Espresso 4 Breakfast: 2013-07-27: Polar Opposites - Climbing at the Kahlenberg Ropes Course, then Mozart at the Musikverein

Today we zoomed back up to the top of Kahlenberg to do the high ropes course. Amy was super-supportive of our craziness and got some great pictures (but ultimately opted out of the "trusting your harness" part of the schedule :)

The three monkeys, not yet aware what they've gotten themselves into (again!).

The pictures don't do it justice (when do they ever?), but the lines and ropes courses (for intermediate and expert) were REALLY HIGH. Like 50+ feet.

Rick, placing his "faith" in something.

It doesn't look like it, but this was one of the 3 or 4 most difficult sections for us. These swiveled and swung around a lot, were very unstable, and were woven through the safety line, so you had to go to the left of one, right of the other, etc.

The climbing was in a word, AWESOME. We (especially me) were dripping with sweat, but we lasted 3.5 hours. Very tiring physically and mentally. The physical part is obvious, but the mental part was primarily due to [eu]stress and anxiety. Even though we were having a ton of fun, and got a LOT better by the time we left, there's still just a teensy-weensy bit of anxiety involved in navigating that high off the ground, ropes or not. But there's also a lot of real exhilaration and sense of accomplishment as well, so when you're done it just feels amazing.

This was quite a big course, and I think it was in partnership with the local park system or something, because the walking trail went right next to the course, and there were signs everywhere that said essentially "don't be stupid and climb on this if you don't have harnesses". Which is YET ANOTHER difference from America. There are so many places/things here that I just think to myself "this would never work in America - some idiot would sue the shit out of these people because they didn't take sufficient precautions to stop him from climbing without a harness". Whereas here, they're like "duh! Don't be an idiot, man".

Anyway, of the courses, the blue was easy, red intermediate, and black expert. We did all of the blue and red except one, did repeats of several of the blue and red, and we did 3 of the black. I have to tell you, there were just a couple of times on the black that I was actually a bit scared. And that's a good thing.

After that, we had an awesome lunch at the Cafe Josefina attached to the climbing center. Note, the girls are becoming a bit of connoisseurs of Radlers, and Amy's favorite is the orange radler. I continue to gather data points about which beers are my favorite :) Interesting is that I really didn't care for weissbier before coming, but am kind of digging them now (especially the Edelweiss). It's been a while since I've had something like an over-hopped West Coast style IPA like Torpedo, Abrasive, Hopslam, etc. These are not large challenges, in the GSOT.

This was the flower bouquet next to our table for lunch.

After we were done high-fiving each other and having lunch, we went home to rest up for the big night at the orchestra. We stopped by PopFest for a while again, music was good (again!)

Karlskirche makes a perfect background for a kewl place to listen to music

Contrasts.

Yes, they're wearing wigs. A little off-putting, until you hear the music and realize you wouldn't care if they were wearing deer antlers. Great music!