vinegar, salt, sugar
400 mL oil (not olive oil)
2 Tbsp chopped chives	Puree apple and mix with horseradish
	Add lemon juice (to keep apple white)
Soak bread in milk	Season with cider vinegar, salt, sugar to taste
Stir together all eggs
Season with salt, sugar, vinegar	Gravy Sauce
Squeeze out milk from bread and add bread	Fry diced onions in butter
Stir mixture while dripping oil into the mix	Add a bit of flour, fry another minute
Stir in chives	Add some broth from the beef
(or use blender, as you would make mayo)	Bring to a boil and add grated horseradish

After mixing together the ingredients for the apple-horseradish sauce, you'll end up with something like this.  

 

Serving Tafelspitz: 

And then comes the fun decision - how to serve your tafelspitz. Traditionally there are two main ways:

1) The entire pot (usually copper) is brought to the table and guests serve themselves out of the communal soup pot. 

Here, you would remove meat from pot. Remove fat and slice meat against the grain. (Restaurants will do it very thinly, but it's tough to do at home without meat falling apart).  Season soup and return the slices to the pot for serving.

2) Guests are served in separate courses, so you'll need to keep the meat warm and moist during the first courses. 

In this case:

Remove meat from pot. Remove fat and slice meat against the grain.  Keep meat warm in oven, making sure to cover with broth and foil to stay moist.  Strain contents of pot to separate veggies and broth (use cheesecloth if needed to achieve a nice broth).  Set aside veggies that you will serve (carrots, parsnip, possibly onion and leek - it's up to you).  Season soup (it's optional to serve with veggies and/or thinly sliced noodles in the broth). 

Tafelspitz Ettiquette:

Traditionally, Tafelspitz then is eaten in the following order: 

Course 1: Soup
Serve soup, either clear broth, or with diced celery root and parsnip and/or noodles. 

Course 2: Marrow
Very traditional - remove a bone from the soup pot. Scoop out the marrow and spread over toasted rye bread to eat. 

Course 3: Meat
Arrange sliced meat on a deep plate or soup bowl. Pour some broth over it, season with sea salt, and decorate with chopped chives. Usually served with the cooked vegetables, accompanied by crispy potatoes, boiled potatoes, and/or creamy spinach. Serve with chive and/or apple-horseradish sauces.

While I think it's important to know the authentic way, it can be simplified easily into a really enjoyable hearty dinner.  Since there was a nice small piece of Tafelspitz on sale yesterday, I decided to try an even simpler method -

This time I boiled 2.5L (around 9 cups) of beef broth, using the powdered version of broth. I added 1 onion cut in half (with skin on), around 450g (1 lb) piece of Tafelspitz, 1 bay leaf and a tablespoon of a mixture of ground szechuan and pink peppercorns. Then I turned the heat down to low, covered, and let cook for 3 or 4 hours. Again, it turned out perfectly, and with a very nice roast beef flavor.  Next time I'll throw in some small potatoes from the beginning to cook and absorb the flavors. The entire process took about 10 minutes of active work, and made a great lunch plus leftovers!

Vienna - Schoenbrunn and schoenes Essen

Not long ago, Frau A and I took a weekend trip to Vienna.  This time, instead of driving (like to Stuttgart), we decided to take the train.  The ride itself is about 4 hours and 20 minutes.  At this distance, the door-to-door time is just about equal with flying (but still a little cheaper, when you factor in the ride to the airport).  We could have driven in slightly less time, but the train was more relaxing and no traffic jams.

We all learned about the Austro-Hungarian Empire in school, but still it is easy to forget just how close Vienna is to Hungary and the Czech Republic (probably because you think of Austira as part of the modern German language block.  In fact, there is a boat that travels along the Danube to Bratislava, Slovakia in just over an hour.  (next time...)

One of the most popular tourist destinations in Vienna is Schoenbrunn Palace and Gardens.  It was very cold that day in February, so we spent an abbreviated time snapping photos of the palace and grounds.  In comparison with sites in Munich like the Nymphenburg Palace, Schoenbrunn has a much more regal and powerful feel -- it was the home of the Habsburgs and center of power in its time.

