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Friday, October 31, 2008

Austrians and death


the local dj is playing Hallowe'en appropriate songs, starting his show with Michael Jackson's Thriller ("the only man this night who doesn't need a mask") and just played "Am Zentralfriedhof", a comic song about the party there tonight. Zentralfriedhof is Vienna's huge, famous cemetary. This is a shot I took of it in 2006. It's got about 2 1/2-3 million dead in it, and the Viennese use it as a place for a picnic and stroll. It has several entrances, bus, Schnellbahn, and tram stops. There's a Jewish section (several Adolfs, but none born after Hitler's rise to power, oddly enough...) and sections just for composers (such as Haydn and Beethoven and Mozart) and a section for artists, etc. It really is a lovely place. There are bullet holes in some of the graves, where a shoot-out took place in WWII. Purportedly, the Austrians are fascinated with death. The humour certainly is black here; it's what I love about the Austrians. They are a funny, witty people.

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