Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Cider in the Stout

No, not another weird British drink combination. (Speaking of which: never ever drink Guinness with blackcurrant cordial - tried it once, 'cause I learned on Herm that some people like that -- elderly gentlemen in general, come to think of ... hm... However, I found that pure Guinness is more to my taste.)

Back to the topic: "The Stout" is a fairly new 'Irish Pub' in Vienna, where Kate and I went last Friday to celebrate Kathi's birthday. A glimpse at the drinks list told us that the pub offered a wide variety of ciders and having just come back from England where we encountered "Aspall's English cider" for the first time, we decided to expand our knowledge of this delicious liquid a bit further and after a long time of indecision finally ordered "Old Rosie's".
5 mins later the - strikingly handsome - waiter advanced with just ONE of the desired drinks - the last bottle, apparently.
"No prob, we'll share and order another one afterwards."

Which we did.

Again and again.

On the list were, I think, 6 different kinds of cider and we had them all! On one of the beer mats we took down our ranking (which might have been a bit ... influenced in the end and not very accurate): The clear winner of the evening was "Savannah", a South African cider, made from Granny Smith apples. yummy. The already mentioned "Old Rosies" follows closely. In between come the classics "Strongbow's" and "Bulmer's" - average, the latter tasting of honey.
"Blackthorn", on the other hand, tasted a bit too much of its name and was therefore declared the loser of the night.

'twas a merry evening - the two of us thought we must also make other pub goers laugh and, consequently, grabbed a whole stack of beer mats and decorated them with pieces of wisdom. (Not everything too wise, but amusing at least!) -, which was later enriched (or rather disturbed) by a slightly weird guy who was trying to out-philosophise me by talking about cycles of which no-one can escape &c. ... but I fought bravely!

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Shake it

Right - thanks to my influential environment (for which I myself am responsible) I'm turning to English now... (it's just everywhere!)

Anyways, one of these influential things was a very recent trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, well-known for being the town where William Shakespeare was born (1564), lived and died (1616).
The reason for going there were (apart from my general wish to spend time in the UK whenever I can) Kate, Nina and Constanze and their obsession with "Dr. Who" star David Tennant, who happened to play the lead roles in Hamlet and Love's Labour's Lost. Knowing that I liked Shakespeare stuff, they kindly asked me if I wanted to accompany (!) them (and as a result of my answering in the positive forced me to watch "Dr.Who"...haha!).

So there we were and had incredibly good seats (3rd row!!! - we even got to see D.T.'s underwear label...) for an incredibly low price. Theatre there is for everyone and not as posh as here - more like cinema, where you can eat and drink.
Both performances were brilliant! Can't remember ever laughing so much at a play (i.e. LLL)!(Surprisingly, the Shakespearean language posed no problem at all.)
Alas! We didn't get an autograph from Mr. T., who had cowardly sneaked out at some back door... but never mind :-). Waiting in the cold can also be fun :-P

And to get as much Shakespeare as possible, we bought a ticket for all 5 Shakespeare houses in the area - that kept us up and running during daytime: We weren't even deterred by the fact that Mary Arden's House was more than 3 miles off. Walking is a good exercise, the weather was most of the time agreeable and the canal path is too beautiful. (Yeah, walking along a canal is a sort of leitmotif in my UK holidays it seams...)

We also met a lot of interesting people in the various pubs and on our way... some more abusive than others ;-). (We were called "Welsh" just because I wanted my J2O topped up with water -> "Water?! Why not lemonade?"
"Because I'm not British"
"Where are you from then?"
"Austria"
"Austria... isn't that near Wales?" ..... "So how did you like the food? Is it like the food in Wales?" etc....)

It was a great little holiday and like always I came home with a lot more stuff than I took with me from Austria. (But who wouldn't buy a 2kg-Thesaurus for just 6 Pounds?).
Thanks to my summer job - which actually bought me 2 holidays :-) - I'm still not broke and therefore happy... and planning...

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Decirculisation

Kristina steht auf.
zieht sich an
wäscht sich das Gesicht
stapft in die Küche
macht Tee
macht Müsli
öffnet die Tür und nimmt den "Standard" von der Matte. (sehr nett, dass der jetzt immer vor der Tür liegt, muss ich nicht immer Schuhe anziehn und in den Keller runter... allerdings wird mir jetzt auch klar, warum der Standard nicht jeden Mittwoch da ist.... offenbar sind manchmal andere Leute schneller....)
Setzt sich hin, schlägt den Standard auf und beginnt zu frühstücken und zu lesen.

Und auf einmal kriegt sie einen Schock:

Die Wiener Linien haben für sich (und entgegen so manchen politischen Parteien) beschlossen, dass sie nicht mehr wollen, dass Leute mit den Staßenbahnlinien 1 oder 2 eine Runde um den Ring fahren können. (Ist das möglicherweise zu monoton für die Fahrer, da die dann das Gefühl haben, dass die Strecke und somit auch der Tag kein Ende hat? hm...)
Aus diesem Grund pfuschen sie jetzt bissl herum, nennen die bisherige Linie "N" "1", die "J" "2" und die "D" "3". Und schaffen die 1 und 2 einfach ab.
Toll.
Ganz ganz super.

Also kann man sich nicht mehr aus Langeweile in den Einser oder Zweier setzen und im Kreis fahren und sich die ganzen hübschen Gebäude anschauen..... (ja, ok.. schön langsam kenn ich sie).
Das Ärgste allerdings ist das Faktum, dass diese Änderung schon am 26. 10. (das wär auch gleich der österreichische Nationalfeiertag) in Angriff genommen wird. Feiern wir also die Nation mit einem Bruch der Tradition - schön!
Ich freu mich schon auf das Chaos und die ganzen Leute, die in die falsche Bim einsteigen (mich eingeschlossen).

Der interessanteste Punkt des Zeitungsartikels ist jedoch die Aussage, dass man zwar alle "Buchstabenlinien" durch Zahlen ersetzen will, die "O" jedoch gleich bleiben solle, weil Nicht-Wiener sie sowieso für einen Nuller halten. Klar, hat was das Argument. Stimm ich absolut zu....