Espresso 4 Breakfast: 2013-07-15: Swimming at Dianabad

Today we all went swimming at Dianabad - another (!) really cool set of pools in Vienna. It seems that there are pools (kickass ones!) just about every mile or two in Vienna. I think the official count is 32 swimming complexes in the city. You'd think this was a total swimming culture, that they would dominate the Olympics like Brazilians do in soccer, or like Russia (and Ukraine) dominate rhythmic gymnastics. Separate topic, but you do realize that the IOC removed wrestling from the 2020 Summer Olympics, right? Wrestling is one of the few ORIGINAL sports in the ORIGINAL Olympics, a discipline *steeped* with history and athleticism, probably the oldest sport known. And it is being removed to make way for things like golf and ribbon dancing, er, RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS. It quite literally makes me sick. If it makes you sick too, please take a few minutes to write the IOC and let them know they should stop being such idiotic and dickish money-grubbing corporatists. (http://www.change.org/petitions/ioc-international-olympic-committee-keep-wrestling-a-part-of-the-olympic-games)

Hey, speaking of idiotic and dickish money-grubbing corporatists, who was it that ran the IOC during the 2002 Salt Lake City Olys? Tip of my tongue... I think Salt Lake City has a special significance for this person.... Ahh well, I'm sure it will come to me. Moving on.

But it turns out that Austria only ranks 16 in historical Olympic swimming medals (their neighbor to the north is 3rd).

Although it would appear from our later visits to other pools that Austrians are not at all shy at the pools (*ahem*), this one in particular didn't allow cameras. No problem, here are some sweet mosaics that were in the lobby.

The inside of the place was pretty cool, there was a wave pool there, a water slide (the Master Blaster) and a sweet turbo-jet lazy river. The jets were so powerful Maya and I played a game of "hang on the wall and try to pull yourself upstream". She destroyed me...

Had a great time there, but we had a misfiring in the food translation department, and I ended up getting a HUGE PLATE FULL OF BOLOGNA AND ONIONS for lunch. That's right - because lord knows I haven't had enough meat, tubesteak, and other non-vegetable foods. :) I still ate it, because dude, I was hungry. But still.

Amy and Ella left to head out shopping, while Maya and I stayed to swim a bit longer. Then she and I navigated home on our own, which was fun. We almost missed a transfer, but my dumb luck keeps kicking in!

Maya is always in motion. ALWAYS. We love it :)

POW! Except when she's staring me down.

When Ella and Amy were back from shopping, we went to visit the Stadtpark. Should be fun to see, also a potential scouting trip to see if it's somewhere that we'd be comfortable having Amy and Ella run by themselves. Thus far, I've been the main running partner (which is NOT to say we've been doing it a lot...). If the bad guys knew what I knew, they'd fear her more, but such is the way of things in many male-dominated societies.

The area of Vienna that we're in is on the edge of what appears to be a large Turkish population, which is not necessarily a problem. The problem is that I've noticed a LOT of intimidation and leering. Not the same kind as in Italy or Spain - this is leering with what appears to be in the blurry spectrum between "not innocent intentions" and "outright malice". There is also a large cultural component to staring other men down. Happens to me easily 20 times a day. FWIW, I'm losing patience with this cultural norm.

So the idea was that maybe the Stadtpark would be safer for them, but it turned out that idea was a big bucket of NOPE. Pictures below.