In case anyone is wondering, the sign says (approximately) - "cozy wozy".
Update 2010-06-21: Yes, li'l Cozy Wozy is still alive and well.
2008-12-14 02:03
Taken from the very edge of the construction project happening near the south-west corner of the station. The "Waterfront Building" will be built here, consisting of a congress centre for up to 3000 people and a 418 room, four-star hotel.
When the building is finished at about 2010 or so, perhaps even the website[a] will be available.
2008-12-08 02:21
View from the battery commander's station. The stench in here was terrible. Many of the abandoned buildings of Fort Baker have found new uses as shelters and toilets.
2008-09-03 07:16
I also went on a speed-hike to Mirror Lake, which was all dried up this time of year and more "Mirror Puddle", being about three by twenty meters in size, with a depth of half a meter.
2008-09-06 16:04
Tiedown - lasso the calfand tie it up. The lasso is attached to the horse and the horse will keep the rope taut once the calf is caught. The rider dismounts and lifts the calf and dropit to the ground on its side or back before tying up the calf's legs. Scoring is based on time taken.
2008-08-30 20:41
I listened a little on the radio on on the bus to the ferry, and in what can only be described as some serious synchronicity, there was a program about alcoholic seniors. (Retirees, to be precise.)
Now, no picture sums up the ferry trip as good as this one. I saw people - including senior citizens - carting and carrying four, five, six, seven of these boxes of beer. The tax free shop even had little baggage carts one could borrow to haul more.
2008-08-02 18:59
Memorial to the Austrian vicims of the Nazis at Schwedenplatz. A transcript, where I have inserted capitalization and punctuation as I see fit:
Niemals Vergessen
Hier stand das Haus der Gestapo. Es war für die Bekenner Österreichs die Hölle. Es war für viele von ihnen der Vorhof des Todes. Es ist in Trümmer gesunken wie das tausendjährige Reich. Österreich aber ist wiederauferstanden und mit ihm unsere Toten, die unsterblichen Opfer.
Approximate translation (trying to preserve idioms) into English is:
Never Forget
Here stood the house of the Gestapo. It was Hell for the confessors[b] of Austria. It was the antechamber of death for many of them. It is buried in ruins, as is the Thousand-Year Reich[c]. But Austria is reborn and with her our dead, the immortal victims.
The Gestapo, however, was not some kind of all-knowing Big Brother - in order to inflict its suffering on its victims it was almost entirely dependent on a complicit population:
As historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo was for the most part made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by ordinary Germans for their information. Indeed, the Gestapo was overwhelmed with denunciations and spent most of its time sorting out the credible from the less credible denunciations. (...) 80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to information provided by denunciations by "ordinary" Germans; while 10% were started in response in to information provided by other branches of the German government and another 10% started in response to information that the Gestapo itself unearthed.
Unlike Germany, which has done more than any other nation to uncover its crimes during WW2, Austria has hidden behind the excuse that they, too, were invaded by Hitler. But the fact that large parts of Austrian society was totally behind Hitler can't be denied, and it is only recently that Austria has started to examine its own actions during the Nazi era.
2008-01-24 20:42