I rarely get to be a pure tourist in Europe. I had such a pleasure this past Sunday evening, led around Vienna’s first district by my good friend
Angelo, the best late night ersatz tour guide one could ask for.
Ivory King (pictured) rounded out the delightful touring trio.
We wandered by the Rathaus, the Parliament building, through the Volksgarten and the Hofburg before arriving in the thick of the first district, “old Vienna”. Angelol asked me if I had ever seen this part of Vienna before, to which I replied, “yes, but the only thing I remember is the crypt of
St. Stephen’s. It was the only place my cell phone didn’t work.”
My goal for the evening was to see the
Stadtpark, and possibly catch a slice of Linzer Torte. These were the last two things on my mother’s list, having spent a good deal of time in fits and starts at the epically fabulous
Schönbrunn Palace, and having completely slept through my chance to see the
Vienna Boys Choir.
The Stadtpark was fabulous. It deserves its own entry.
Unfortunately, our leisurely late night stroll through the Stadtpark left us rushing to find a cafe that served Linzer Torte. Angelo eventually led us to the
Hotel Sacher, where we had a wonderful slice of
Sacher Torte, Turkish Coffee and talk of finding food with Web 2.0.
While on a post-dessert stroll, walking laps around the Opera House with Ivory. my parents were packing for an emergency trip to Chile. I returned to the Metalab a few hours after Angelo left us, only to discover that my 90 year old grandfather had been hospitalized with pneumonia. I jumped on Skype and heard the details of the trip and my Grandfather’s condition.
In the midst of an otherwise morbid and emotionally draining conversation, the one highlight of that conversation turned out to be the accidental Sacher Torte. While my mother had specified Linzer Torte, just as I was about to explain to her that the Sacher didn’t have any–she said, “Oh! Sacher! That was the one! The Sacher Torte!”
This is a project I’ve been procrastinating on for six years. Today, at the C4, I’m making a go at ending the verpeiling with my website. Ending the string of broken promises that it will be updated. As with any blog, anything Web two-point-oh, it’s a work in progress, but it has to start somewhere. So, this is and end and a beginning. I hope there’s a long middle.
Some context: Nickfarr.org was registered in April of 2003. Mostly, it just sat there with a picture of me in front of Fred 62, almost at daybreak on North Vermont Ave in Los Angeles. My friends Patrick and Marikka stood with me in the middle of the street, snapping me holding a sign that was barely legible. Occasionally, people would ask me what the sign said…or just make assumptions it said something vulgar. Really, it was part of a photo project of mine at the time, one where I held signs with silly sayings like “Iron my shirts before you wear them – Kenneth Cole”. That particular day, I was professing a crush on Thora Birch. Her role in Ghost World was fascinating. A few months later, I’d be leaving LA for Grand Rapids, MI.
Previous incarnations of my more active online presence were on Livejournal, monkey.org and umich.edu. Today, I am reasonably active on Amplify and Twitter as well as hackerspaces.org’s blog.
Where will I go from here? Hopefully somewhere really cool. As I wrap this entry up, surrounded by awesome people at Cologne’s hackerspace, preparing for my talks at SIGINT 09, I hope I can actually engage with the world through this website/blog/digital home. Hopefully, people will find useful ideas here, be it in the form of random entries, slides, papers and other things I intend to post.
So here’s to a momentous beginning. All apologies to Anne Sexton for the title.
