Tales from an English Coffee Drinker
I drink a lot of coffee (black no sugar), so much so that no matter what I'm doing I usually have a cup on hand. However, this isn't a blog just about coffee -- it's about anything I find interesting!
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Sunday, 23 October 2011
Viennese Wildlife
While in Vienna I noticed a couple of strange wildlife sculptures adorning the front of big imposing buildings.
The double-headed eagle is easy to explain, it's the symbol of the city. This specific example was on a Regierungsgebäude (Government Building) on Stubenring, which I photographed from the balcony of my hotel room. The gilt bee is a little harder to understand. It is on the Spar-Casse Bank on Graben.
According to
http://www.erstestiftung.org/inside-the-foundation/roots-and-history/the-bee/
the bee was the ‘heraldic animal’ of the savings banks in general.
Ah, that would make sense then. Shame my guidebook didn't actually mention why it was there!
The bee was the symbol of thrift throughout Europe.
I love Vienna, and Sep/Oct is the best time to visit because of the vast and cheap availability of Sturm (Storm) which is apparently too explosive to be transported, but tastes absolutely delicious! If you get the chance I recommend trying it.
Damn, I missed out on trying Sturm. I did, however, have dinner at a vineyard, and consumed an awful lot of local white wine.
I've known of exploding bottles while folk were doing home-brewed beer but I'd never heard of explodong wine before.
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