36 Years Ago

36 Years Ago, Vienna 1971—A Student Journal

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.)

Austria360 Belvedere Palace North Vogl

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. Sad

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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