2007-05-24

Vienna or Shriners Convention and the Evil TV Tax

Summer has definitely arrived in Vienna. With a vengeance. It is about 10:00 p.m. and the temperature is still hovering around 75. It feels kind of good but fairly hot when trying to run errands in the neighborhood. My foot is considerably better since Heather's last posting but I'm still looking a little Igor-ish as I walk around.

That I don't mind but one can also feel somewhat self-conscious as they try to blend in with the local fashions. However, it is a city of a million people so you can wear whatever you want. But, as I was venturing out in shorts I did check out to see if others were also similarly attired. There are a lot of people wearing shorts unlike when I was an exchange student and you just did not see it that much. However, I did seem to stand out as I was one of the few people not wearing black socks with my shorts. We've seemed to slip into cocktail hour by the pool at a shriners' convention. I have yet to see garters otherwise it appears to be black socks as far as the eye can see. I am starting to get used to it and I am comforted by the fact that it appears as though I can wear my best dress shoes with my running shorts.

Speaking of socks, Heather and I got socked with the TV tax. Every television set and radio in Austria must be registered. That way, the local television monopoly ORF gets to charge you a mandatory fee. They decided to put us on a six month billing cycle for 180 euros. Now, I'm as big a fan as the next guy of bell-making documentaries and lederhosen clad hikers serenading beer drinkers, but that amount of money seems a little extreme. Supposedly, they do play some popular American shows in the evening and if you can figure out your remote, you can get an English simulcast. We have yet to figure that out. We thought of taking a moral stand and not paying the bill (we have sat on it for two months) but today a letter arrived mentioning that they would send us to a bill collector in two weeks. You know how pleasant that sounds in German?

2007-05-18

Ich habe meinen Fotoapparat wieder vergessen.

I forgot my camera again.

It's been a social week here in the 13th District. And some late nights. Unfortunately, I have no pictures to post of our week because I keep forgetting my camera. So, a couple of stories to let you know we're still alive - and living the good Viennese life.

Tuesday night, I was lucky enough to get a preview of Angelika's the Dining Room. While Angelika hung up my coat, Gino greeted me enthusiastically, giving me a dog hug like only a golden retriever can. We ate antipasti, warm baguette, deep fuschia colored beet/rhubarb/potato soup (keep checking A's blog - she may post her newly invented and delicious recipe), risotto with tomatoes, and rhubarb cake with meringue on top. With each course, we had wine from the Dining Room's special wine supplier. I feel like I'm in a special club to know about this label. We'll have to try to bring some home with us.
My writing will not do Angelika's cooking justice. Even in English, I don't have the vocabulary. Suffice to say it was fantastic and I know the restaurant will be a huge success. The ambiance complements the food and wine beautifully.
And then there is the chef herself. She is so warm and kind and I felt like family before she had served the soup. At 10 o'clock, I noticed the time and thought, 'well, we'll chat about one more thing and then I'll catch the Straßenbahn.' The next time I looked at my watch, it was after midnight! We quickly checked a website, to discover that while the Straßenbahn was still running, I'd miss the last U-bahn that would get me home. I thought I could try the Night Bus, but Angelika would hear nothing of it. I think Gino would have been happy to give me his basket, but I had to get up for class in the morning. Angelika called a taxi and sent me safely on my way (after they finally found the house).

Curt has been struggling with an injured toe this week so Wednesday I was on my own at Wein & Co. and the Naschmarkt to buy most of the ingredients for our little dinner party Thursday night. 17 May was a holiday (Ascension, I believe) so no stores would be open. This required a little more planning ahead than we are used to. I managed to navigate all my purchases in German. It wasn't pretty, but I got the job done and no one switched to English despite my lack of vocabulary, sketchy comprehension and those "cute" R's of mine. (That description is from my German teacher who also describes my oh-so-American r's as sounding like a dog barking.) Curt took care of buying things we could get at the neighboring grocery store. When I got home I also stopped by the Apotheke to replenish our supply of Ibuprophen which is, blessedly, the same word in German. Curt started marinating the Indonesian Ginger Chicken.
We spent Thursday cleaning, the apartment and a little more than 1kg of spinach. Late afternoon, Curt excused me from the kitchen and started to cook in earnest. I only got called in once to help improvise a cover for the baking pan since we didn't buy aluminum foil on Wednesday. We found a couple of slotted disposable pans in the cupboard, I turned one inside out so the holes wouldn't line up and stuck them together as well as I could. We didn't get a tight seal, but it seemed to go ok. Our guests, Marie and Florian, arrived at 7:30 with dessert in hand (I'm a bit afraid to try baking in Celcius). For appetizers, we had artichokes stuffed with cheese, pita bread, and hummus from Naschmarkt and some prosciutto-wrapped goat cheese app's. All quite tasty, but nothing to compare to Curt's masterpieces. There was the chicken on rice, with the extra sauce over the top - so yummy! And he fried the spinach in the giant electric skillet with garlic, red pepper flakes, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I married a great cook! Marie made a Sacher Torte that I found to be significantly better than the one we tried at a cafe in March. Just goes to show: nothing beats homemade.
Marie and Florian asked to see wedding photos which we don't have here so they ended up seeing far too many photos that are in my computer. (such good sports) They logged onto the Austrian version of Facebook to show us photos of Florian's spring break trip to Paris and Marie's year in Helsinki. And we started to plan their Feb '08 visit to the states. New Orleans, St. Paul and New York are firmly planted on the itinerary. We might just tag along to New York....

