Greatest. Statue. Ever.

_{Madame Josephine Peur-Soleil de Grand Chapeau. The hat was so the dog could get some shade as well}

Yesterday, Amynah and I decided to pop our heads into the three-part museum located in the Palais Rohan. We’d somehow managed to avoid it during the two years we’ve been living here, but as the first Sunday of every month is free, and I was getting a little cabin-feverish, we took the plunge. And I am glad we did, for we saw what must rank as the greatest masterwork of art ever created.


_{Nope, the masterpiece was not this ceramic boar's head serving-dish complete with detailed, glistening viscera. Yes, that's a bit of its spine there in the center. Bonne appetit!}

At first, the museum seemed unlikely to blow my mind as thoroughly as it did. There were the usual assortment of broken pottery and spear tips in the archeological section, and while the Arts Decoratif section held some interesting (and freaky) items, there were entire rooms of Virgins and Crucifixes that didn’t strike me as being notable improvements on the theme.


_{Is it just me, or is Mary rolling her eyes at the crying and the weeping and the wah-wah-wah?}

It was in the Beaux Arts section where I had my encounter with genius. There was a table of small sculptures on a table, unremarkable except that they were almost all of animals, usually in the process of eating one another. Set in amongst these was the jewel of the museum’s collection.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Rodeo Gorilla.”



Yes, this is a sculpture of a Great Ape riding an angry bull. It is, without a doubt, the greatest work of art ever created by the hand of man. Better even than Van Gogh's "Dragon on a Motorcycle."

Leiping Leipzig

_{And why wouldn't they?}

We stopped in Leipzig to visit our friend Stefan, who kindly showed us around town. The place had not suffered much in the war, but forty years of communist neglect had done a lot of damage to the former capital of Saxony’s historic buildings. Construction cranes and heaps of slag are all over the city, as they try to restore the place to its former glory, and centrally-planned brutalist slabs share space with idiosyncratic Beaux Arts wonders.

For the most part, the autocrats of the GDR had left the edifices of the Saxon bourgeoisie alone, to crumble of their own accord. One exception, Stefan explained with typical understatement, was the old university chapel: “They blew that up in the 1980s. This did not go unnoticed.”


_{The Stasi emblem - they weren't aiming for warm and cuddly.}

There were protests, which was remarkable, given the state of fear people must have been living in. We got a taste of that in the Stasi museum, which memorializes the East German republic’s secret police methods. These ranged from the tragic, like mothers interrogated for the ideologically impure school essays of their children – to the absurd, like a camera hidden in a pillow strapped around the abdomen of a female agent to fake a pregnancy (“Ooo! I can feel it clicking!”) Another disguise kit included a hard helmet, prompting me to wonder if the agent was to infiltrate the Village People.


_{They were efficient, at least: these are confiscated "Western" musical cassettes, repurposed to record phone taps.}

All joking aside, it was a chilling place, and the events it memorializes are not purely historical, by any means – more than one exhibit had photographs ripped from the walls by people that had recognized themselves or loved ones.

That said, we know how the story ends, and it ended here in Leipzig.



The St Nicholas church was the scene, starting in the 1980s, of a series of protests against the regime. Initially, these were demands for a better quality of life but over time bloomed into the mass movement that eventually overthrew the regime, disproving Stefan’s observation (quoting Goethe) that given a choice between injustice and disorder, Germans will always choose the former.

Who are you calling a Weiner?

_{For some reason, we so no plaque commemorating the Hitler announced the Anschluss from the balcony of the palace in 1938. I wonder why that is?}

Ladies and gentlemen, may I finally present you with part one of my long promised account of our Eastern voyages. I’m going to post them more or less in order, and will, once I’ve boring you all with the text, throw up a page or two of photos. I may or may not duplicate those on Facebook later.

On to Vienna, where our wandering and underslept heroes are, having located an overpriced hotel, orienting themselves in the capital of the once-mighty Hapsburg Emipre.

We were located in the middle of the shopping district, from where we took a quick peak at the cathedral, lunch at Burger King (we were hungry!) and then down to the Imperial Palace quarter. There, we were accosted by one of the many be-robed classical music touts that prowl the tourist zone, hawking a concert of Vienna’s greatest hits by various ensembles catering to, well, people like us. Figuring we’d never get tickets to the real deal, we acquiesced to the overtures of a girl selling tickets for “The Imperial Orchestra” for the following night. When she gave us directions, she said “it’s just down this street here – you know, where the Burger King is.” Amynah and I looked at each other guiltily – did she know our secret shame?

We, and 500 other tourists showed up at the stroke of 8:11 or thereabouts the following night and settled ourselves into what we had been assured were the best seats in the section with the worst view. No matter – the hall was lovely, decorated with elaborate wood carvings apparently for Vienna’s well-to-do to dance under in the late 19th century, and almost well-insulated enough to block out the sounds of the parking garage Muzak blaring from across the street.

If half a successful music career is an imaginative band name, then I predict a bright future for the Imperial Orchestra. They’re not short on chutzpah, I can assure you; I wouldn’t have the brass to call a ten-piece ensemble an “orchestra,” nor would any entertainment featuring a ballet sequence performed in fuzzy bunny costumes strike me as deserving the name “Imperial.” It was good fun though.


_{The Imerperial Orchestra, performing with the Elmer Fudd Ballet. Note the bunny ears on the right.}

During the days, with an embarrassment of Viennese riches on offer, ranging from Hapsburg palaces to the Museum of Modern Art, we elected to visit the Esperanto Museum. Our logic – and we were proven correct in this - was that we were highly unlikely to run into crowds of other tourists there.


_{Screw you buddy, I don't need a translator - I know Esperanto!}

The “Museum” consisted of a single room in the Austrian national library dedicated to this and other made-up languages (including Klingon); the displays consisted largely of posters from the annual Esperanto conferences over the century. The most disturbing exhibit, by far, featured a recording of a woman’s breathy reading of Esperanto erotic poetry. I didn’t understand it, but I will admit I did get a funny feeling, what with all the words like “penetrato” and “ecstsasa.”


_{Following a mention of erotic poetry with a picture of giant globes is just asking for a bad joke, I know. I regret nothing!}

In a similar spirit of universalism, and much more complete, was the museum of globes – featuring some giant numbers that mapped out the heavens, pocket globes, and one smaller number for children that included a handy pamphlet describing “The Peoples of the World” including both their Austrian and Tyrolean varieties, both of whom are apparently inclined by nature of their race to grow facial hair and smoke pipes. To this, based on my observations of Viennese women, I can only agree.

(I lie. Viennese women were all very attractive, and rarely smoked pipes).