The weekends.

It occurred to some time yesterday I guess it was, that I hadn't really uttered a peep about what we did on the weekend just past.
And since we're well on our way to the next weekend,  time is sort of running out on that one.
First of all,  I'm making a huge assumption here that anyone actually gives a rat's tiny behind,  and secondly,  sometimes the "muse",  has quite simply left the room.
I suppose that's the ultimate form of laziness,  when I can't quite bring myself to operate a keyboard,  but that's not always the issue at the heart of the matter.
(um,  it's also a good idea to have something to say...)

OK,  Saturday:  Bolstered our courage and went to the Naschmarkt.
It's just a tad too far to walk,  especially for my travelling companion (OK,  maybe for me too)  so we took the car.  Wasn't sure about the parking situation,  so I stopped at the closest Tabac just around the corner from our front door to get a "Parkschein". 

Don't you love all these links I'm shoving in here?  Saves me a heap of explanation,  let me tell you.
They're not all in English, but at least there's pictures.

Found out from the lady at the counter that the parking was free after noon from Saturday onwards.  Bought a spare Parkshein anyway.
We were exceedingly lucky in that we found a parking spot with very little trouble.  (that's right up there with seeing a solar eclipse in my estimation)  and headed into the crowd.


We seem to have a knack for going to this place when it's quite cold out,  and any of the restaurants we peered into we both crowded and smoky.  Interestingly,  one of the places had live music.  A small three man group was playing "easy listening"  or something along those lines.  I thought that was kinda neat.
Took a camera.  Took a picture.  Here it is.

In a similar situation to most any place like this in the winter months,  I'm sure it's going be simply mobbed in the summer time.   I can hardly wait!!

So that was our big outing on Saturday.  Sunday it was once again all about finding yet another church to visit for a service.
Thought we'd see what  Stephansdom had offer. 

(OK,  that link will take you a while to wade through.   I can wait)

Done?

Alrighty.

You may have gathered from the pictures and all the information,  that this place is HUGE.   Very hard to even try and capture on camera.
Here's the thing about going to a service in such a place,  since there are so many tourists,  you have to make it clear to the guy standing guard at the front of the church, (well,  behind the fenced off area that you'll notice in the last video)  that you are in fact going up to the front for the 10:15 mass.  Helps to know what time the mass is as well.   Fortunately there were no three questions to answer like,  "What's your favourite colour?"  or "How many letters did Paul write to the Corintians?"  Or "What's a "Henway"?"

We just said we were going in for a mass.

Come to find out,  a heating system had been installed back in 2000,  and even though it only gets up to around 10 degrees,  that was actually heaps better than just having heated seats.
I could still feel my feet when we left.   Didn't hurt that I wore my boots this time around.

A fine time was had by all.


Especially since there was a choir (who get to sit down!)  and we got to hear some Mozart who,  by the way,  was married in this very church.

Bet you didn't know that one did ya?

At the end of the service,  I did whip out the small camera to try and take a couple shots.
 

It also occurred to me to try and capture some of the ambience in some sort of moving picture format.

Note in the video,  that way over on the other side is the choir,  still seated.   Plus I wanted to keep recording until the organ player was finished,  but I was holding the camera over my head,  and that didn't last long.

Here ya go

And this next one will demonstrate the trouble with tourists.  How I ended up getting it in black and white is a bit of a mystery.  Probably has something to do with operating the video feature on the camera without my glasses on.

Mind you,  anyone coming out of the fenced off area without a camera is most like someone who was just at the service,  but still.  

Please go here....


Maybe tomorrow we'll talk about the driving license situation.

Stay tuned.

Is this civilisation?

Came across this little snippet this morning.  Had to share.

08. 03. 10. - 15:00

Vienna chainsaw massacre avoided

A quarrel between two Poles and two Romanians at Vienna’s Prater amusement park yesterday (Sun) almost ended up as a chainsaw massacre, police said.

The four men who had spent the day drinking in an apartment across the street from the Prater fell out after one of the Romanians began drinking from one of the Pole’s favourite bottle of wine.

What started with an exchange of insults quickly moved to the street, where the Romanians began laying into the Pole. At that point, the other Pole ran into the street with a chainsaw and attacked the Romanians.

He cut one of their fingers off but during the mayhem accidentially cut his own nose off too.

Several passers-by were also injured before police managed to break up the fight in front of the Prater’s giant Ferris wheel.

Police spokesman Mario Hejl said today: "Luckily the Pole did not have the chainsaw turned on. Otherwise, things would have been much worse."

He added that police had not yet been able to question the men because they were too drunk and interpreters had to be found.




............./.............

Since it's not April Fools Day,  I can only guess that this is an actual story,  and even if it isn't,  I almost peed my pants.