Here I caught Frau A taking photos of the front gate.  It was a blustery day, so I used the Olympus "dramatic tone" filter to increase contrast and give the picture more punch.

We took a short tour of the palace (of course, a very vary small part -- it's enormous... wonder what the other thousands of square meters are used for?).  For a moment, the sun was hitting the back of the palace nicely, and the colors came out beautifully.  That's Frau A again on the right, snapping her own pics.  Again, perhaps not as ornate as other palaces, but has a really large presense.  Impressive.

You see the balcony in the above photo?  This is the back of the palace, facing the gardens.  From here, you get a nice view of the grounds -- massive scene.  This was the end of winter, so things were a bit gray and muted, but you might imagine what it could be in the spring a summer.  I also particularly like the structure on the hill at the far end.  It looks like a mystical site in a fantasy movie.

  

Again, since it was mostly an overcast day (except the few minutes for the photo of the back of the palace above, where skies magically cleared) I took the opportunity to use the "dramatic tone" art filter again and caught sun streaming through the clouds.  Nice otherworldly effect.

After hours on your feet walking around the palace and gardens, you need some good food (schoenes essen) and we definitely found that.  No, we did not go the Hotel Sacher and get the famous sachertorte.  However we did have Wiener Schnitzel and Zwiebelrostbraten at the "12 Apostles Cellar".  The building has been around since 1339 and it's known for traditional Austrian cuisine.  We also had the local "double malt" beer to go with the dishes.  As expected, it was a bit sweeter than a typical Munich helles, but the malt was roasted more darkly and it had a nice, complex flavor.

Later in the weekend, we enjoyed some goulash -- no, not the soup but yes, this is a Hungarian dish leftover from the empire.  It's hung around because it's good.  The meat is falling-apart tender, and the paprika-rich sauce is fantastic.  And we washed it down with more local beer.  Notice that these glasses are different than the Munich maß. They're more squat - shorter and wider - but still give you a half-liter.  The most common Viennese beer is the märzen, like the beer server at Oktoberfest.  A little darker and sweeter than the standard Munich helles.  Excellent.

        

Yes, those are two shots of local schnapps in front of the beer.  Cultural research, you know.

Despite skipping the sachertorte, we did indulge in two other Vienna classics:  apfelstrudel and chocolate truffel torte.  Sooooo good.  There are so many nice cafes in Vienna, and they all have a selection of sweets like these.

         

We have more photos, and more thoughts to post about Vienna... but we really can't wait to return.  A great weekend getaway from home base in Munich.

Photoblog - Vienna (City Tour)

Frau A and I went to Vienna in February.  It's just far enough to feel like you've escaped, but the trip is not too taxing.  Around 4 hours by car, a little more by train... you could fly from Munich (less than an hour in the air) but the trips to the airport are almost not worth it.

During our weekend in Vienna, Frau A and I took the city "circle" tour on a bus.  It's cliched, but actually a great way to quickly get oriented in a new city, and to see some of the interesting sites (and then decide which ones to see in detail the following day).

We boarded a train from the stop near the hotel, and headed towards the inner city.  Some trams look more modern than the ones in Munich, and almost have the curves of, dare I say it, a ski gondola.  It is Austria after all.

We arrived near the Opera Haus, from where the buses depart.  This is one of the largest Opera Houses in Europe, completed in 1869 and then rebuilt from the original neo-renaissance plans after the World War II.

It wasn't originally very popular with the Viennese -- the initial reception was so bad that one of the two architects comitted suicide, and the other suffered a fatal heart attack (Wikipedia always has the good news for me).  Nevertheless, they did decide to restore it like the original (with just a little modernization), and it's an accepted part of the city today. 

Unfortunately, because it was winter, the fountain on the side of the Opera Haus was boarded up.  (All the ones in Munich are, too.)  But it still is a common place for people to gather, and for the companies to sell tour and concert tickets to tourists.  We didn't capture them on film, but guys in traditional outfits roam this sidewalk accosting tourists, trying to sell event tickets.