Next time: photos!

ETA: here's a direct link to Angelika's rhubarb soup recipe, with photos.

2007-05-10

die Strumpfstricknadeln

Double-pointed (knitting) needles, a.k.a. dpn's

Apologies to the non-knitters among our readers. You can skip down a bit to read about the start of my German lessons....

First, to answer Amy's question posted in the comments of my last post: Good eye! There are actually two 8's and two 10's. I asked D. to send me two 9's for making i-cords and she didn't have them so she went up and down a size for me. Silly me! Of course I needed a whole set to make the baby hats. My circular needles of the right size(s) aren't long enough to do magic loop and I only have one long enough (maybe too long) for the two-circ. method of knitting in the round. So, today I trooped back to my favorite tiny yarn shop and all in German purchased a set of 5mm Addi DPN's. Ok, so after I paid, the lovely (lieb) shop owner said something that I didn't understand at all, but I did ask for, receive and pay for exactly what I needed. Not too shabby.

Ok, I'm done talking about needles for now. Those of you who couldn't care less about the yarn can tune in again. I just finished my fourth German lesson. We are actually meeting tomorrow to make up for a future holiday so I can't claim to have completed the first week quite yet. My brain is filling up quickly, but something must be sticking. I seem to have made an old lady on the U-Bahn happy this afternoon when I more or less understood her question about the station, despite completely botching my answer. Another woman in the car corrected my answer, I apologized (clumsily) for only speaking a little German and she grinned and seemed to say something like, "eh, most people on the train won't even talk to me. It's so nice that you try." Or maybe she grinned and said (in a deceptively kind voice), "you Americans come and get in my way and make my life miserable and you don't even have the courtesy to learn my language. Go home you stupid girl!" I'm going to pretend it was the first option and feel good about my first week of classes. I mean, at least I tried. Three days ago I would have had to stare blankly ahead and pretend I was deaf. On my way up the steps at my station, I realized that the key word in her question was "now" not "next." So, me saying "now Ober St. Veit, now Hüttledorf" instead of "next Ober St. Veit and next Hüttledorf" like I intended was ridiculous. I'm starting to think she might have said that second thing....

The most interesting, and potentially difficult, thing I learned today: the gender of nouns is not always consistent between German-German and Austrian-German. So, my 1951 dictionary let me down on my vocabulary homework and Curt may start correcting me when I'm locally right.
Jetzt, ich möchte ein Bier.
Now, I would like a beer.

2007-05-05

wir sind wieder da

We're back.

Sorry we've been away so long. We were busy playing tour guide which is more fun than writing about the latest repeat episode of "Silent Witness." Or reading about it; trust me on that. So, today we bring you sites and activities checked off our "to visit" list, thanks to our enthusiastic guests.

Suzi and Michael, representing our Supper (cooking) Club, arrived late on a Thursday evening bearing gifts: a care package from Diana and an empty suitcase.
Yarn, for the knitting obsessed, and cookies

We got them checked into the hotel, with only minor confusion at the airport's S-bahn ticket vending machine. Fortunately, they didn't take our inept screen punching as a sign of our tour-guiding abilities and stuck with us for the whole week. We set out from the hotel in search of dinner and Curt guided us to 7Stern Bräu where we enjoyed beer (including one that smelled like smoked gouda) and traditional Austrian fare in a great courtyard.