OK so,  somehow a couple digits where lobbed off,  along with somebody's nose,  and the chainsaw wasn't running?

And what's with the "passers-by"?   I'm pretty sure if I saw two Pollacks mixing it up with a couple gypsies I'd give them a wide berth.


 Thanks for playing along.

Up on the roof.

From time to time there's the odd sound coming from the hallway outside our door,  and I typically ignore most of it.  Half the time it's someone hitting the "ass button" in the elevator.  Now, I refer to it as the "ass button",  since it's the button one pushes to summon help,  but is unfortunately just at the correct distance from the floor so as to facilitate it's being pushed accidentally by one's ass....
....which apparently wasn't the experience of one of our neighbours last Wednesday night,  since I found out that she was stuck between floors for 20 minutes,  and had to be extracated by the company that monitors the "ass button".   Remember how I mentioned that the elevator was not working on Thursday morning when I came home with the chandelier?
  Right.
Got the whole story.
Apparently you also need to hold the "ass button",  since a quick jab won't do the trick, thankfully.  Probably because they've heard so many people hitting it with their asses up to this point.


I should say,  I was pretty impressed with the fact that it only took someone twenty minutes to get here,  but I guess in light of our having coined the phrase "Tod Falle"  for the elevator,  that's probably a good thing.

Do I need to give another German lesson?  *sigh*

Tod Falle  =  Death Trap.

I'm sure it's not really  a death trap,  but once in a while there's that moment of doubt, just after stepping aboard,  when getting on just doesn't seem like such a good idea.

I try to take the stairs.


So there was some clattering and banging outside the front door,  and I just figured maybe the chimney sweep guys were back?  Who knows?
Well,  turns out the roof hatch must have been frozen,  since these two gentleman asked very politely if they could come through.
Hey,  whatever.

They weren't the chimney sweep Dudes from last week though...

What exactly they were trying to determine remains a mystery,  but I figured I'd need some photographic evidence,  or you'd just figure I was having an episode or something...

(pssst...Bob's gone bonkers!)



No no kids,  I ain't making this shit up....

So you're probably wondering (aren't you??)  just how did the little guy get up on the upper section?


Well now,  let's have a look,  shall we?

 

 

Pretty sure I need to put in an "Alley-Oop"  at this point.

Think they practised that one a few times?  "ladders?  we don't need no stinking ladders!"

Actually,  if we're going to rip off a line from "The treasure of the Sierra Madre" properly, it would go more like this;
"So if you're the chimney guys,  where's your ladder?
"Ladder,  we ain't got no ladder, we don't need no ladder, I don't have to show you any stinkin' ladder!"


Fun to go off on these tangents,  innit?



So fine,  they come back down,  traipse through with their by then snowy boots,  and off they go.  No biggie,  since I was going to do a little post weekend floor washing anyway.

That was that.   Or so I thought.

Get finished washing the floor,  and the door bell rings.  I'm thinkin',  *crap*,  they're back!

But no,  it was a third guy.   Looking for the first two.
I'm like,  "Dude,  they ain't here".   (and that,  by the way,  is a direct translation of the German)

So off he goes,  and no sooner had I opened my "Sunday Times*",  but a fourth guy shows up.
In addition to his coveralls, he at least had a piece of paper with him,  and the address he had been sent to wasn't any number in this building,  let me tell you.
Nearest I could figure was that some less than clever secretary had mistyped the apartment number and instead of it being a 31,  it was 91.
31 is way over on the other side,  where they are STILL working on one of the two top floor apartments that we looked at back in September.

I'm not kidding.

I don't think things are going well.  There was talk that a wall had been ripped open and he had been sent to close 'er up and finish up.   (Funny what people will tell you when they're feeling kind of bad for being at the wrong address....like it's any of my business?)

Now,  life is too short to start getting agitated about this kind of thing since well,  although some folks would find it sort of annoying,  I tend to see the humour in the whole parade past the front door routine.
I also realised that if say,  we were out in the "burbs" like what I'm used to,  they would have all been able to see each other already at the street,  instead of playing hide and seek in some building with two elevators that are a half a block apart.

Now,  in addition to the little snippet that he let slip,  how else do I know things aren't going all that well?
Well,  there's the fact that just last week it looked like they had ripped out ALL THE FLOORING from an entire apartment,  since it was sitting in bags lined up at the front door for a day or so.  Plus, remember once upon a time we had to have a visit from the four eyed door installer?
It so happens that when I was down in the garbage room,  I saw one of the workers come down to let his sorry ass in the front door.

This was shortly after the four Marx Brothers had gone through.


Somehow I suspect that it might all tie in to the water leak from a couple weeks back....?


I just have this sneaking suspicion.








*there was no "Sunday Times"  and they didn't really look like this....

......