Wien is swarming with pigs

Hundertwasser House

Melissa is back in Paris with Merlin and Henri. She will probably have nightmares about meat for the next few months while she recovers from the recent Fleischfest in Wien.

Gwen has arrived and we have warned Muffin that she is not a cat lover. Muffin usually ignores this type of advice but is steering well clear of Gwen. I think she is just out of sorts about Bill but is possibly worried about what Gwen keeps in her gigantic suitcase.

Wien is now swarming with pigs of all sizes. These are apparently lucky charms and I am not sure whether you give them to people for luck or buy them yourself. I will make further enquiries. The pigs were certainly out of luck in Am Heumarkt over Christmas.

We went to Hundertwasser house which is a truly astonishing sight quite near to us in Landstrasse. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedensreich_Hundertwasser

We also went to Mauthausen Concentration Camp which is about 160 kilometers from Wien and is a very scary place indeed. It was bitterly cold and it is not hard to imagine what it was like there during the war.

I have just finished reading Armageddon by Max Hastings. This is the best book I have read about the last year of the war in Europe and gave me a lot of very interesting information. I am trying to find stuff about Austria - and Wien in particular - but of course it is all in German so I have a lot of work to do.

I may have been a bit hard on The Third Man. I will have another look.

There were a few snowflakes over Christmas and while we were driving but nothing to shout about yet. Today it got down to about -4 when we went to the Flughafen to pick Gwen up and we were glad to get back home to a fire.

The Air Conditioning people were supposed to come today but missed the appointment (again). I am not sure what we need to do to get them to call - possibly I haven't filled in the right form or use the correct code word. I will keep plugging away until I hit on the right answer.

Rozalin has already made enquiries about the KAP but we are in the wrong season and may have to wait a few months.