The Good, The Bad, and The Tomato Paste

There are actually many good things about living in Europe,  and perhaps Vienna in particular.
I say "perhaps",  since I'll never be a true city boy,  but that's OK,  this too shall pass.

Sunday's outing comes to mind.

Think about it,  the Choir from the University of Vienna (one of the oldest in the world,  going back to 1365 ) along with a gaggle of musicians playing music written by a couple of the most clever dudes to ever put quill to manuscript.
Seriously.

And all we had to do was show up.




And they say that one of them,  the little guy
who lived here in Vienna,  would typically have the music in his head,  and "composing" it,  was mostly a matter of simply writing it down. 
...mind boggling...


€5,00 in the collections basket,  and another voluntary €10,00 on the way out the door by way of appreciation...


Meanwhile,  actual concert tickets are as rare as hen's teeth.


But I digress...



Let's slide on down to some more basic amenities,  shall we?

There's hardly a week that goes by when beer isn't on sale.

Ah yes,  it's come to this.  The true measure of a man's willingness to look favourably on the European Lifestyle.



A few weeks back,  it was Ottakring.








This time around,  it's Gösser which,  if I were to buy 24,  was at an astounding €,54 each.
(that's around 80 cents CDN kids....and as it turns out,   80 cents American too....sorry there Yanks)

How can you NOT buy 24 at that price?

Now,  I have made the mistake of buying beer in bottles but really,  it was at some discount type store somewhere in Prague,  and it broke my heart to just recently take a six pack of empties to the recycling bin.



This,  unfortunately was the last one.....

Not quite worth it to drive back to the Czech Republic to take back six empties I'm afraid.





Now let's briefly talk about the "bad",  shall we?

A while back,  I think it was when we were living in the Netherlands,  I saw a brief piece on the Tube about this particular type of Water Closet that the Germans where all keen on.
Little did I know,  that the Austrians were of a like mind,  and that we would be blessed with a couple of these abominations when we moved here to Wienerland.

Now,  in case at some time in the future that link fails to produce results,  let me just snip a short quote from this rather lengthy description:

And I quote:


German toilets are quite extraordinary. Other European toilets - well, the ones that aren't merely holes in the floor - work much like their North American cousins. They are shaped a little differently, but the basic principle is the same: the excrement either lands directly in the water or it slides down a steep slope into the water, before being flushed away. Simple, effective and clean. See?

"Normal" toilet

Not so the German toilet. The excrement lands on a bone-dry horizontal shelf, mere inches beneath one's posterior. Repeated flushings are required to slide the ordure off the shelf into a small water-filled hole, from which it hopefully disappears. See?

















(with credit to Scot Anderson for that).

Turns out much has been written on the subject.



Here's the thing,  the exhaust fan is your friend.   Really,  I could leave it at that.
I mean,  I made sure that we shipped a couple toilet brushes from the Netherlands,  so that we'd be prepared since,  one needs to clean the damned toilet every single time there's any hint of "the big one".
It doesn't even need to be "the big one".
Honestly!
It's going to lie there,  mocking you in a naked,  stinking "shittin' in the woods"  kind of way.

If I didn't know in the back of my mind that we'd be blowing  on out of here at some point in the future,  I'd seriously consider shipping over a couple proper "plopping"  toilets.

Well,  actually I could get them from the Netherlands.  We didn't have this problem there.



Now for the Tomato Paste.


Ever open one of those small tins of tomato paste,  but you don't need to use the whole thing?   Then you try putting it in the fridge,  where it gets forgotten and starts to become some sort of twisted science project?

The answer?  Simple.  Tomato Paste in a tube!

Brilliant!

See?  Stupid little can on the left,  resealable tube on the right.   What more can I say?

I think tomorrow night just might have to be pasta night,  so I can try it out.






On edit,  I've been informed that we DO have tubes of the stuff in Canada.  I guess I've just never seen it,  as I rarely am called upon to do the grocery shopping over yonder.

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Easter Weekend.

Hope everyone had a fine weekend.

Good Friday here is pretty much an ordinary Friday,  so the good news for me was that I didn't spend the day wondering if I'd make it through the day on no food,  but it also meant my travelling companion was working up in Schrems trying to sort out month end.
Now,  you may remember that on the previous Friday I had had the winter tires taken off and the summer rubber put on?
Well....seems it snowed Thursday night in Schrems.  There was a phone call. 
"Just wanted to let you know it's snowing!"

Oops.

There was some nervous laughter on my end.


Fortunately it was all gone by the next day and the drive home was uneventful.   Actually, it seems there was gobs of opposing traffic heading north,  but hardly anyone on the road coming the other way.  So if they go "north" for the weekend,  don't they just end up in another country?  I'm just saying.



