Oh Duh but woddabout dah rules?

It is very windy today. I am wondering how Merisi will photograph this?

It is so windy that they have had to tether the ducks in Stadtpark to stop them from being blown to Bregenz. I will see if I can get a photo.

I raved about Ein Wiener Salon yesterday (You can see how excited I was - I Blogged on Sunday). But there is another restaurant worthy of report.

We visited Restaurant Walter Bauer on Friday night. It is a delightful restaurant in Sonnenfelsgasse and was one of our best culinary experiences to date. Excellent food and outstanding service.

We had the Degustation menu with the specially chosen wines. Each dish was a delight and the accompanying wine was – in the main – just perfect.

Cate was so enamoured of the wine that accompanied the opening item (which for some strange reason was a sweet dessert wine – but absolute nectar) that she tossed off three more glasses at the end of the meal while I had half a glass of Port.

Fortunately Herr Bauer and I were able to stop her from dancing the Can Can for the large table of Baker and McKenzie lawyers and I got her home in one piece where she fell asleep on Muffin’s rug.

It was of course (and needless to say in Wien) horrendously expensive so we won’t be going there very often.

On our Wiener Restaurants scale - 7/10. This awards points for ambiance, service, food and value for money. Most restaurants in Wien fall at this last hurdle.

(Ein Weiner Salon would be 9 on this scale).

However, it has been earmarked as the next project for when Gwenyth comes to Wien and have to have a really special knees up.

We can't really use Ein Wien Salon for a proper knees up as it is very small and the kitchen adjoins the dining room - and there is no door.

I can see all sorts of terrifying scenarios emerging after the third bottle of Pilcher Gruner Veltliner.

(We are assuming that the Indochine 21 people will still not have forgotten us by then and that our photos will still be in their window surrounded by a Skull and Crossbones).

Well we have to start planning our trip to Australia in July. The timing is going to be tight because Cate has (of course) meetings at both ends.

Cate has four days in Peoria before the trip starts and then goes to Hong Kong at the end of our two weeks in Australia.

Cate’s company (Ducky Pharmaceuticals) has outsourced its travel and employee management processes to another company (Goosy Gander).

Many organisation do this these days so they can focus on their core business.

What it usually means is that it then takes ten times as long to get anything done, it is usually done very badly indeed, it costs ten times as much and the employees get screwed in spades on an ongoing basis.

Rozalin has had quite an hysterical exchange of emails with them about our trip.

I was expected to pay my own fare to Peoria because it ‘was not the most direct way to Australia’. This would have been very expensive indeed and it would have been much cheaper for us (and much more expensive for Ducky) for Cate to fly back to Vienna and for us to leave from here.

Rozalin explained that as Cate had to go to Peoria on business it was hardly reasonable that we have to fly to Australia separately by different routes on home leave.

‘Oh Duh but woddabout dah rules?’

Rozalin was able to use cutting edge logic to demonstrate to Goosy Gander that it was much more cost effective for us both to go to Australia via the USA on around the world tickets.

i.e. she said to Goosy Gander ‘if we do it your way it will cost three times as much’

The side benefit is that we can go to Vienna, Virginia to see the cats Steve and Sophie (We may also see Will and Kris the cat minders).

We are very pleased that my ancient and venerable brother Burne and his wife Jan are coming to visit us in October.

They are re-turfing the greens at his bowling club in Sydney so he has a few weeks to kill and has decided that Vienna is the best place to be at the end of the football season.

I have promised him that Australian beer is readily available in Wien and that he will be able to watch endless replays of Australian Rules Football in the Billabong.

Actually he doesn’t need endless replays now as after one beer he falls asleep and as he is quite small I will throw him over my shoulder and carry him home through Stadtpark past the Duck pond.

It is a little know fact that my brother played Australian Rules Football at an international level and represented a country.

No the country was not Australia.

You can have a guess if you like and I will reveal the secret next week.

Some important news from Australia.

Anna Bligh has claimed victory in the Queensland state election, becoming the first woman elected as premier in Australia.

Sure we have had women Premiers before - but normally they are bequeathed the rotting corpse of a State when the male leader who drove a stake through its heart bails out just before the election.

Inevitably the girl then loses the un-winnable election and another bloke takes over.

PS: See comment from richardrj today - he has finally revealed what the mystery object is. I bet he doesn't know what country my brother represented though!