Yo, I got your 'Viennese Balls' right here

There's still bickering in the comments at afoe about Hungarians being beastly to Slovenians. To get away from it all, I spent the weekend among people Hungarians and Slovenians alike would no doubt be happy to bicker about: Austrians.

Yes, it is Ball Season in Vienna, and the KuKs are out in force. So it was dinner at the Palais Palatschinken (or something like that), then on to the Hofburg for the Juristenball. All very glittering. Using the very same bog where the Empress Sissi might have forced herself to bring up her most recent meal was a thrill to be sure. And here's a useful tip: if you find yourself at a Viennese ball and (like me) are hopeless at the quadrille, you can fake your way though with a bit of dosey-do'ing and frequent high-fives.

In that spirit, I point you to the latest photoshop phiesta from Something Awful. Tucked away somewhere off the front page is this study of Napoleon showing his opinion of his opponents. I believe the Austrians were agin the wee Corsican, so might be said to have had the last laugh. But then of course the Habsburgs themselves were later given the old heave-ho, though their exile, I suspect, offers rather more amenities than St Helena did.

Which reminds me of a story (supposedly true, but then these things never are) about Otto von Habsburg, scion of the former empire and now a conservative MEP from Bavaria. Somebody once tried to find out whom he liked in an upcoming football match. 'Was meinen Sie, Hoheit: wer wird im Spiel Österreich-Ungarn siegen?' To which the great man replied: 'Jo mei, gegn wen spuin's?

Somebody recently suggested that afoe could do with a makeover as 'A Fistful of anti-Vatican II Monarchists'. Well, that's about as close as you're going to get.

[Props to Norbizness.]