Zentralfriedhof

I went to the Central Cemetery today. It was rather rainy and miserable, so it seemed a good time to go. The cemetery is huge, at 2.4 square kilometres more than twice the size of the area within York's medieval walls, and with a (dead) population of well over 3 million. It's so big, stretching two kilometres along one of the main roads out of the city, that it has three separate tram stops and its own internal bus service.

I advised moogdroog, who has been busy lately organising resistance plans in the event of a zombie apocalypse, not to bother with Vienna. The city would be lost within hours.

Since the dead haven't yet risen to feast upon the brains of the living, I thought I'd go and take some photos while I had the chance. I gave myself a theme to make it more interesting: neglected or forgotten graves.

I thought this was an interesting contrast: in the background a grave drowning under fresh, colourful bouquets; in the foreground a grave neglected for so long that it's been torn apart by a tree trunk. Somebody must have come to cut the tree down, but not repair the grave.

This looked like a little girl's tomb, but the inscription was in Russian. No, I did not knock over the potted plant and stuffed toy for dramatic effect.

This was the oddest and saddest thing I saw - a marble cross inscribed "Beloved and Unforgotten" casually dumped on another grave by the side of the path. There wasn't a name on it, so I wondered if it even ever belonged to anyone.