Schloss Belvedere, Vienna

I real­ised I still had a few photos from Febru­ary in Austria left unposted, so here they are. Strange to think that six weeks ago I was trav­el­ling around Cent­ral Europe for work, and now I don’t venture more than a mile or two from home. I had a flight back to the UK from Vienna, and a few hours to waste in the city centre. I decided to go for a walk in the Belvedere Palace Gardens, en route to the Music Museum. Vienna Cent­ral station used to be sever­al differ­ent moul­der­ing terminuses arranged around a huge windy car park, until they knocked it down and built a gleam­ing new one, with under­ground park­ing and local trans­port connec­tions, free­ing up a lot of land in the neigh­bour­hood, mean­ing that what was indus­tri­al yards and car parks until recently are now modern offices and blocks of flats like this one. The gardens are free, but you pay to go inside the museum and art galler­ies in the palace itself- I didn’t have time for them all that day. Not pictured: Amer­ic­an tour­ist of the type that doesn’t under­stand the concept of appro­pri­ate volume for speak­ing, or that perhaps you don’t have to vocal­ise every fleet­ing thought you have. I was stood about 20 metres away and was trying to block her nonsense out, but could still hear her boast­ing about how she has SOOOO many more Instagram follow­ers than  other people and she’s SUCH a big deal (not iron­ic­ally). I have no idea how the other people in her group reacted, as they spoke at normal volume. I hung around this end of the garden and waited for her to get further down the path so I wouldn’t have to hear her, but it took quite a long time for her to get far enough away for her foghorn voice to stop carry­ing. Ogling harpies is ill-advised. “Empty salons. Corridors. Salons. Doors. Doors. Salons. Empty chairs, deep armchairs, thick carpets. Heavy hangings. Stairs, steps. Steps, one after the other. Glass objects, objects still intact, empty glasses. A glass that falls, three, two, one, zero. Glass parti­tion, letters.” There’s a defin­ite atmo­sphere of France or Italy inside the park- I think perhaps intens­i­fied by the fact the build­ings around it are looked after, but not done up immacu­lately spick and span in the usual Austri­an style. Myster­i­ous topi­ary orbs.I’ve always found this sculp­ture quite creepy.