A Day of Unhealthy Eating

Well, I made it to Vienna, land of monumental doorways, at least in the old city center. (This one is subtle compared to some of them!)

My flight was uneventful, but I had the rudest, crankiest security agents ever at Heathrow airport. They'd announce their spiel about liquids and laptops and whatnot, and then a minute later they'd say, "Since you seem not to be listening, I'm going to say it again...you can stay here for an extra hour, it doesn't matter to me." One woman challenged them on their rudeness and the agent said, "Well, you haven't been here all day," and then joked with her co-worker about pulling the woman's bag for a search. (At least I hope it was a joke.)

I just kept my head down and got through the line, but even I was a target when I didn't step through the security gates quickly enough. I got a reproachful stare and an exasperated "come on" hand gesture. I don't think I've ever dealt with security agents who so clearly hated their passengers.

Once on my Austrian Airlines flight, things were fine. Fun fact: they play Strauss waltzes on the airplane! Unfortunately, they don't serve food or coffee, unless you pay extra for it. So I satisfied myself with water and their one free piece of chocolate. I was glad I got a croissant at the airport.

After we landed in Vienna, I caught a nonstop CAT train into the center of the city and spent the next few hours walking around.

I had a hamburger at a restaurant near this statue depicting Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. Although credited with modernizing the Viennese capital, he's apparently associated with right-wing, antisemitic views and as you can see, the statue is quite controversial. It reminds me of the furor over monuments to Confederate leaders in the USA.

I wonder whether this old sign on a candy shop has raised any eyebrows?

I made my way to Stephansplatz, the main cathedral square in the old city, and remembered my first visit here back in 1997. I was with my mom on a bus tour through Germany and Austria, and we saw many of these sites, like the Plague Column above. It was interesting to revisit them. I can't believe that was 26 years ago.

I did not try to go into the Cafe Central, an elegant (and almost 150-year-old) cafe that's one of Vienna's most famous culinary destinations. Look at that line!

Instead I went here, and had a huge, milky coffee and a slice of sachertorte. The sachertorte had been refrigerated and it was very firm. I think I could have injured someone if I'd hit them over the head with it. It tasted good, though.

I didn't try to go into any of the museums or palatial structures like the Hofburg Palace, above. I did a lot of that on my previous visit. Instead I just wandered the winding streets.

This looks like an intriguing play, doesn't it? According to Google, the translated title (from Croatian) is, "If I'm a Woman I'm Not a Horse."

Anyway, after wandering long enough to (hopefully) work off the hamburger and the sachertorte, I caught the subway out to the part of town where I'll be staying. I checked into my hotel and had a dubious salami-and-pickle sandwich from the hotel shop for dinner.

Oh, some of you asked what kind of librarian training I'm getting. It's focused on the software we use in the library to check out books and manage the collection -- how to compile reading lists, find related materials and do some of the back-office stuff like inventory, for example. There's also a banned book discussion, which should prove interesting!

Off to the Land of Mozart and Freud

I'm cheating a little bit with my blogging today -- I'm writing this post late on Saturday and scheduling it to publish Sunday morning. That's because on Sunday, when I'd usually be writing, I will instead be winging my way to Vienna for librarian training. Or, more accurately, on my way to the airport to get that winging underway.

I'm excited to go, even though the trip is going to be ridiculously short. I'll be back on Tuesday evening. I hope to blog from Vienna but I'm only taking my work computer so this is going to be an experiment.

The picture above shows a new restaurant opening in West Hampstead. I'm not sure how I feel about "filthy rich food," but I like a good burger as much as the next person and the place is practically around the corner from our flat, so I'm sure we'll try it.

This happened yesterday, completely out of the blue. Thames Water closed the street right in front of our flat and jackhammered a big hole in the pavement. Something about a leaky pipe. Above you can see the yellow jackhammer thing (I have no idea what it's called, but it's like a bulldozer with a jackhammer attachment), and behind that a big red truck that sucked up the jackhammered pavement, dirt and debris like a gigantic Electrolux. The center of the road is closed and there's still a big hole, but now that the heavy equipment is gone I've seen some cars inch their way around the sides.

