Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

You cannot love your country only when you win.

You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On the Road and In Your Backyard

On the Road and In Your Backyard

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On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.

Submit Your Photos

Good Morning All,

This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.

So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.

You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.

For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.

Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!

Once again, if it’s Friday, it’s otmar, do prepare to gasp – I warned you!

Next week, more great stuff as I work through so many great submissions from JR in WV and Le Compte and many others.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Today, pictures from valued commenter otmar.

This week we hosted a small international conference in Vienna’s city center. In order to spice up the day, we organized a guided tour to the state hall of the Austrian national library.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_National_Library for the Wikipedia entry.

This library started as the Hapsburg’s court library, but was accessible to all citizens. The main building is part of the Hofburg complex, the residency of the emperors. Most of the pictures below show the baroque “Prunksaal / State Hall” which was finished in 1723.

Entering the hall.

The oldest book in the collection: from 1368.

The emperor had a statue of himself put in the center of the hall: in a Roman general’s uniform, with Baroque hair, larger than in reality, with a boastful inscription.

Guess what my association was when the guide described this statue?

Frescos in the central cupola.

Book. Lots of books. The big ones in the lower rows, the smaller ones higher up.

Once more the center of the hall.

The new wing of the Hofburg also houses parts of the library but also a different museum.

 

Thank you so much otmar, do send us more when you can.

 

Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.

 

One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email

Reader Interactions

24Comments

  1. 1.

    otmar

    My next batch will be a change of scenery: we’re on a skiing vacation, thus: less buildings, more nature.

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    Gorgeous photos! I love Vienna and hope to have the opportunity to visit it again someday. Once is not enough!

  6. 6.

    ThresherK

    I think the overbearing statue is of Charles (Karl) VI, HRE at the time. He’s a bit of a wreck, even for a Habsburg, and the Trump analogy holds.

  12. 12.

    otmar

    @debbie: Google translate is tolerant. The words are correct, but the order was not quite. Where to put the verbs is pretty tricky in German.

  15. 15.

    MomSense

    All those beautiful books look heavenly. That is the kind of place I would like to get lost in for a year or so.

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    Thanks for the pictures, otmar.

    Everyone should probably see Vienna and the palaces once. The stuff there is so amazingly over the top that even Trump’s attempts to mimic it are a pale shadow.

    I thought it was interesting that they melted down their gold plates and utensils for currency when times were tough. I guess it makes more sense than just having the stuff stacked up in gold bars in the vault.

    “Hey princess, darling. We’re a little short this month. Have the help melt down a couple of serving dishes from grossvater’s set and get yourself something nice at the furrier. Run along now…”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    StringOnAStick

    Vienna is an amazing city; Betty is right that once is not enough. I looked at Otmar’s cupola photo and my mind said “I know his it feels”, meaning how it feels to be there viewing such beauty. Thanks Otmar!

  23. 23.

    J R in WV

    Fabulous palace of a library. We visited Fiernza aka Florence Italy and toured parts of a huge pile of a a palace, bedrooms with ceilings taller than the rooms were wide, with huge ceramic stoves in a corner – no chimney, just a huge stove to burn charcoal, I assume. Home of the Count of Tuscany, not really sure of the proper title, bound to have changed over the years, but you get the drift.

    This is much improved over the Italian palace, but of course Italy was a rough place for several centuries there, compared to the Holy Roman Empire’s control of Vienna.

    Love the photos Otmar, great detail. Ancient palaces really appeal to me, if I were ruler of the world I would spend all my time wandering around all the palaces, from attic to basement and through the “maintenance” tunnels and halls.

    Folks, you should be aware that you can open these photos by clicking or right clicking to open them in a new tab, then click on that photo to expand it greatly, so as to, for example, examine the frescoes on the ceiling. I also noticed railings in the windows below the ceiling which mean that there’s a maintenance passageway inside the ceiling of that room.

    Who knows how many interior passageways (and doors, and viewing locations, and listening places) there are in those palaces? What conspiracies were hatched about the Dukedom of The Upper Rhine (for a made up example) in the library over coffee and cognac and a good book or two?

  24. 24.

    Origuy

    It’s not as gorgeous as the Austrian National Library, but the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University is pretty impressive. The exterior is a grid of marble panes that are so thin that they transmit light. The bookshelves inside are in a glass room, that you need permission to access. Between them are two floors of exhibits, including a Gutenberg Bible and Audubon’s Birds of America. When I was there, they had a collection of items from the Harlem Renaissance.

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