And….they’re gone.

Was that two weeks?  Seems to have gone by mighty fast.  I suppose time does really fly by when you’re having fun.  Having good guests usually does help to pass the time. 

There was some question about the “catastrophe” in Bled,  and I’ll get to that.  One of these days.  It’s not that all fired serious,  as it has only to do with desert.  Mind you,  I do suppose it depends on ones point of view.  Having a “desert catastrophe” could do irreparable harm to ones psyche.  Couldn’t it?

Anyway,  Travelling Companion and I were up at dark thirty this morning so that we could get her to her office early enough for me to then get back here to take our company to the airport.  Sucks to get up that early,  but the traffic was awesome.  That’s what I tell myself at least.

Most recently,  we’ve had a somewhat busy weekend here in Wienerland,  as I had secured tickets to one of the “Mozart Concerts”  at the “Musikverein” for Saturday night.  

You’re probably wondering just what the heck that could be, and suffice to say it’s one of the local concert halls,   and in spite of what is spelled out in that Wiki article in that link above,  there are actually six different halls within that one honkin’ huge building. (Not five.  Wiki is sometimes wrong you know?) 

I had ordered the tickets on Thursday to be picked up on Saturday night before the concert.  The next ever so slight challenge is to find the correct venue within the building.  It’s not an entirely self explanatory endeavour,  but we found our way after asking a couple questions. 

 

Here are our guests just before the start of the concert.

 

We were in the “Brahms” hall,  which is a fairly typical ornate kind of place.  Nothing new here.

So,  you have to understand that,  having been here in Wienerland this long, we’ve seen this particular performance either three or four times.  I think it’s three,  since the one at Schönnbrunn involved some dancing,  and since there was at least one guy prancing around in tights,  I've mostly blocked that experience from my memory.  I think I can safely say, “three”.

I try therefore to look on the whole experience with the same sort of “newness” that the musicians and conductor must try to have,  since they’re doing this gig every freakin’ night. 

This is one of the concerts that is done in “period costume”.

I just grabbed a pic from the net,  since I don’t seem to have anything decent of my own to offer.   Just so you get the idea.

Really though,  I mostly feel sorry for these poor buggers,  since they’ve all studied for years and years,  only to now put on some great heavy set of drapes straight out of “Gone With the Wind”,  along with some stupid-assed white wig.   Even my own head was starting to itch.

Of course,  these heavy costumes are a little bit more refined than the version portrayed by Carol Burnett,  but it did truly look to me like proper drapery fabric.

 

I think you get the idea.

It’s mostly done for the tourists and well, our guests had been touring around,  and they did enjoy themselves.  It was all good.

 

Even though we had had plenty of meals in restaurants,  it’s never a bad idea to take guests out to Plachutta,  which was on the agenda for last (Sunday) night.   All the vegans can look away at this point, since this is most definitely a “meat and potatoes” kind of place.  As a matter of fact,  a group sat down at a table nearby,  only to get up and leave before having ordered anything,  and since I’m slightly nosy,  and asked our waiter what the deal was, he told me they were looking for chicken.   Ha!Nope.  Sorry.  Only beef.   They even have a big diagram of an animal on the menu with all the various cuts and what they’re called.  Sort of a road map to yumminess. 

The dish that Plachutta is famous for is, of course,  Tafelspitz,  and we’ve gone to this place often enough that it feels like I’m Norm from Cheers.   Well,  it’s not exactly such that “everybody knows your name”,  but at least they now spell it correctly in their reservations program.  Small steps.

 

Above, Margaret is trying to decide if she instead wants to have Schnitzel,  but we steered her in the direction of the house specialty.  There were no regrets.

Oh,  and speaking of feeling like Norm,  when we left the waiter shook all our hands,  and thanked me for bringing our guests to Plachutta.  Too funny.  Never hurts to suck up a bit I suppose. 

That,  and having decided to eat desert first when we were in Bled a few days ago,  are a reasonable representation of the highlights for me over the last little while.  I’ll take these little boosts whenever I can.

 

Tomorrow,  I promise to hack up something on the subject of the desert “catastrophe”.   Really.  I’ll do it.

 

Thanks for looking. 

 

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Mitigating the missing bits.

Was I saying something?   Were there questions?

The reason for going to all those places basically comes down to roots.   You see,  one of our visitors is Travelling Companion’s older brother.   It so happens that he was born in Austria.  I know!  Isn’t that crazy?   But no,  he’s not an Austrian citizen,  although I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.  He was quite young when the family emigrated to Canada in the fall of ‘51.   Travelling Companion was only a twinkle in her father’s eye at the time,  and she and the rest of the siblings were born in Canada.    Any more info than that will get me in trouble with the blogging police.   Trust me.

So naturally,  even though his birth and baptism was in Spittal an der drau in Austria,  the first order of business was a trip into Slovenia.  It’s a nice country.  I highly recommend it. 

My Slovenian is pretty weak,  and even I don’t feel like a complete foreigner there.   Mind you,  there have been times when I’ve been able to communicate in German with folks whose English is as weak as my Slovenian,  so I suppose there’s always that aspect.   See,  they were once part of the “Austro-Hungarian Empire”, in addition to which, the notion of learning German in school is still something that is part of most school curricula to this day.   There are a couple German speaking countries right next door after all.

