Thanks Mrs Henderson

It’s official – the smoking, steaming remains of the Queen Mary will be collected next Tuesday morning. Shortly thereafter a man from Mercedes will deliver a much smaller car - with automatic transmission.

At last I will have a free hand with which I can respond to the regular friendly gestures I get from other Austrian drivers. As far as I can tell these gestures mean ‘Welcome to Wien’, ‘You drive beautifully’ and ‘I like your style’ – but I can’t be sure as I have never spoken to the drivers concerned.

We are not going to Turkey next week. Cate instead is going to Korea – and I am not going anywhere. Cate is looking forward to this as last time she went to Korea they made her eat live octopus and she just can’t wait to see what they have lined up for her next time.

She does not have to fly Duckair this time so is reasonably cheerful about the trip – well as cheerful as one can be under the circumstances of missing out on a weekend in Istanbul with a spunk like me.

India and Thailand have been crossed off Cate’s ‘to visit’ list for the time being and I guess this will be added to as the world gets madder by the day.

News from the Austrian Times is that Vienna’s "Monument to the Honour of the Soldiers of the Soviet Army," popularly called the "Russian Memorial," is to be renovated at a cost of 828,000 Euros.The 1955 State Treaty ending Austria’s occupation by four Allied armies, including the Soviet Union’s, requires Austria to keep all Allied graves and monuments in top condition.The monument was the first large-scale building project in the Second Republic founded right after World War II. Work on it, much of which was done by prisoners of war, began on 19 August 1945.

I suspect this is a ruse by the Austrians who will accidentally demolish it halfway through the renovation process. The least they could do would be to make it look at least as ghastly as some of the buildings the Russians left behind.

We had the last of Mrs Henderson’s famous Singleton Hot Pot today and delicious it was too. Mrs Henderson gave us the recipe when we visited them in their country mansion before we left Australia. It didn’t have precisely the same ingredients – but was quite an extraordinary culinary achievement.

It's goodbye to the Queen Mary

Gareth's tail fell off in the snow on the weekend. He doesn't look happy.

Apparently the Austrians do not always know when it is going to snow. An item in the online version of the Austrian Times says that ‘A snowfall that took forecasters by surprise last year left Vienna practically paralyzed and many vehicles stranded on a nearby motorway. Many people had to spend the night in their cars before being rescued the following morning.’

They are, however, well prepared this year and say that they have ample supplies of kitty litter and salt.

We have so far escaped having to drive on snowy roads but our time is coming. It is snowing again today and soon when I drive Cate to and from work we may have to brave the conditions. I am carrying a wooden peg for Cate to bite on as we skate along Ungargasse. I may also wear ear plugs.

The ransacking of Cate’s lunch money has stopped – or at the very least has slowed down. This may only mean that the lunch money thief is on holidays but we will keep a close eye on the situation.

Today we learned that the Queen Mary is being taken away from us. Unfortunately it is not because our car is ready as the people in Germany have still not decided whether or not they will build it.

They are however so embarrassed by the whole sordid affair that they are going to provide us with a Mercedes Benz C Class Saloon until ours is ready.

This car will be smaller than the Queen Mary (most things are) so I will be able to develop my rallying skills in the cobbled streets of Landstrasse.

After some expert and sustained attention from the panel beaters the Queen Mary is being retired and will be used as a floating hotel in Dubai.

Cate can't get her head around Zwolf

My second German lesson went well but we still haven’t moved on to meat. My teacher is a traditionalist and thinks that I need to learn grammar and verbs and stuff like that.

I will finish the first book by the end of December and my teacher says that I will be able to do most things in Wien in German.

I have asked her if it will help me get the car but she is not confident so I will keep buying lottery tickets (I missed out on the Skoda Octavia).

But I have moved ahead in the meat department in leaps and bounds lately. I can with a reasonable degree of accuracy identify and buy beef and chicken of various types. I did have a bit of a disaster with bacon today but can recover from that because it is going into a beef hotpot and Cate will not be able to identify it by the time I have finished.

I did ask for bacon at Spar and he asked me something incomprehensible (it could have been ‘have you got your car yet?”) and I said yes. He then sliced it so finely you could watch TV through it - and it dissolved when I put in into the hotpot – but I am sure it will taste just fine.

I am more worried about some other vegetables which are supposed to be in there but which I could not find. I have put in substitutes – the names of which I shall not mention because Cate reads the blog and will say something like ‘I thought that tasted like X – you should never put X into a hotpot as it gives it a funny flavour’.

Cate is going to start her German lessons in December after she finishes her next round of trips. We have already started informally and she can say ‘Bitte’ ‘Danke’ ‘Gruss Gott’ and ‘Enschuldigung’ – and can count up to 11. We have been stuck on 11 for a month or so because she can’t get her head around Zwolf but will keep plugging away and hope to be at 14 by Christmas Eve.

We just have to hope that she doesn’t have an urgent need for 12 of something between now and then. She would have to ask for 11 and then for 1 and this may cause massive confusion.

We have settled at the moment on a blend of coffee called ‘Caruso’ which we get from Alt Wien in Schleifmuhlgasse. It is fabulous stuff and makes our hearts sing in the morning. Well not really but you get the picture.

We had a another fire last night and watched the last 4 episodes of season 3 of 24. This is truly the silliest TV program I have ever seen (apart from I Dream Of Jeannie) – but is addictive. It is worth watching just for the laugh out loud moments as improbable situation follows farcical moment as the bunch of hapless stooges in CTU save us from yet another mad terrorist.

CTU makes the Bush Presidency seem like a monument to careful planning, prudent management and sound judgement.