One of the downsides to a bus tour is that it's not a great environment for photography.  The bus windows are pretty clean, but there is always a little grime on them.  Plus there are glare & reflections to deal with.  (Murphy's law:  when there's something interesting to film, the bus is moving and you're getting jolted around....when you're stopped at a red light, it's in front of McDonald's.)

We did get a few photos that are share-worthy...  The one below is the St. Francis of Assisi Church, also known as the Jubilee church (celebrating the reign of Emperor Franz Josef).  Unusually, it is located outside of the old city and close to the modern quarter.

We were then driven by the Austrian Parlaiment building, and decided to come back later on foot.  The streetcar/tram lines obstruct the view a bit, but you can definitely see the greek-style columns -- it was designed this way to reinforce the idea of democracy (completed in 1883).  The two houses sit here, and it's quite practical:  the Austrians include meeting lobbies, a gym, and of course multiple bars for their representatives.

Still on foot now, we're heading towards the Rathaus from the Parliament.  You'll see a lot of horse and buggy tours in Vienna, and it's easy to understand the romantic appeal.  The fence here surrounds the grounds to the Hofburg Palace, which we did not get a nice photo of... the bus didn't work for us and we didn't have a chance to walk by again later.  Ugh!  Check the link to Wikipedia or Google images, it's really quite impressive.

 

Finally we arrive at the Rathaus.  The building is so large that we tried my new wide-angle lens and had to keep it at the widest setting:  18mm!  Completed in 1833 in gothic style, the Rathaus seats the Burgermeister (mayor) and city council.  It has a pretty nice restaurant too, serving traditional Viennese food.  The park in front has events year round, and hosted the Vienna Ice Dream when we were there -- a blog post unto itself!

Overall, we definitely recommend taking the bus tour around the city, then pick your spots to come back to.  You'll need more than a weekend for Vienna, but it's a start.

Olympus "Art Filters" (in Vienna and Stuttgart)

One of the fun features of my new camera, the Olympus E-PL2, is its "art filters".  The Olympus art filters are basically a set of pre-packaged algorithms that apply Photoshop-like processing to a JPEG file, inside the camera.  There are six "art filters" available on my camera model:

- Pop Art
- Soft Focus
- Grainy Film
- Pin Hole
- Diorama
- Dramatic tone

Frau A and I played around with a few of them over the last couple of weekends.  First, here is a "regular" photo, taken in a bar on our first evening in Vienna. 

Now here is a photo a few seconds later using the "dramatic tone" art filter.  It appears that this filter pushes the contrast pretty high, probably the saturation also, and maybe a few other tricks too.  It's my favorite filter so far, and I'll probably do a dedicated post on it later.

 

You can also get neat "mirage" like effects from reflections with the dramatic tone art filter.  We just set the camera on the table (marble and polished) and pointed it at the hotel entrance.  This has a warm golden glow, and the table looks pretty cool.  In this case, I'm glad we didn't have a mini tripod with us and tried the table.  Frau A did the creative work here.

A different example:  here we're at the Schönbrunn Palace gardens in Vienna, and taking a "normal" (unprocessed JPEG) photo of an arch.  The sky is slightly blue, the arch green, background buildings brick/reddish, and Frau A in front.

This is the result with the "pop art" art filter.  It cranks up the color saturation.  You can see how yellow the small part of the building through the second arch (in the background) comes through.  That I like.  The green is more intense too, and the brick colors richer.  And look how the gloves on Frau A stand out!  It's an interesting effect, but has its downsides.  For instance, the grass on the right starts out as a dirty green and becomes reddish/rusty with this filter.  That's not to my taste.

Here is one example on the streets of Vienna where the effect was OK -- probably because it was more localized.  The "regular photo" would have been a lot more subdued, because the sky was gray.  The filter took the yellow from the rental bikes and brought the color forward (it's unrealistic, but photography is art, right?).  The red car and pale yellow taxi behind it stand out a bit more too than they would without the art filter.  Because the graytone street was not affected too much, it's not too overwhelming.  The photo itself, of course, is not going to hang in the Met, but that's part of the process of getting to know a new camera and limitations of the photographers!

