An anarchist at heart

So a couple of weeks ago Cate said ‘I have to go to London for a conference – why don’t you come with me?’

Oh Cool! I thought – I love London. I have been going there since 1976 and it never ceases to fascinate me.

And then she said ‘we can spend a few days there – I am sure there are lots of things we have not seen’.

Then I understood.

Cate means – there are lots of shops I have not visited (although I dispute that).

This is a shopping expedition and I know exactly what it will be like.

It will be like when Cate says ‘Would you like to have lunch at Café Central?’

And I say sure what a good idea and when we are on our way to Café Central she says ‘Oh I just have to pop into Peek and Cloppenburg for a moment’

And I realize – not for the first time in my life  – that I have been deluded. We are actually on a shopping  trip.

So this is what London will be about – and I now exactly where we are going – and I even know exactly where the Sad Bastards seats are in the shops I know we will visit.

Although this time we are not staying at the Ritz and have opted for places much more economical.

But I may let my head go and buy some T-Shirts in Banana Republic. Pure decadence!

I am an anarchist at heart.

Beware of the nose of the cheese

Vineyards and a distant Lake Neusiedl

We had to get back early from our trip as Cate had to fly to Moscow for a few days.

But we had a wonderful time in Das Schmidt – except that – as usual for us – the room was too hot and there was of course no air conditioning. This simply does not exist in provincial Austria – or indeed as far as we have discovered – in  provincial Europe.

There is always heating of course – but the cooling is what we miss because it is inevitably too hot in the rooms for us.

This is why we like to travel to cold places.

We had to leave the door open – and therefore suffered the town clock which chimed every quarter hour – but mercifully stopped at 11:00 PM and did not start until 6:00 AM (shriek!)

We have never been to any town in Austria that did not have a chiming clock.

Das Schmidt is one of those typical Austrian hotels that has a pool, sauna and spa.

It is also typical in that it provides what the call a ‘halb pension’ which means that the cost of accommodation also includes breakfast and dinner.

When you arrive you are given a menu so that you can make your choices for the evening meal - there are usually three choices for the main course. Then each day at breakfast you have a new menu to complete.

When you visit the restaurant for the first time you find the table with your name or room number on it and that is yours for your stay.

The food is usually – how should we say it – unremarkable – but is adequate for the purpose of  maintaining life.

Das Schmidt did have a very nice cheese selection – and – the first time we have ever seen this anywhere – a sign asking cheese eaters not to cut the noses off the cheeses.

We only discovered fairly recently that it is apparently the height of bad manners to cut the noses off cheeses – and we have been adopting this course of action assiduously ever since - so as to not appear plebian.

There are many stages for this

Cate is working her way through the various stages of post furniture buying depression.

The stages include – but are not limited to:

Incredulity: That something could change so much from what it looked like in the furniture store.

Astonishment: That you could buy something that does not actually fit into the space for which it was intended.

Amazement: That you could acquire a piece of furniture that does not go with a single thing you have already.

Frustration: That no matter how many times you move the furniture around it does not quite work the way it should.

She will soon move into a very brief stage of resignation where she thinks fleetingly that we will just have to live with it.

Unfortunately she passes through his stage at the speed of light and quickly moves onto the next phase where she starts thinking about what we need to buy to make the whole thing work.

If I am lucky it may be only things like chairs and coffee tables. I am accustomed to this endless process and the good thing about shopping for furniture is that there is always somewhere to sit down.

On the weekend we are going to Neusiedlersee to stay at the Smith Hotel. We are going to spend a couple of days just mooching about and  cycling around Lake Neusiedl.