Dave's not thrilled about this -- "These things always happen when you go out of town," he said, harkening back to the time they shut off the utilities for a few days for a water main break while I was in Florida.

But there was good news yesterday as well -- MY BANK CARD ARRIVED! And it does work. I tried it at Waitrose to be sure. What a relief, that I can travel to Vienna and not be penniless. (I have a credit card and a bank card linked to my American savings account, so I would never have truly starved -- but I'd rather spend my British money.)

Dave and I took Olga to the cemetery for an afternoon walk. We found the cowslip blooming in the butterfly garden.

And someone had left not one but FOURTEEN portraits on the grave of English singer Marie Lloyd, who was quite famous in her day and apparently has fans even now.

Anyway, forgive me if I am not around blogland as much in the next few days, but I will continue to post daily. I promise.

Hunting Cries and a Crypt

Dave and I took the tube down to Soho yesterday to meet up with our friends Sally and Mike, who we haven't seen in ages. (In fact I don't think we've seen them both together since the pandemic began!) I met Sally through blogging way back in 2006 or so. She hasn't kept a blog in more than a decade but we've remained in touch and see each other now and then, and Mike (her husband) sometimes joins in as well. So it was great to reconnect with them. 

Dave asked me the other day why Soho is called that. In New York, for example, SoHo is an abbreviation for "South of Houston," the neighborhood immediately below Houston Street. (Pronounced HOUSEton, not HYOOston.) But what's London's Soho named for?

A good question, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia (which is never wrong): "The name 'Soho' first appears in the 17th century. The name is possibly derived from a former hunting cry. James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, used 'soho' as a rallying call for his men at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685, half a century after the name was first used for this area of London."

We still have no idea why it's named after a hunting cry. Wouldn't that be like calling a neighborhood "Yahoo" or "Woohoo" or "Tallyho"? Which I guess you could do, but it seems a little strange.

Anyway, Soho has long been London's "gayborhood," and we met Sally and Mike at a Thai restaurant in the heart of it, just off Old Compton Street. We had a good lunch marred only by the tendency of people going in and out of the restaurant to forget to close the door. There was a persistent chill wind at my back.

Afterwards we went to the Cafe in the Crypt below the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and had coffee. (We're not in the photo above, so don't try to find us!) Somehow I've never been to the crypt but I've heard about it for ages, so it was fun to finally go.

The floor is paved with old gravestones. One wonders how George and Ann Veale would feel if they knew total strangers were sipping lattes and eating walnut cake atop their memorials. (Allegedly the crypt's bodies were removed long ago, so I don't think George and Ann themselves are nearby.)

Anyway, we stayed until 4 p.m., when Dave and I made our way back home to rejoin Olga. I settled in to do some blog reading, and coincidentally, when I read John Gray's post about being curled up on the couch with his dogs, this was the scene on our own couch:

Going Up the Chimney

Yesterday Dave and I went down to the Battersea Power Station to go up in the scenic elevator, called Lift 109. The elevator is a fairly spacious glass capsule that rises through the northwest chimney of the power station and protrudes from the top, giving riders amazing views all around. There's also an interactive display that allows visitors to learn about the power station and its past.

Above you'll see what the chimney looks like from the inside as the car begins to rise to the top. It was intermittently sprinkling rain yesterday, which is why there are water droplets on the glass roof.

And here's the view! Not too shabby, huh? This is looking east toward the city...

...and this is looking west toward Chelsea and Hammersmith, with the rail bridge to Victoria Station and the cabled Chelsea Bridge in the foreground.

Here's the view to the south. You can see the green roof of the power station in the foreground, with the huge skylight, as well as all the construction that's occurred right around it. It's madness down there in terms of apartments. Dave and I fantasized about moving to such a place and living a more urban existence -- and maybe we will someday -- but for now the dog and I are enjoying the garden too much.

