Elsien's Traveblogue

I beat the strikes! On Sunday night I managed to get out of Brussels on the penultimate train before the country closed down: national rail strike ... and into France, which was about to erupt into a general strike.
I had trouble getting to work in Versailles on Monday morning and back to my hotel on Monday evening as the RER Line C, which I have to take to get there, was either still on strike from the previous week or already on strike for the next day. There weren't many trains, most were cancelled.
Tuesday morning I did get to the airport, RER Line B was running one in two trains from the overground platforms and Niki Air was running beautifully. Good old Niki Lauda, rather prefer him to Michael O'Leary!
So, now here I am in Vienna – was supposed to have done some work here for the European Commission, but they postponed it. I had such a good deal on plane and hotel bookings though that I decided to go anyway and use it as an art study trip: there are at least three Caravaggios here and the Cellini Salt Cellar I wrote an essay on two or three years ago, sight unseen.
There's also Rachel Whiteread's Holocaust Memorial, which I saw yesterday. It's a big blob of a thing in an elegant, baroque square – must have been quite a shock for the Viennese. Still, what they did to the Jews was quite a shock too. When I was there, a large group of teenagers arrived, with teachers and a guide and while the guide was feebly droning about “millionen Jüden getötet” a girl posed herself on the edge of the monument in classical 'model' pose while her friend took her picture, to be posted on FB no doubt. I was too late to take the picture of them taking the picture, alas. An Austrian man and I agreed that “man weisst nicht ob man lachen oder schreien sollte... ”
Central Vienna is beautiful, more pictures to follow. Art Museums today ...