Bine and Friends in Vienna

It's 1904 and our studious friend, René Bine, is enjoying the experience of studying medicine abroad. I have postcards from 1904, 1905, and 1907, so I wondered where he was during the 1906 earthquake. It turns out he was back in San Francisco for the cataclysmic event. In fact there are so many records, including passport applications, that it's pretty easy to find out where he was at any given time. More to come on that, of course. In the meantime, here he is living it up in Vienna in October, 1904.

The message on card  #112 reads:

Thursday, October 6, 1904

Dear Folks,

I believe to-day is mail day, but no news is there to be had in spite of that fact. The same old monotonous facts prevail. We arise at 7 or 7:15 A.M. + after breakfast usually accompanied by umbrellas walk our 1/2 or a bit less to our Krankenhaus (hospital). Umbrellas, I emphasize, for it rains 3 mornings out of every 4, + on the 4th it is sure to be raining by noon, + on the other 3 days it usually stops sometime after 1 or 2 P.M. so that we can very accurately prophesy the weather here. - Then at 1:15 we come home, + 1:30 we eat. We have at our table, our Mt. Sinai friend, Dr. Hirschler, a Boston man Conlan who weighs 180 and is about 5 ft. 5 in., besides a lawyer from Vienna named Unger, a Dr. West from N.Y.  etc etc but we enjoy most our man Conlan. He has an appetite that

(continued on next card)

does not beat mine, but he insists on taking all on his plate at once + yells Schnell at the girl (1 of his few German words) + withall is so serious that Paul and I roar even before his comical fat face - Then we have our Chicago Leschititzkyarian + a pretty sister, + we joshed them aided by Conlan so that they never know when we're serious. they are lots of fun. One is Unitarian, the other Presbyterian; their name Trumbell, one says is Scotch, + the other she says nay, + when one wished to throw something at me, the 2nd she held her arm - yes, the latter is the nicer of the two. On our off nights we get the pianist to spring a few Symphonies on us. She is really clever.

Say, when you write me more than 4 sides of letter paper, remember Jules has to pay 10 cents and I 10 cents here. So either weigh after.. or use much thinner paper + envelopes. Rec'd yours of 8th + 14th (Marie's) 2 days ago, ___'s Paris, none from anybody else. Even my wives don't write. I guess the new men have cut us out. Paul gets us the news however from here and home both.

Have you ever seen anyone write so much on a postcard? As for wives, he wasn't married yet, that was still several years off.

Here's the back of one of them; at that time no messages were allowed on the address side.

More to come...

Tram Tuesday - Melbourne, Australia

I was surprised to learn that  Melbourne, Australia has the largest tram network in the world. That's right, larger than St. Petersburg or Berlin, with 250 km of track, 487 trams, and 30 routes. The tram system in Melbourne has been around since 1884 and currently provides over 182 million passenger trips per year.

In contrast to many places that had mostly horse-drawn trams in the early years, Melbourne focused on a cable-drawn system before changing completely to electricity in 1940.

There is no message on the back of the card, but here's a close-up.

René Bine #110

This is a continuation of the message from card #109 on Friday's post.  Dr. René Bine wrote messages that continued mid-sentence from one card to the next. It's a shame about the occasional missing cards, but I do have this one.

Here's a link to the previous post, if you didn't read that message. This is a beautiful card with a lot of detail, even without the descriptive message, and Bine is fairly careful about keeping his writing to the blank spaces.

The message continues from the previous card:

We also are figuring on entering university courses from 8 to 9 A.M. + 12 to 1 PM or 5 to 6:30 so you can see we will have more then we would the latter are...

practically "free" the other "pay" courses limited to 10 men + we are well satisfied with our success so far. I never kick any how as I have all I can do to study the lingo.

We heard indirectly of the severe accident which befell Miss Mabel Brunker, our U.C. M.D. librarian + a very good friend of ours. If you hear or read anything about its significance (maybe fatal) let me know. Also as I said before leaving, send me only the Sunday Bulletin "News" part + if evenings occasionally then be topics of local interest, only the "news" sheets. We see here the Neue Freie Presse - Wien + every other day or so, at the Cafe, the Paris N.Y. Herald + London Times.

Universitat Strasse is the continuation of Alser Strasse + is running in the picture, toward the Ring. University is 3 blocks from the Krankenhaus (hospital) which faces Alser Strasse. we are 2 1/2 blocks from the latter.

As far as I can tell,  Miss Brunker recovered and lived many more years. More to come on Wednesday.