Here's a shot showing the interior of the lift itself.

We weren't up there for long. Maybe ten minutes? Fate threw me a curveball because right after I took the top photo with my big Canon camera, the camera stopped working. I tried to take shots of the scenery and kept getting error messages. The contact points between the lens and the camera body weren't communicating for some reason. Thank goodness I had my phone as a backup!

Anyway, it was a fun visit and well worth it, I thought. We also wandered around the shops in the power station, had lunch and a coffee, and (of course) I bought a t-shirt. Then we took the river taxi downstream to Westminster to board the tube, and that was a scenic and peaceful ride along the same stretch of river I walked just a few days ago.

Otherwise, yesterday was pretty uneventful -- we walked the dog, I read, Dave focused on choosing music for his band students, and in the evening we watched our new favorite Netflix show, "Beef." Have you seen this show? We just finished the series last night. It was full of surprises and does not disappoint!

More Skateboarding and Complaining

Remember the skateboarding fox? I only posted a picture of one of them, and several readers asked to see the other two. So yesterday I walked back to the Mill Lane Bridge and got a few more shots. Above is the entire painting by Kira Latini (age 9), and below are close-ups of the other critters.

(I think this is actually a squirrel.)

Yesterday we stayed home, intentionally, because we were due to be visited by an engineer for the renovation company and by someone to fix the clogged downspout. I'm sure you can predict, based on my recent experiences with customer service, that neither of these things actually happened.

The downspout guy at least showed up -- at 1 p.m., so we were definitely NOT the first call of the day -- but he took one look at the situation and said he is not the man for the job. He said it would require a two-man crew with a ladder and possibly a cherry picker blah blah blah, and the landlord's home care policy probably doesn't cover that work anyway, and he would get back to them to say so. Despite being assured by several people on the phone that the work is covered and his company could do it, I somehow fully expected him to say that. So I'm kicking it back to the management company. It's not my building, and not my gutter.

As for the renovators, he hadn't shown up by 2 p.m. so I called the main office.

"Oh, he called in sick today," said the woman who answered the phone. "We'll have to reschedule that."

Would it be too freakin' hard to PICK UP THE PHONE and call me to tell me that, so I don't sit around all day for no reason? Thank goodness I didn't take another day off work. In fact, I told her she would have to arrange to get keys from the property managers, because we couldn't spend another day waiting around.

Another panel on Mill Lane Bridge. Is that boy looking at his phone?!

I've heard nothing more about my new bank card since calling the bank on Tuesday and being told it would come within three business days. (Granted, they still have through tomorrow to get it to me.) Last time the bank sent me a text when they mailed it, but this time, nada. Unless it hasn't been mailed yet. Which is entirely possible.

To make matters more interesting, we haven't received any mail this week. The newspaper recently carried a story about problems at a local sorting facility that residents said were delaying the mail by weeks. The Royal Mail absurdly claimed: "No customers should experience delays for more than one day." Well, we didn't get mail for about four weeks, and it looks like we're in another dry spell. Anyway, I have a debit card from my American bank as well as a credit card so I won't die if my bank card doesn't come through once again.

I honestly didn't mean to turn this into another customer-service bitchfest. But that IS my life lately, it seems.

To end on a more positive note, let's take a look at a REAL fox (not on a skateboard) that wandered through our garden yesterday morning. I eventually opened the back door to scare it off because I was afraid it might get familiar -- in one unsavory way or another -- with Olga's bed, which was lying outside on the grass. This fox didn't look as fluffy as the others we've seen. Maybe he/she is younger or older, or maybe just damp.

Squawking

As long as we're talking about exotic birds, here's what our back garden bird feeder is looking like lately. We've gone back to the suet balls and the parakeets are thrilled. You wouldn't know it, though, because they're always in a bad mood. I've never seen such squabbly birds.