Saturday, Curt dutifully went to class and aced his mid-term. I led Suzi and Michael on a walking tour of the Inner Stadt. We climbed the spire at St. Stephen's (my second time, how does Curt keep getting out of it?) and had lunch at a great little place whose name translates as "the Pretzel Vault." Later that evening, we met in the Stadtpark for a stroll and then headed to Plachutta for dinner. Many locals advised us that we absolutely had to take our foodie friends there. I think it lived up to the hype, though Curt might have found there to be too many tourists dining around us. We chuckled at the apparently 10-year-old sommelier, but couldn't find fault with his skills.

Sunday was the Vienna Marathon. None of us wanted to be in town for that so we met early at the boat landing to catch the ferry to Bratislava. All the boats for the day were booked. Plan B! We decided to take the train to Melk instead. Suzi had been there before, but didn't mind a return visit. My favorite part was the monastery's library. Or was it the cream sauce on my pasta with salmon at lunch, accompanied by a wine "from prehistoric rock"? Either way, a great outing.
Tour Guide Curt

happy tourists

the view from the monastery
(it didn't
seem so hazy)

We returned by train to a stop near the apartment and strolled through the neighborhood, gave a tour of the apartment, drank a bottle of wine, ate some pastries from our favorite bakery... (and I finished a sock I was knitting). After relaxing awhile we decided we were hungry. Well, I wasn't after the 4 portions-worth of pasta I ate for lunch, but everyone else was so we set out for our favorite pizza place. It was closed, the menu gone from the case, and no note on the door. I feared the worst, but announced again, "PLAN B!" We headed to another pizza place on the other side of our apartment. It turned out to be an excellent back-up, and they brought us "schnapps" after we finished up. Suzi and I were handed Amaretto and Curt and Michael received Grappa. Despite nothing going according to plan (or maybe because of it), it was another fantastic day.

Monday, we took advantage of half-price day at Kunst Haus Wien and turned it into a Hundertwasser day. We toured the museum, bought souvenirs (Hundertwasser yarn and sock pattern for me), and had coffee in the courtyard.

the tables get the guests into the spirit of the place

This hot dog outside Hundertwasser Haus inspired us to get lunch at a Wurst stand

The shadows on the tower/chimney at the heating plant reminds me of the colors cast on Curt's lap by the table

Monday night, we went to the Stadt Oper. Our cheap seats didn't allow us to see all (or much) of the stage, but the music was outstanding. I went in hoping to defend the architects so distressed by the critics that one committed suicide and the other suffered a fatal heart attack just before the building opened. I think the critics were overly harsh or the architects were overly sensitive, but they did miss the mark a few times. It's an impressive building with some amazing frescoes, particularly on the loggia, but the entrance procession felt clumsy to me and the proportions in the music hall itself seemed off. Maybe I was more interested in wavy floors and tree tenants that day, though.

The Belvedere

Tuesday, we met at the Belvedere to visit the Klimts. You really can't visit Vienna without seeing The Kiss in person, can you? We all selected other paintings as our favorites, but didn't regret the pilgrimage. Salm Bräu, just outside the Lower Belvedere entrance fortified us for some more site seeing. Curt and I planned to send Suzi and Michael to the Schatzkammer, but found it closed on Tuesdays so the four of us headed to the State Hall at the National Library instead. Two baroque libraries in three days; I swooned. We headed to Demel for treats. We stopped at the hotel to pick up the empty suitcase and headed back to the 13th for a light dinner at the Wein Hutt'n. After seeing our guests safely to the U-bahn station, we set to work stuffing that suitcase with winter clothes and books we've finished, but don't want to abandon.

Wednesday, we wandered through the Naschmarkt where I learned that photographing the flowers is frowned upon but everything else appeared to be ok.
olives stuffed with pistachios
I have no explanation for why we didn't buy any

We went to Wein & Co. for the last required souvenirs, but the prices at the wine bar portion kept us from lunching there (plus, it was only 10:30). We dropped off the heavy stuff and headed to the Prater, took a ride on the Riesenrad and had a nice lunch. Suzi and I had the risotto with green and white asparagus. Yes, I chose an asparagus dish. Pick yourself off the floor, Mom & Dad; maybe I'm not "adopted" after all. Suzi and Michael toured the Schatzkammer while Curt and I wandered around. Then, we headed to Schönbrunn for a stroll through the (much greener) gardens before dinner where Curt and Suzi could have shared the spare ribs, but opted for their own platters.
before

after

Whew! You think that was a long post? Imagine if I'd remembered EVERYthing we did!
Thanks for a great week, H's!