The Prater (and . . . well, yeah)

As they used to say on Monty Python, "And now for something completely different":


Ah, the dangers of computers: the chance for our governments to spy on all the most tawdry and trivial details of our lives, the chance for the machines to rise up against us using our own networks, roving bands of "neo-Luddites," and your daughter getting into your wife's make-up bag. I swear, it took Sophie two minutes of my inattention while at the computer to compose this little work of art. Now, in addition to her other mantras ("Don't eat dirt" and "Don't eat rocks" among them), we've added "Don't play with Mommy's make-up." Violations carry a mandatory sentence of a time-out. (We also have a joke mantra, since Sophie likes to pretend to eat parts of us--a bite of arm here, a fingertip there: "No cannibalism." Is it really a joke, or shouldn't we all have this mantra?)

Anyway, we had a date for the Riesenrad, one of the world's oldest Ferris wheels, at the Prater, a large park that was a former imperial hunting grounds. The Riesenrad figures prominently in the great Vienna film The Third Man, which everyone should see if they haven't already. It was raining just a bit as we set out, so Sophie donned her Euro-strollbrella for the first time.

Luckily, it cleared up almost as soon as it started raining, and we had a nice afternoon. Here's a shot of the Riesenrad from about a half-mile away. The car labeled "5" is like the ones you see on the Ferris wheel itself.



You enter your car with about 15 strangers and you're off.


Here are shots of Sophie with both of us during the ride.


While she was with me, way up at the top, I got Sophie to say that the people on the ground look like ants. (It's a Third Man reference. You've got to see it to get it, see? Don't you wish you'd already?)


Finally, here's a shot of the Riesenrad from the Wurstelprater, the section of the park filled with cheesy county fair-like rides and games.

Sophie was much too small for almost all of the rides. Here's the one she could ride:



And here's the one she really, really wanted to ride. I can't wait until she's old enough