As I've written before, these are ring-necked parakeets native to India. Large populations of them have become established in the wild in the UK, particularly around London.

And here's a little video, because still photos can't quite capture the cacaphony:

(You wouldn't know it, but inserting that video was a challenge. YouTube insisted on calling it a "short," which apparently means I don't get an embed code. Instead I'm given a button to automatically insert it into Blogger, but that creates a whole new post. So I had to do that, copy the code, insert it here, and erase that new post. What a pain. Gods at Google, if you are listening: I JUST WANT AN EMBED CODE!)

Anyway, I hope you appreciate the crazy parakeets. Mrs. Russia doesn't like them because they're so noisy. The Russians have never asked, but I get the impression they'd rather we not feed parakeets. I like them in small doses but I don't like their tendency to completely monopolize the bird feeder. We also get robins and starlings (also noisy) and magpies and occasionally a woodpecker, but only when the parakeets have eaten their fill.

Yesterday Dave and I had an urban outing. We went to Pierre Victoire for lunch and then to the The Photographer's Gallery, to see their exhibit of vintage queer photography. Many of the pictures were what we'd call physique photography, bodybuilders and that kind of thing -- but I suppose it was basically the porn of its day. It was interesting to tread that line, admiring the photography for its artistic technique but knowing the customers bought it to admire the men. (I admired the men too, I admit it.) And wouldn't you know, I somehow managed to leave my glasses at home -- and many of the images were pretty small, almost like contact sheets.

Who goes to a photography exhibit without their glasses?

Me, that's who.

Ravenous Camellia Monster, Yet Again

They're at it again -- the squirrels, devouring the flowers from our neighbor's pink camellia bush. We see this every spring. Among gardeners, this is apparently a well-known phenomenon. Camellias (along with tulips and crocuses) are among squirrels' favorite springtime snacks. I suppose there must be nectar inside the blossoms, or seeds, or something. Maybe they're just pleasantly crisp, like a colorful salad.

For some reason, the squirrels never attack our camellia, which has white blossoms. Maybe it doesn't taste as good?

Yesterday was pretty rainy, so I spent much of it inside. Dave and I got the plans for the rest of our week sorted out, and I read a chunk of "Almost Perfect," another YA novel that I've been curious about. It has commonly landed on recent banned book lists, because it's about a trans girl, but I'm finding it very mild in terms of content. And it's not a recent book -- it was published in 2009. I suppose just having a trans character is enough to be offensive to some (rigid and judgmental) people.

This may be the last we're going to see of this geranium. It's several years old and it was getting very leggy and gangly, so I pruned it several weeks ago. I cut it back pretty hard, leaving only one green sprout, and although that sprout is still alive I don't see it budding anywhere else. I'm not sure it's going to make it. I saved this sprig as an "insurance policy," thinking I could root it, but it's not growing roots, so -- yeah. I may have killed that plant.

And as long as this post is turning into a mishmash of unrelated pictures...

...here's an image you may have seen on Mr. Pudding's blog. It's supposedly me, Dave and Olga, rendered in the style of Grant Wood, with the aid of the Artificial Intelligence bots at Microsoft Image Creator. Dave and I were amused, even though it doesn't really look like us. Dave said, "I don't wear glasses!" He also has longer hair, and more of it. And why do we look so worried? Is it because our hands are weirdly fused together and we now face hours of surgery in order to no longer be conjoined?

I used to have a sweater vest like that, though.

Finally, for your auditory pleasure, here's a little video showing what it's like to sit out in the garden on a warm spring afternoon, with the birds singing and the dog twitching in the sun, and -- most audibly -- the ice cream truck inching its way around the neighborhood playing "O Sole Mio." It's a monotonous tune, but I like it, bringing a hint of carefree summer days to come.

I made this video on Sunday. Yesterday it was too rainy to sit outside, but I heard "O Sole Mio" making the rounds nonetheless. I'm surprised an ice cream truck can make a profit these days, considering the price of gas!