OK I have been busy!

I had to take a few days off for one reason or another.

Raining and cold at the moment - 8 degrees - we love it.

I scared the bejeeesus out of an Austrian motorist yesterday who foolishly thought I was going to stop for him. Well I probably would have apart from the rain and the cobbles and the size of the QM and my relatively slow reaction speeds. The QM stops like a whale on ice. My victim's next call would be to his dry cleaner 'Helmut - I heff urchent chop for you".

I have booked tickets for a mass next Sunday where the Vienna Boys Choir sing. Cate thinks that it is important that we do this and that we need to pay €100 so we can hear the VBC sing hymns. I personally wouldn't pay that much for an audience with the Holy Father - even if he sang - but hell - we are in Vienna!

The Austrians recycle everything and there are many different types of bins - plain glass, coloured glass, plastic, paper, metal, false teeth (I made that one up). They recycle absolutely everything. You can wade through knee high piles of cigarette butts to get to the bins and find cigarette packets in there. Weird!

We now have some TV - 40 channels to be precise. 37 are in German. In English there is BBC prime, CNN and (Cate's favourite) Eurosport. On the latter channel I am currently watching the Vuelta Espana and it is very exciting. Cate does not think so.

The channel I watch most is the local Wien community channel which mainly consists of footage taken by a camera attached to the front of a tram. I am getting pretty good at picking the streets in Vienna and have hours of fun working out which tram line we are on.

The cat litter is working well and the cats are very regular. What time does Muffin go to the toilet? I hear you ask. At precisely the time I take my shower is the answer. The cats have perfected the art of getting litter to cling to their paws so that they can spread it around the house. Apparently this makes them feel more comfortable.

May people ring me and speak to me in German. These are not productive conversations but occasionally I get visited by maintenance men who speak Polish or Moldavian or another eastern European language. I do not have productive conversations with these people either but I bet I could trounce the average bear at charades after the last two weeks.