Saturday we made a quick trip to the Naschmarkt again to pick up a couple pieces of salmon,  along with a couple other specialities that are not to be found in the regular stores.  This is never an easy outing, but we managed to wade through the crowds,  get our stuff and emerge at the other end.  It's basically one long skinny row of vendors,  so turning around and coming back through the crowd is really just unnecessary punishment.
At least it is for me.  Turns out travelling companion "loves"  the crowds.   Methink she sits in her office by herself way too much.


At some point in time we usually look around on the net for a Church service,  and Saturday was no exception. 
There was some mention of something to do with Mozart at the Jesuit Church ?


That got my attention.

  "We're going there".  "What time?"


Now, for those of you with score cards,  the program was Mozart's Coronation Mass 
Requiem,  and the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah.

This is sort of an Easter "triple header",  if I could put it into baseball parlance.



 
From the outside of the church,   you would never know what lies beyond,  since the inside is absolutely breath taking.
I realise I'm running out of superlatives when it comes to some of these buildings,  and I'm sorry.  

If you go to that first link,  there are a couple more photos online.   We were there for the service,  so picture taking was kinda tough.

I really and truly wanted to get there by about 10:00 for the 11:00 a.m.  service,  and we did manage to get there by about 10:25,  but the place was already mobbed.   There were chairs available in one of the back rooms.


We were kinda stuck off to the side.....

I wish I had a better example of the music,  since it's pretty hard to convey just what an extraordinary experience this is.
I did manage do find something on Youtube,  and you're welcome to follow along.

This is the "Kyrie"  from the Coronation Mass:








I'm afraid I'm going to have to drag you kicking and screaming along for another piece,  which is one of the first parts of the Requiem.
(there are actually 14 sections....we heard just the one)






After communion,  people started to leave,  even though they still hadn't done Handel's Messiah.
This gave me a chance to take out the small camera.

Fortunately the Hallelujah chorus is just under four minutes long,  since my arms were starting to get a little shaky towards the end there.   Not sure if you can tell.


Our original intention was to bolster our courage and head out on the bikes on Monday,  but the weather here was pretty lousy,  with single digit temperatures,  rain and wind.


Hopefully spring decides to return.

An April Fools joke of sorts.

No,  we don't go playing tricks on each other.

I've noticed a couple lame attempts on the internet, and that's only due to it being the place where I seem to get the most of my news.  At least nobody has bothered to send me any lame-assed emails up to this point.
The day's not over though.....and it's still morning in North America.


So where am I going with this?

Well,  for the last few weeks I guess it's been,  I've been accompanying my travelling companion in the mornings to the parking garage and sending her on her way.   First of all,  the excercise ain't gonna kill me and secondly, she's been using this one computer bag lately that I swear would give Paul Bunyan a hernia.

I've already had my share of hernias in my life and I'm all good.  They've been fixed.
Thanks for your concern.
Just the same,  it doesn't exactly do wonders for my neck and shoulders,  but I'm sure I'll be fine.



Since it's "month end",  she had decided to head up to Schrems and help out the mutts in the trenches,  so this mornings luggage was of the extra cumbersome variety. 

That would not be such a huge deal,  except that we couldn't get into the flippin' parking garage.


*sigh*


See,  since we are "Dauerparker"  (we have a long term parking arrangement),  we have a plastic card with a magnetic strip,  not unlike a credit card, that we use to get in and out of the garage.  It usually resides in a little pouch with the car key,  along with a couple gas cards.  Normally I simply leave the card in the pouch,  hold it up in front of the sensor and the door opens.
Nothing happened.   Turned it over.   Nothing happened.
Opened the pouch.
Well,  there we go! There's only a couple gas cards.  Great for getting fuel,  not very helpful at the moment.


We just sort of looked at each other like a couple stunned bunnies.
(note Easter theme)



Now I have to say,  this is something that I've come really close  to doing myself,  since I do tend to zone out once in a while.  I've had to shuffle back to the car on more than one occasion and fetch the card,  so as to not end up being locked out.
Of course,  there's also that moment of doubt just after I've opened the door,  but not before letting it slam shut behind me,  when I feverishly open the pouch to double check that I do in fact have the card.

Weekends are a time of greater concern,  since the place is locked up solid all day Sunday.  Kinda puts a damper on that "Sunday Drive"  program when you can't get to the car.



Fortunately it was after 7:00 a.m.,  since the big metal doors are closed over night as well.
What that means however is,  we had to slink our way down the ramp that comes out way over on the other side.





Does it look like it's a bit of a hike? 

 There's no camera trickery here.  We're not just "underground".   No-no....this is a level below that. 


No biggie,  but a whole lot of slinking. 


A hand brake on luggage wouldn't hurt either.







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