Turns out the Vienna Art History Museum was closed today, sorry Pat. Luckily Pat is an agreeable sort. He didn’t mind that the hotdog stand had no vegetarian options, either, because he met an Austrian blogger, Lisi, by talking to her in Dutch, which she found amusing, I hope, although I would have found it frightening in her shoes. Luckily the Natural History Museum across from the Art History Museum was open and we went and looked at mummies for a while before walking around. Mummies were used in medicine in the renaissance, and there was a big market for them, leading to the production of counterfeit mummies.

One funny thing, for me, about hanging out with young single guys is meeting chicks again. Some Iowan university has an exchange program in Vienna – I met a bunch of those people when I was a student here 20 years ago – and Space met two Iowan women today as well and spent the rest of the day comparing Vienna to Iowa, which was funny. Tomorrow we’re meeting them again at an Irish pub.

Another thing I never expected as a child is that, when I grew up, librarians and linguists would not only be cool, but would also rule the world. Yet now, look: what is google.com but a librarian and a linguist combined? And not only that, it turns out librarians will babysit your children (sorry about that) and a linguist is able to make Gamma sleep by speaking Dutch to her. Now if I could only prevent librarians from drinking my best single malt whiskey.

We’re leaving in a few minutes for a stroll through Vienna. Pat really wants to see a certain picture at the Art History museum, so we’ll go there. Then, look at St. Stephen’s Cathedral or something in the inner city.

I’m working on some pictures. Here are the first two, from my drive to the airport this morning:
This is something I thought would interest the boys, a form of billboard here in Austria which evades billboard laws (distance from street etc) by being attached to a stack of hay instead of mounted permanently on posts. They weren’t too impressed however.
Here is the view from the freeway a few minutes from my house. As you can see, floodwaters are receding.
I plan to post more pictures as soon as I replace the batteries in my digital camera.

Captain James T. Kirk, ruler of Liberia, immortalized on Liberian coin.

Why is Miguel posting this link, you wonder, when he is busy with guests? Because it is, first of all, the first such link ever e-mailed to me by a reader, in the history of this site and moreover, that reader is cool Dutch person Inne ten Have and thirdly, Pat, as we know, is a big admirer of things Dutch.

For two guys who’re only staying a week, Pat and Space sure packed enough stuff. I mean, Pat even brought a tape recorder, man. Not sure what we’ll do today. I was planning an initial tour of Vienna, but they’re more tired than I expected, maybe we’ll just sit around. Gotta go.

Flight OS 0094 arrives in an hour, if there were no delays. I’m off to pick up Space and Pat. More later.