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Tuesday, January 13, 2009

My new hat is made out of rats


We went to Fabios in Tuchlauben for the first time and it is now Cate’s favourite restaurant – but she is very fickle and likely to jump ship very quickly.

Our favourite would have been Indochine 21 but there were some regrettable incidents late in the evening last time we were there with Gwenyth and we are going to have to wait a while before going back.

On Sunday we went to the Alte Donau near the Vienna Centre and it was an amazing sight with skaters formicating all over the ice. This was another first for me as I have only ever seen scenes like this on the silver screen.

Cate and I managed to hop about on the ice a bit without killing ourselves but have decided against trying to skate on it. It is too hard and too cold.

On our way out I said to Cate that she should get some practice getting Billy out of the garage. She reluctantly agreed but went at it with a will and tried very, very hard to crash into the Audi on the rack on the other side of the garage.

I shouted very loudly and she stopped just in time, missing it by about a millimetre. ‘Excuse me’ I said ‘didn’t you hear the proximity alarms screaming at you?’.

‘Oh yes’ she said ‘but I thought they were mistaken’.

It must be a girl thing.

It is starting to get very cold indeed and we are really feeling it. Cate has bought me another furry hat. The sales assistant said that it is made out of rats - but she may have meant a similar furry creature as she was struggling a bit. Cate has also bought a large and tea cosy to keep her ears warm. She hates the way she looks but is now so cold that she is losing interest in being fashionable.

We went to the Wollzeile and found a shoe store where the very effusive and persistent Italian man assured us that all his shoes were very comfortable and very cheap so Cate bought four pairs of shoes and a pair of boots. And they were indeed very cheap (for Wien!) – as they were all on sale and all half price.

Cate now has (I am guessing) 2,000 pairs of shoes so I am waiting for her to say (real soon) ‘I don’t have any shoes to wear with this dress!’ At which time I will say ‘Darling – you should buy some more shoes – We can rent another apartment so that you have somewhere to store them’.

I also bought a pair of shoes as Cate is sick to death of my sneakers which I wear (together with my black T Shirts) every day of my life.

As we still have no heating I went off to Saturn at SCS to buy another couple of heaters and there was not much left but I got a couple to keep us going. I have hassled the building people but don’t hold out much hope of getting anything done while it is so cold. I Imagine the workman will all be huddled up somewhere drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and playing cards and will not emerge until spring.

We now have (temporary) drivers licences. I went to collect them in the morning and confirmed my view that all driving licence places are the same the world over. They are built by the same colour blind anally retentive architects and staffed by people who go to the same training college where they are flogged mercilessly and tortured with red hot irons.

They are singularly the most depressing places on earth and the only thing they don’t have is hanging points so that the punters can’t do away with themselves while waiting in line.

3 comments:

  1. Glad your almost legal as far as driving goes. Yes frozen rivers and lakes are interesting and hard to get used to. The first time we drive across a lake I thought for sure we were going to fall through. Lovely Engineer Hubby said Ice is so think it isn't an issue still.
    Good luck with the heating.

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  2. Could your hat be made of Bisamratte, which is german for "Muskrat" :-)

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  3. Yes - it could well be Bisamratte - I will do some further research.

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