Before I finally put my European trip to bed here and go back to the world of leather-covered spheroids, I'd just post a few pictures from one of my favorite parts of my trip, a walking tour of Vienna that covered many of the scenes in one of my favorite films, "The Third Man." This 1949 film directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene was set in postwar Vienna and was shot mostly on location (some of it was filmed in London) and the ruins of the once proud city are as much the star of the films as Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten are.

The group that led the tours, Vienna Walks, is run by a family of Timmermanns and the youngest member of the family, Christopher, led my tour. This is a family that really knows everything about this film.

(As an aside, when I told Christopher that I too was a Timmermann, he asked me "Do you spell it with two Ns at the end?")

The tour starts at 4 pm. Which unfortunately limited the number of photos I could take. Well, I could take a lot of photos, it's just that most of them don't look very good.

Not on the tour is the Riesenrad, the Ferris Wheel in the Prater amusement park. It is where one of the film's most memorable scenes takes place. (The YouTube video of it has Spanish subtitles.)

Sadly, the Riesenrad was closed for regular maintenance when I made my visit, but it looks pretty much the same today.

The climax of the movie involves a chase through the Vienna sewer system. You don't go down there on the tour because: 1) it's really small 2) it's really smelly and 3) most of those scenes were filmed on a set in London. But there is a shot of a tunnel that is supposed to be an entrance to the sewers.

That is actually not a sewer, but rather a walled in portion of the Wien River (it's not just L.A. that paves it rivers). And here is what that looks like today although viewed from the other direction.

When Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna, he tells a soldier that he's headed to his friend Harry Lime's apartment at 15 Stiftgasse. However, director Carol Reed had to use a different building.

Then:

Now (and it's a bit dark):

Finally, there is the doorway where Harry Lime first appears, revealed only by the light of an open window across from the doorway. This is what it looked like in the film right before the light comes on. The cat in the bottom of the frame "recognizes" Harry Lime.

When I tried to shoot the same doorway as it looks today, there were "issues." Such as my inability to get my camera set correctly. So you'll have to take my word that this is the same doorway.

There are many other scenes from the film that you get to visit: the Hotel Sacher (where Holly Martins stays in the film and where Graham Greene lived at the time), the Cafe Mozart, and the Kohlmarkt where the authorities set a trap to capture Harry Lime. Not that my shots came out. Can I curse the darkness?

I didn't have time to visit Vienna's Central Cemetery, the site of the famous final scene in the film.