Napoleon
Boy, i am having a cold now. For sure.
I went to the Napoleon 05 Event in Hollabrunn. Hollabrunn is a town/city outside of vienna. 30 minutes car drive away from Vienna, to be precisely. I know this is the Vienna blog, but people, this isnt in a different state or country, so please dont be upset and write me mad emails.
Around 100 people, dressed up in the old uniforms of the french army under napoleon and a couple of austrian soldiers, were performing a war. A rather interesting one! According to the local people Napoleon got send back to wherever he came from in Hollabrunn. We won guys! Oh yes, we did. I still havent figured out if its right or not, i only know we didnt kick Napoleon’s ass back to France right there in Hollabrunn. Correct me if i am wrong.
Unfortunately an accident happened after one hour of fighting each other. One of the men handling the old cannon suddenly fell back, while dark smoke covered the cannon. His bloody glove flew away, and the kid on my lap pointed at him asking me if this is for real. It was for real. I cant say if he blew off his whole hand, or his fingers, or if its “just” a little wound. He was bleeding heavily, and it took the emergency shockingly long to arrive and help him. I decided it wouldnt be so great to stay at the field with straw in my pants and dust on my face and a kid asking me for another jacket (she already had MY jacket. I was already freezing like hell myself), so we went to the market. The Market right next to the battlefield had food, drinks, food and food and food. I counted 3 places without food. One of them was for kids playing soldier. Of course i convinced my kid to do that stuff too. Kids need fun after they saw an accident, you know. We shot arrows like pro-archers, we used a little cannon and we fought against each other. I lost, yes.
When we returned to the battlefield the injured soldier was already picked up by emergency helicopter.
After that we really left. The show continued, but it was already starting to rain and i successfully shot more than 300 photos.
Extremely cool pictures, thanks for sharing. I like the framing, the composition, the colours/shades of grey, everything! (Did you adjust them in an image processing application, or if they come like that right out of your camera, which one do you use?) You might as well link the large versions directly, zooming in absolutely pays off.
In case you can be bothered: to be precise; it took the emergency aid/ambulance/assistance/service shockingly long; when …, the soldier had already been picked up. Consistently capitalise Austrian, French, I, Vienna (or write in all lowercase alltogether), but not market. Lastly, I find the distinction between “its” and “it’s” quite useful; but of course, if you did that, you’d also have to write: this isn’t, please don’t, still haven’t, we didn’t, I can’t, it wouldn’t.
the frame was added with photoshop. the contrast was a bit too high cause i was shooting on automatic mode most of the time (which pretty much sucks, but having a kid to watch over and thousands of people standing next to me i couldnt bother changing the settings after each shot), and i lowered it with photoshop. everything else is pretty much the original.
i can be bothered! i have to admit i was just a lazy ass and didnt re-read the whole thing. thanks for pointing it out! :)
you always will be my lazy ass photoshopper if i ever need one. but i am not sure about the “napoleon 05 event” huh=?
my camera follows your command, monsieur luc.
check out the link landumhollabrunn.at
hi daniela, hi mitzti,
first of all: it was a great and perfecly organized event. the people there did a great job and it was a lot of fun for re-enactors.
i will also inform you, that there were 229 uniformed people.
the gunner from the kk artillerie was from teplice and his wound was not so “spectacular” as many of the visitors want.
fact is, that he loaded his cannon without washing the barrel with water before. the blackpowder was set - because of glooming rests of the last shot - on fire and the wooden handle was shot out of the barrel. this injured the right hand (little finger and ring finger) of the guy. we organized the ambulance but as the battlefield is more than 60 minutes away from viennas best hospital, we decided to call the ambulance-helicopter - just to make sure, that our comrade comes to an hospital in the shortest possible time.
i already visited him and i can tell you, he is well and he will be back to chech republik within the next days.
cheers
wolfgang
k.k. infanterieregiment nr. 3 erzherzog carl
weird. according a local newspaper he was injured badly, though, i cant remember which newspaper it was.
but thank you for informing me about what really happened to him, i highly appreciate that.