Mom's Questions about Vienna Answered

Since I seem to have blogger's block, I'll use Mom's comment on the last post as a framework. Clever me.

Don't they have any small ANYTHING in Vienna?

Yes: extremely small stitches in the insane petit point works you can get in some of the stores we passed. Other than that, everything is pretty much huge. And covered in gold. Chris and I decided that Vienna (and much of western Europe) shows that Americans don't know crap about old money, big houses, or insanely ostentatious people. I suppose Donald Trump does like to gild his possessions, but he really couldn't pull off wearing a jeweled crown and ermine stole. I'm sure the US will gain more opulence cred as time goes by, though, so fear not; in a few hundred years, McMansions will come to be seen as attractive and tasteful, and we will pay large amounts of money to pass through their rooms, which will be only sparsely furnished because the family will have had to sell everything before going into exile. I'll stop now.

What's with the Sistine Chapel for Spanish Horses?

That's LIPIZZANER STALLIONS to you, and they have an awesome riding arena because they are the best horses in the world and SO SO PRETTY. I'm pretty sure I'm serious when I say I suggested Vienna for our vacation because it was home to the Spanish Riding School, and I wanted to go see the Lipizzaners. Sadly, there aren't any shows in summer, so we didn't get to see such fancy maneuvers as the courbette or capriole, but we showed up for the morning practice and got to watch the horses trot around the ring for an hour or so. Chris claims not to have been too bored, which is nice of him. The light wasn't great for our non-professional-grade photo equipment, but we managed to get a couple nice (or artistic, at least) shots:





I've seen the Lipizzaners perform a couple times in New England; the most recent performance was at URI, by an American group, and it seemed pretty dinky compared to my memories of the show I'd seen in Worcester in 1988. Well, it turns out that the Worcester show was performed by the actual Spanish Riding School! So that explains why it had seemed about a million times better. We'd even gotten front-row tickets for free, because I'd posed for a newspaper photo with one of the horses in some Kmart parking lot a couple weeks prior. I should get my mom to scan that photo for me. Sadly, I didn't come away with any good photos of the event, because I was a dumb eleven-year-old trying to take flash pictures through a glass divider.

Why is there a dog in the bushes?

Aha! That's not a dog. It's a statue of a dog's butt. It was oddly fascinating, and I couldn't stop staring at it all through dinner.

Whose dog is it anyway?

Well, it was a pretty close likeness of the butt of what seemed to be the restaurant owners' dog. So there you go.

My guess is the folks who partake of the ever present torten only need to walk around a bit...it looks like canvasing the terrain burns a few calories.

Yes, especially if you are carrying a huge mutant baby like I am. Which you aren't so SHUT UP! YOU DON'T KNOW MY PAIN! Sorry. Hormones. Anyway, Vienna itself was flat, but Baden, Melk and Durnstein (our side trips) featured plenty of lung-popping hills and stairs. Funny, Chris didn't seem to be nearly as out of breath as I was after climbing all those inclines. Perhaps it had something to do with the huge mutant baby. Or all the eiskaffee.

Enough about you all...how was Soren's visit with Grammy & Grampy?


Oh, HIM! Right! He, of course, had a fabulous time in Ohio with Grammy and Grampy (plus some bonus time with Aunt Rachel and Uncle Dude). There were piles of toy cars to be parked in the living room, stylish new duds, visits to the children's museum and aquarium, and car trips with views of cornfields and LP tanks (which Soren apparently finds very interesting). Sadly, Chris and I didn't get to talk to him while we were in Austria, since our phones don't use GSM technology and Chris' emails to his parents about setting up time to Skype went undelivered (as were all his emails to .edu addresses, for some reason). He came back with a lovely photo album of his week in Ohio, though, so we have proof that he had a fun time. Come on -- what's better than a week with grandparents?

You know, besides a week without a toddler?

Of course, absence does make the heart grow fonder... so I'm very glad to be home with my little boy again.

Would You Like Schlagobers With Your Eiskaffee?

Grüß Gott! Sorry about the lack of recent posts, but Chris and I decided that Grammy and Grampy have been very good this year, so they deserved a week with Soren, completely free of parental anti-spoiling maneuvers. And then we figured that we've been pretty good, too, so we decided to take a trip to Vienna!

There are many things to say about our trip, and I could probably sit down and try to compose a post with narrative structure and stuff, but I would never get around to finishing. In short, we had a great time, and Vienna was, as my good friend Hannah put it, "tortenly chamberful".

Ah, the torten. I'm not sure how Austrians maintain their figures, because as far as we could tell, they subsist mainly on torten and coffee. It was hard, but we made do. Chris stuck with espresso, but since I'm eating for two and require extra calcium, I was forced to order Eiskaffee, which is a lot like iced coffee, but with ice cream instead of ice cubes. Perfectly reasonable substitute, if you ask me.


Hey! Look how pregnant I am!

Oh, and since the US dollar is getting sand kicked in its face by the Euro, Chris economized by drinking wine and beer instead of water. We cut corners wherever we can.

OK, while we're on the subject of food, I would like to pose a question to everyone who has not been to Austria or Germany, because I want to see if you're dumb like me. Quiz: which of these is a Wiener Schnitzel?

A.


B.


C.


Correct answer: B. Am I the only one who thought the answer was A? I really, really thought I was asking for a sausage when I ordered Wiener Schnitzel the other night, but then they brought out this gigantor fried cutlet, and I was like, Huh? And then I was like, Duh, wurst is sausage. My American concept of schnitzel had been warped by long-ago visits to this fine franchise, and I had no idea that schnitzel was a cutlet. In any case, it was quite tasty, and if I'm the only person who didn't know what schnitzel was, shut up because I don't want to hear about it.

There's lots more, but I'm jetlagged and don't feel like writing any more. More soon! Until then, a beauty shot of a little shack on the Danube. As always, our photos are here.