Archive | January, 2024

A memory (and some poetry) from quite a while ago

29 Jan
A very grainy photo from my first ever mobile phone

My Facebook memories just reminded me of an exchange with colleagues in January 2010 that gave me great pleasure.

First post
I had to work late yesterday and missed going skating. So this morning I went for a walk even though it was snowing pretty heavily.

This haiku is the result (in German first):
Viel Schnee ist heute
In Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark
Aber wenig Leut’

… which translates into English more or less like this:
Lots of snow today
In Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark
Very few people

Later
As I was waiting for the tram to make its way back into Vienna I sent it by text message to friends and colleagues. One of my colleagues challenged me to write a limerick and I came up with this (long tram ride!):

Eliza went out in the snow
She had nowhere else to go
She slipped on the ice
Said something not nice
And now when she goes she goes slow. 🙂

Wiener Wasser (Vienna [tap] water)

13 Jan

I’ve written about it before, but it’s a topic that just keeps cropping up. The tap water in (most districts in) Vienna comes from the mountains and is wonderful, not only safe to drink but also delicious. (My Viennese father used to say with pride, “We flush our toilets with the water other people buy in supermarkets.”)

Even some of our closest neighbors, the Germans, who can certainly drink their own tap water without any worries, aren’t in on the secret, as this story from today’s Kurier shows. When Dirk Stermann, German TV personality and longtime resident of Vienna, met the parents of his then girlfriend at dinner in a restaurant, he ordered still mineral water. The girlfriend’s father, apparently an otherwise quiet sort of man, shouted, “We don’t drink that here!”