The "diorama" filter makes things look like a small model of the scene.  Here is a shot from the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart, about one story above the cars in the exhibit (the effect works better the higher you are above the subject).  Some whites are a bit blown out (overexposed) and it's a bit grainy because the E-PL2 likes to crank the ISO in low light, but works for this test.

 Now here's a similar photo using the "diorama" art filter.

The cars definitely get a shiny, plasticy/metallic look to them -- not bad.  The downside is that this filter takes a tremendous amount of processing.  The camera literally locks up for maybe 20 seconds while the algorithm works on the JPEG.  Also, I've noticed that it makes a lot of the photo out-of-focus.  Look at the front tire on the red car... it goes from OK to just plain blurry.  I'm guessing this is part of the goal of this filter, rather than an error, in effect trying to create bokeh?

From greater elevation, you get something like this (shot from the television tower in Stuttgart).  Again, you see some significant blurring of subjects not in the middle of the frame, which is not evident with in processed shots.  Interesting.  I'm not sure about this art filter yet.

Perhaps I'll break down the others in another post, but I was not initially excited by the output from the other filters.

For casual photographs, the art filters are actually a lot of fun and much better than using Photoshop.  Pros will prefer to use more powerful tools that give them complete control, but for weekend getaways you can get some nice surprises and turn a dreary day into something really cool.

Crazy Keys at the Technical Museum in Vienna

On a recent weekend trip to Vienna, Frau A and I spent a morning at the Technical Museum of Vienna.  The exhibit that I really wanted to see was on musical instruments.  This collection alone was worth the trip east from Munich.

The items represent a great combination of music and technology.  For example, the "piano maker's workshop" has instruments along the evolutionary tree of the modern piano including harpsichords, spinets, clavichords, a tangent piano, and finally the earliest forte pianos.  Even better, they have working, "cutaway" examples of the key mechanisms for about 8 different instruments, so you can see into the guts of how the sounds are actualized -- here's one example of a modern piano:

Most interesting to me were the esoteric instruments that pushed the envelope (in their time) for the type of sounds created, the method of playing and level of musical control, or even automation of the instrument(s).  I took photos of my favorites and will briefly describe them here.

Pictured below is the Janko keyboard.  Theoretically, the Jankó keyboard had a number of advantages with regard to playing technique: the same finger set for all keys, a natural hand position (the thumb always lies lower than the rest of the fingers), a broader range than a normal keyboard, as well as Glissando possibilities in all scales!  As in the chromatic keyboard, the semitones are distributed in equal sequence on a double (paired) row.

For playing-related reasons, three of these double (paired) rows are arranged with one on top of the other like a terrace. Each key thus has three points of touch. In order to facilitate orientation the familiar black and white coloring was kept.  In vented in 1882, the model below was created in 1885!  Of course, it never really caught on.

The creators did try hard for acceptance, though, even developing an instrument with both standard and Janko keyboards!

Another neat model on display had effectively the first pitch-bend for an electronic instrument.  A French music teacher and "amateur radio enthusiast" designed the "Ondes Musicales" after meeting Lew S. Termen (yes, the creator of the Theremin!).  To bend a pitch, the player slides the the metal ring along the draw string on the front of the keyboard.  The instrument won the Grand Prix de l'Exposition Mondiale at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris.  This particular model is a later version (the earliest versions had nothing but the draw string, but it was too hard to pinpoint specific frequencies so they keyboard was added) built in 1960, and production continued until the early 1980s.

Background:  simply stated, electronic (analog) instruments create sound with valves or transistors that make audible electrical oscillations.  Unfortunately, the basic oscillation is usually pretty boring.  In order to make the timbres more interesting allow playing creativity, instrument builders had to add transient controls (change the attack & decay profile of the output), filters (adds different kinds of complexity and distortion to the wave, introduces vibrato, etc.), and other mechanism to alter and shape the output.

