is vienna racialist, or is it just my imaljanation?

take a look at this picture:

nothing racialist about it, right? this is the secession building that austrian artists erected in 1897 in contempt of the conservative artistic establishment already in effect. so where does the racism come in? after it was built, it earned these disrespectful nicknames: temple for bullfrogs, assassination on good taste, crematorium - and now for the racialist ones - mosque, and assyrian lavatory! assyrian lavatory?!? my grandfather would be slightly offended by that last one, i think...

it doesn't end there. on the danube river in vienna, there's a place where viennese go to drink, sunbathe, smoke hookahs, and feel like they're either in brazil or in the caribbean...it's also the only place in the city we found a large population of dark-skinned people working in full force. and when i say working, i mean performing, because they were clapping and hollering and being way too friendly for mankind on the streets. we felt bad taking pictures of them, so we took pictures of these people instead.

and there's one more instance of racialism at a chinese food stand, which i won't bother explaining for fear of insulting your intelligence.

i know some people who probably approve of this one.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

on a completely different note, we finally made it to budapest monday afternoon to see the disaster that is my apartment. it is in a bad state. it is not going to be fixed. it is going to be sold instead. any takers?

let's talk about something more fun. these thermal baths, where we spent all afternoon yesterday, are called széchenyi fürdő, named after some guy called széchenyi. they are located on the pest side of budapest in a park. these are two of the three outside baths.

the largest pool is the coldest at about 24 degrees celsius, and the one closest to you in this picture is the warmest at about 37-38 degrees celsius. that one feels like a giant jacuzzi.

our favourite, though, is the one that has a whirlpool in the middle. it's about 34 degrees celsius.

every other ten minutes, jets turn on that force swimmers to whirl in a counterclockwise direction super fast (around the spa at the very center) depending on how close to the jets you are. people usually knock into each other out of lack of control of their own bodies, and some dirty boys use it as an excuse to touch strange girls in strange ways.

there's also an étterem at the baths, where the lady behind the counter let me cut in front of other tourists because of my awesome hungarian-speaking abilities, and that's no lie. here is the "delicious" food we ate...(click the pictures to see detail)