Day 035: Dinner with Anjali's mom; Belvedere Palace
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day 35
— Dinner with Anjali's mom; Belvedere Palace
06-September-1971
(Mon.)
TRANSCRIPT
Keeping very busy. Wrote a whole mess of letters to
friends, etc. It takes an awful lot of time to write
letters, and it costs a lot to mail them.
Always practicing.
At 4:00 met with Anjali and mother, and talked, then
went to Belvedere Palace and had a very, very, fancy
dinner at their hotel. All of it was very enjoyable
and her mother is [was] very pleasant. I really felt
sad, when I think that Anjali is [will be] leaving.
REFLECTIONS
I remember the dinner with Anjali and her mom in
their hotel. I don’t remember the food but I do
remember that the hotel was right across from the
Vienna Opera House. Thus, this was a small but
exclusive and expensive hotel. On the way out, I
looked at the daily room price (back in ’71), and it
was
one month’s rent. Wow.
Anjali’s mom is very nice and very kind to me.
Thanks
mom. And
again, here I do write that I am sad about seeing
Anjali go. 
Belvedere
Palace and 360-degree panoramas. I barely
mention this wonderful palace that is Belvedere.
That’s because I preoccupied with you-know-who. I’ll
discuss it more in the upcoming sightseeing section
of the web site. I discovered this
360-degree
view from the Nothern end of Belvedere
Palace (photo
above) from the wonderful website
austria360.at. The photo
is © Bernhard Vogl, a Viennese photographer and
master of the 360-degree panorama. Bernhard's
panoramas and photographs may also be viewed at his
website
dativ.at.
Quicktime
(Mac, PC) and a fast Internet connection are required
to view 360-degree panoramas.
I’ve been writing letters the last several days. In
my other log, I kept a list of all my family, friends
and relatives that I wanted to write to during the
year.
Letter writing. To make
certain that everyone got a letter during the year, I
placed a “•” next to each name whenever I sent a
letter. [My secret
analog Da Vinci
code to track letters.] Even though letter writing is
perhaps becoming a dinosaur in modern times, it can
be fun. Go out and buy those archaic objects called
pens and paper, and give it a try. I can tell you,
that if my journal were in electronic form on a
computer, I would never have been able to open it up
on a different computer 36 years later. Something to
ponder. That said, I am a total computer guy and so
now I do everything on computer. Exception—for the
last several years, I have kept all types of notes in
those old marble notepads that you buy in grammar
school. It is great. It helps you to get things off
of your mind and I sleep better.
Letter writing will become very important as the year
progresses.
No
computers? There were
no personal computers in 1971. I imagine that if
you’re young, you probably
can’t imagine what it
would be like to be a teenager, high school, college
student, or young adult
without a
computer. We lived in strange times during those
days. Sit down—there was NO Internet. OMG
Analog
life. What did
we do in this analog (non-computer) world? How is it
possible that we lived without Twitter, mySpace,
Facebook, Ning, Bebo, Virb, and my forthcoming social
networking site? Well, I practiced music, read books
and magazines, wrote letters, sat outside in parks,
and took many photos while sightseeing and taking
walks. As for letters, it took probably
a “whole week” to get a
letter across that big ocean [the Atlantic]. Now,
instant messaging takes
a second to cross
the globe. Strange times, indeed.
Do
analog, do digital. My
advice—do both worlds. Don’t be afraid of computers
and digital, and don't be afraid of the analog
world—get outside once in a while, play some sports,
take a walk, breathe in the fresh air, and experience
the
analog world.
It's called Mother Nature.
John
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