The Akaphon was invented around 1963 by the director Institute for Electroacoustics at the Vienna Music School.  (Cool that they already created an institute for that topic.)  Helmut Gottwald manipulated attack and decay responses through the use of light bulbs and photo resistors!  It's like the first modular synth, but limited to transient controls. no filters yet.  Here is is below, built into an upright piano cabinet!

I joke a bit with my friends when I call the next example the "first workstation".  This monster was developed by the Hupfeld company and dubbed "The 8th Wonder of the World".  Released in 1907, in incorporates a piano and three violins -- and plays them "automatically".  Each violin had only one active string, and various bellows were used to control the bow and "fingers" (bellows = pneumatically actuated).   Like a player piano, punched/perforated paper rolls dictated the action.

Technologists continue their assault on the violin with the "Schlüsselfidel" or "Nyckelhar".  A keyed violin.  The strings are played by a bow as normal, but slides and tangents are used to change the oscillating length rather than the player's fingers.  Variations of this instrument have been around since the 1400s, and still in use today in Sweden.

Brass instruments too were targets for automation.  Below is a photo of mechanical trumpet.  Again, punched tape controls mechanisms that shorten/lengthen the effective instrument length to change the pitch.  From the mid 1900s.

Filed under the category "bigger is better" must be this organ - sorry, forgot to capture the details.

Finally, things would not be complete without homage to Bob Moog.  If you don't know who he is, check Amazon for tons of books about his life and creations.

There was so much more there:  a Hönig Synthesizer from 1965, an AKA 2000 from the 1970s, and a Trautonium which uses a resistance wire (pressed by the player) to change the pitch of the oscillator...a similar model was used to make noises in Hitchcock's "The Birds", and Hindemith composed a piece for it!!!

Well, that's as much as I "brought back" to Munich with me.  The exhibition is highly recommended if you visit Vienna.  Cheers.

Photoblog - Vienna (Ice Skating)

Hopefully you saw the post about skiing in downtown Munich!  Siemens built a mini slope for skiing and sledding right in front of their world headquarters and it was a lot of fun.  We were in for another surprise on our weekend getaway to Vienna.

In Vienna we found something similar.  It was built by the city (rather than a corporate sponsor) and sat in front of the Rathaus (City Hall).  It's called the Wiener Eistraum (Vienna Ice Dream).

Instead of sledding and skiing, this is for ice skating.  When you think of ice skating, you might think of an oval rink, but Vienna added a twist -- skating routes.  They feel a bit like a lazy river at a water park.  Check out the map below and you'll see the ice skating paths on the left side.  

Here's a view from the front, taken from the sidewalk.  You see the giant Rathaus looming in the background and notice lights that ensure people can skate until 20:00 in the evening.  It looks like a typical ice skating rink...

...but now in this photo, we zoomed out a bit and you can just barely see the entrance to the skiing route on the front left.  The guy with the backpack is just starting onto the path, and the guy in the green jacket looks like he will follow.

Now we panned left so you can see the path.  It's wide enough for maybe four across, and the skating pace was quite leisurely.  A couple teen guys were moving pretty fast (as usual), but in general it looked like a relaxed way to go.  It's hard to see in the photo, but if you look at the ice skates of the woman with the blue jeans and hat (foreground, right side) on top they look almost like ski boots.  I think the child behind her has the same thing.  That's because the rental skates that were available had ski-boot like buckles on them!  Those quick-lock mechanisms work fast, are familiar, and much more convenient than long laces.  Very cool.  They should have those in the U.S..

Now we're moving further left in the scene, and the photo below (shot from the sidewalk again) shows the people skating by on the ice path.  With the Rathaus in the background it was a really pleasant atmosphere.  The had music playing...

 

... and of course tents with food and drink available.  Frau and I had some glühwein and it really warms you up on a cold day.

Now we're even further left and looking back down the sidewalk to where we started.  You get a better feel for how long the path is -- you can't see the entrance from the rink anymore.  And this is just the first leg of the path going across the front (check the map again)!  We thought about renting skates and giving it a whirl, but had other things to see.  Just another reason to go back to Vienna.