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Life With Karel
Nov. 1st, 2007 07:52 pmOkay, so Karel is sitting on my roomie's bed and reading and life is good.
Okay, so Karel got here late on the night of the 30th- I met her at the U3 station where Ryanair buses drop off their passengers, and explained the Ubahn system. (She'd been here one day before, when she fled her job as a nanny in Salzburg for a day of sanity in Vienna on a tour group, and actually ended up wandering around the city without paying for the subway at any time. Which can possibly get you a E70 fine, but she got away with it.) When went home and snarfed into dinner, and then ended up just wandering and sitting in the kitchen for a while enjoying each other's company. After a while, I got the urge for fries, and we went to Four Bells, the Irish pub rather near to me. The service that night, unlike normal, was really, really bad. Like, we sat there half an hour and no one came to take our orders, and then when we did order, the bartender forgot us for another 20 minutes and only noticed us when he brought drinks to another table.
He was clearly having a rough night- apparently he was manning the bar alone because one girl had quit half-way through her shift, and he was stuck with the whole place alone. He's apparently from San Francisco. Huh.
Anyhoo, we got free tiny bottles of Jägermeister out of the deal, and went to sit on park benches and drink as was perfectly legal for us to do here.
Next day, we both went to my Austrian History lecture- which was great. I could actually understand just about everything he said, despite the fact that I had not finished the reading. I imagine it was rather dull for Karel- a succession of maps and one painting.
After class and lunch at the Mensa, (and an invitation to a party by a strange Hamburger named Oliver) we met up with Colleen to ramble around the city and be a little touristy. We checked out the beginning of the Christmas Market that's being set up in front of the Rathaus, and then went to play cold tourists at the Hofberg. We then went to Cafe im Schottentor and had expensive coffee and Kuchen together. Colleen and Karel began the start of a night-long progress of Beanie-related mockery.
After that, we realized that the next day (today) was a holiday, and everything would be closed, so that we should get food and alcohol NOW before the stores shut. We bought pasta and veggies and Glühwein, which is a seasoned red wine that you drink warm around Christmas here. (I was under the impression that it needed to be more spiced with orange and maybe some nutmeg.) Anyway, we had a lovely meal, and then I proceeded to get the snot mocked out of me by my loving friends. I need to befriend cheaper drunks.
TODAY
Is November 1st, Allheiligentag, All Saints' Day, el Dia de los Muertos. (I really want a sugar skull to eat, but that will have to wait.) So, the thing to do on this day is to go tend your family graves in Europe's most populated graveyard, the Vienna Zentralfriedhof. It is just the most massive collection of deadness I have ever seen. We went to see Beethoven's grave, only to realized that dear old Ludwig Van was buried next to Schubert, the Mozart memorial, Strauss and Brahms. IN ONE ROW. Karel kind of had a "Omigod" moment there among the musical tourists.
After hitting the high tourist spots of the Karl Lueger-Memorial Chapel, (which is so achingly lovely and and incredibly strange- Jungenstil is not generally something one sees as a style of architecture, and the scale adds something to it, I would say.) we ended up heading into the older of the two Jewish cemeteries. This was the one that was mostly destroyed by the Nazis during Kristallnacht, and what remains of it is damaged and neglected. In contrast to the well-tended graves of the Catholic cemetery, it was heartbreaking. There was a memorial, made of toppled and damaged gravestones, for the graves that had been so damaged by bombings that it was impossible to replace the headstones. It was... profane, seeing a pile of headstones just lying there, cracked and broken and dishonored. The rest of the old Jewish cemetery is dark and ivy-covered and battered. There is a new one, but it was getting cold and dark and we headed home.
I bought hot chestnuts on the way home- they are surprisingly bready in their composition. A bit sweet. And that about brings us home, to now, where Karel sits on my roomie's bed reading and I am sipping the last of a pot of ginger and lemon tea, thinking of dinner and karaoke.
Okay, so Karel got here late on the night of the 30th- I met her at the U3 station where Ryanair buses drop off their passengers, and explained the Ubahn system. (She'd been here one day before, when she fled her job as a nanny in Salzburg for a day of sanity in Vienna on a tour group, and actually ended up wandering around the city without paying for the subway at any time. Which can possibly get you a E70 fine, but she got away with it.) When went home and snarfed into dinner, and then ended up just wandering and sitting in the kitchen for a while enjoying each other's company. After a while, I got the urge for fries, and we went to Four Bells, the Irish pub rather near to me. The service that night, unlike normal, was really, really bad. Like, we sat there half an hour and no one came to take our orders, and then when we did order, the bartender forgot us for another 20 minutes and only noticed us when he brought drinks to another table.
He was clearly having a rough night- apparently he was manning the bar alone because one girl had quit half-way through her shift, and he was stuck with the whole place alone. He's apparently from San Francisco. Huh.
Anyhoo, we got free tiny bottles of Jägermeister out of the deal, and went to sit on park benches and drink as was perfectly legal for us to do here.
Next day, we both went to my Austrian History lecture- which was great. I could actually understand just about everything he said, despite the fact that I had not finished the reading. I imagine it was rather dull for Karel- a succession of maps and one painting.
After class and lunch at the Mensa, (and an invitation to a party by a strange Hamburger named Oliver) we met up with Colleen to ramble around the city and be a little touristy. We checked out the beginning of the Christmas Market that's being set up in front of the Rathaus, and then went to play cold tourists at the Hofberg. We then went to Cafe im Schottentor and had expensive coffee and Kuchen together. Colleen and Karel began the start of a night-long progress of Beanie-related mockery.
After that, we realized that the next day (today) was a holiday, and everything would be closed, so that we should get food and alcohol NOW before the stores shut. We bought pasta and veggies and Glühwein, which is a seasoned red wine that you drink warm around Christmas here. (I was under the impression that it needed to be more spiced with orange and maybe some nutmeg.) Anyway, we had a lovely meal, and then I proceeded to get the snot mocked out of me by my loving friends. I need to befriend cheaper drunks.
TODAY
Is November 1st, Allheiligentag, All Saints' Day, el Dia de los Muertos. (I really want a sugar skull to eat, but that will have to wait.) So, the thing to do on this day is to go tend your family graves in Europe's most populated graveyard, the Vienna Zentralfriedhof. It is just the most massive collection of deadness I have ever seen. We went to see Beethoven's grave, only to realized that dear old Ludwig Van was buried next to Schubert, the Mozart memorial, Strauss and Brahms. IN ONE ROW. Karel kind of had a "Omigod" moment there among the musical tourists.
After hitting the high tourist spots of the Karl Lueger-Memorial Chapel, (which is so achingly lovely and and incredibly strange- Jungenstil is not generally something one sees as a style of architecture, and the scale adds something to it, I would say.) we ended up heading into the older of the two Jewish cemeteries. This was the one that was mostly destroyed by the Nazis during Kristallnacht, and what remains of it is damaged and neglected. In contrast to the well-tended graves of the Catholic cemetery, it was heartbreaking. There was a memorial, made of toppled and damaged gravestones, for the graves that had been so damaged by bombings that it was impossible to replace the headstones. It was... profane, seeing a pile of headstones just lying there, cracked and broken and dishonored. The rest of the old Jewish cemetery is dark and ivy-covered and battered. There is a new one, but it was getting cold and dark and we headed home.
I bought hot chestnuts on the way home- they are surprisingly bready in their composition. A bit sweet. And that about brings us home, to now, where Karel sits on my roomie's bed reading and I am sipping the last of a pot of ginger and lemon tea, thinking of dinner and karaoke.