 

 

As far as the trip was concerned,  there were a couple agendas at play.  Besides birth places to visit, such as Žužemberk,  where we lit a little candle thingy at one of the grave sites,  thus:

 

there was also a request to see the sea,  and the faint hope of finding a couple material stores so that Travelling Companion could add to her ever growing arsenal of fabric that she’s been collecting when the opportunity presents itself. 

 

You’ll notice there,  some material in these nifty storage containers that are available from IKEA?   Well, more storage was required,  so going to IKEA was on my agenda yesterday,  which was part of the reason why I couldn’t seem to come up with enough spare time to post anything.   That’s my story anyway.

 

 

It turns out that the fabric shop in Ljubljana had moved or was not to be found,  but we did find a place just outside of Bled that turned out to be a hidden gem. 

From a Canadian or North American point of view,  we found the location of this place to be a bit unusual.  If you go to their website, here,  you can see just how much fabric they have available. 

It was a good thing that the cousin in Sava had written down the address for us,  and even then,  it almost seemed like we were driving off into the countryside somewhere.   I do know I’ve encountered places like this in Ontario,  where you drive and drive thinking,  “This can’t be right”,  and then you come to some huge outlet that only the locals seem to know about.    In my case that would be some place that sells lumber or tools. 

No fabric for me.

By the way (and this took me a while to find again, as my memory had gone dim) the Wellbeck Sawmill comes to mind,  which is a not very short drive from our place in Burlington, Ontario.  I thought it cute that,  on their home page it even states,  “worth the short drive to…Wellbeck Sawmill”.   Right,  it was no short drive.  But MAN,  they had everything,  and now I’m glad that I found their website.  The last time I was there was back in the dark pre-internet days.   Good times.

 

 

If you didn’t happen to elect to go to the fabric store website,  that’s all fine and dandy,  as I did take at least a couple photos.

It seems that the concept of “zoning” isn’t really that big an issue in Slovenia,  since this place looked to be a house/property/whatever that had then been transformed into a retail outlet.   If you’re brave,  and willing to click on this link to a Google map,  you can get the idea that this place is in a tiny village,  not very close to any place where there would be traffic or “walk-in” business.   You either know about this place,  or you don’t.   That’s all there is to it.

 

There was lots of fabric to choose from.  Some of it really high quality stuff. 

Eventually though I meandered outside,  where I was more intrigued by the local surroundings.  

Bt the way,  that would be T.C.’s older brother off there having a look around.

 

See,  a nicely stickered pile of lumber is what gets my heart racing.  The whole fabric shop thing?  Meh.

There was the distinctive sound of a thickness planer to be heard from a place next door as well.  Also something that gets my head turning.

No pictures of the Dude milling some lumber though.  He was busy and I wasn’t about to bother the guy.  I’m never overly keen on someone wandering up my driveway and bugging me when I’m doing the same,  so why would I then be an annoyance to anyone else?  Just common woodworker courtesy as far as I’m concerned.

 

I was more intrigued with the cut outs on the side of the house next door that appeared to be “upside down”,  since I’m used to seeing hearts as cut-outs,  but the other way around.  I wasn’t sure what was going on there.

Teardrops perhaps?

We’ll never know.

The odd thing I suppose is,  I’ve by now become so used to seeing the Slovenian/Austrian style of houses,  that it’s only when I see something like this that I look on it as “unusual”.    It’s curious what we can get used to.

All in all I think I put an additional 1500 kilometres on the car by the time T.C. and I got back to Wienerland on Tuesday night.   We dropped off our two guests in Spittal an der Drau,  but that snippet will have to wait for another day. 

I need some lunch.

 

Keep those sticks on the ice.

 

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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Didn’t fall off.

The face of the Earth,  that is.

Travelling and blogging has never been one of my strengths,  so I don’t even bother taking along the computer these days,  since half the time I end up lugging the thing around with me,  but then have too many other things to do,  and end up crashing at the end of the day without uttering a peep. 

My hat is off to those who can stay awake long enough at the end of the day to tell that day’s story.  Seriously.  Good on ya.

 

Here’s a brief summary,  and I may expound on it later this week.  We’ll see. 

Left Saturday morning and took off for Slovenia.  Went to Sava,  Ljubljana, Ivančna Gorica,  Žužemberk,  Bled (where there was a minor disaster,  by the way)  and then on to a place where we had to wear sun block.

 

I know I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack,  but I did bring along a tube of spf 50.

 

This was one of the views from our hotel room.

 

Here’s another.

The problem is,  I have gobs of photos,  so it’ll be a challenge to sort through them and try not to get too carried away. 

Which means,  for the moment,  I shall do nothing.

 

I’ve managed to find my passport photos,  since we got a message from legal Dude that I’m to meet him (or her, perhaps) at the MA 35 tomorrow morning to ONCE AGAIN renew my Residence Permit.  Think they’ll kick me out?  Probably not.

We’ll see how that goes.  And how long the line is.  I’m so looking forward to standing in line.

  

Stay tuned for all kinds of updates.