The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

On MSNBC.com yesterday, I saw this headline, "Suffocating heat in Oklahoma's forecast today and all of this week." I'm not really sure it ethical to describe the weather in such antagonistic language, but I have to nonetheless agree that yesterday's heat was suffocating. I hate the heat. And I really hate being unethical. I like a temperate summer and a cold, cold winter. I like the type of summer where it's warm enough to grow a garden and go swimming if you want to, but not because you have to. Vienna, in this regard, was the perfect place for me. In the three summers I spent there, we had about 7 to 10 days each summer in which the heat was suffocating. Of course, Europeans go on holiday, so they head to the beach on the Croat coast, or elsewhere, or they head high into the mountains. Three weeks later when it's cooled down, they come back. As George Michael Bluth once said (of the French, specifically): I like the way they think.

I'm not exactly sure how I keep ending up in Oklahoma!

Truthfully, except for the weather, I really like it here.

The people who hung around Vienna during a heat wave spent a lot of time at the Donau, the Lobau or at a Badeteich (I'm not sure what that literally translates to, but a Badeteich is a lake. I'm not sure if it's a specific type of lake or what). We went to Hirschstetten Badeteich once and didn't enjoy it. We didn't even get in the water because it was like a giant mud puddle, a playground for dogs--a dirty dog playground at that. We did really enjoy swimming in Alte Donau, however.

When the Donau flows through Vienna, it is divided into two main channels, as well as a canal that moves slightly south into the city before reconnecting with the river downstream--the Donaukanal. Alte Donau is an old bed for the river that is now dammed off on both side so that the water isn't participating in the natural flow and currents of the river. All of this was done in order to provide Vienna with greater flood protection. You can read a little bit about it in this Wiki article on Donauinsel. Also, you can always look at my map of Vienna to get an idea of the layout of the various river flows through Vienna.


In the following picture you can see the Neue Donau (near) and Der Hauptfluss (far). You can also see some of the rides in the amusement park of the Prater on the far side of the river. On the other side of Prater, one would be able to see Donaukanal, which juts into the city slightly. Atle Donau is behind the camara from this angle.


View of Vienna from Donauturm looking south into the city, July 2008.
In the next photo you can clearly see (from left to right) the Alte Donau, Neue Donau, Der Hauptfluss. Also, if you look closely, you can roughly make out the course of te Donaukanal, if you follow the line of trees moving from the right of the picture to the left. I took this photo from an airplane the day we arrived in Vienna.



View of Vienna and the Donau looking south from an airplane, July 1, 2007. You can clearly see Ernst Happel Stadion on the far bank of the river, from which Jews were deported to death and concentration camps by the Nazis. In lighter times, Gretchen and I saw Bruce Springsteen there..



Some wayward gypsy escapes a bout of suffocating heat falling upon Vienna, July 2007.

It's a good river