Like many places, winter has been longer and snowier here this year than other years, but finally there are some really encouraging signs that early spring has arrived. Below forsythia in one of Vienna’s parks. (Never mind that we would normally see this the end of February or so!)
About a year ago I wrote about how well Austria did in the apprentice competition in London. Today I was reading the Saturday “Kurier” at the breakfast table, as I do almost every Saturday I don’t have to work, and came across another field in which Austria is top: computer hacking! Apparently, there is an annual competition for hackers, the iCTF (international Capture The Flag) competition. In 2011 students from Vienna’s technical university came in first. This year they only ; -) came in second. A team from the U.S. won. By the way, the article was quick to point out that “hacker” is not the same as “cyber-criminal”.
A hacker’s task is to find the weak spots in computer systems. They can use this (super) power for good or evil! 😉
For one thing, Vienna awoke today to bright blue skies – chilly still but cheerful. I was inspired to take two bags of books to the Christ Church shop (the thrift shop of the Anglican church in the 3rd district). There I found a good-as-new copy of Frank Tallis’s “Death and the Maiden” for EUR 2. This the fourth book I have read in this series set in Vienna at the time of Freud and uniting two friends, a Catholic police inspector and a Jewish doctor and psychoanalyst, in solving crimes. After taking care of several Saturday chores and errands, Mylo and headed to – where else? – the Vienna Woods where we caught the first whiff of “Baerlauch” (wild garlic) and enjoyed watching the ducks navigating between water and ice.
I’ve had a egg carton sitting next to my computer for days to remind me to write about a new text in the cartons. I’ve long thought that the Viennese are better at putting their money where their mouths are than my compatriots, and I feel this backs me up.
One would think that egg farmers would want to sell as as many eggs as possible, never mind if food gets wasted. Well, not everywhere. There is now a heart with a stem printed inside the egg cartons in Vienna with the motto “Food is precious” [“Lebensmittel sind kostbar!”]. Next to this is the following text (translation mine): Food is precious! So don’t throw any away. Eggs, for example, can safely be used after their expiration date for baking and cooking, or enjoyed as hard-boiled eggs. It’s simply important to heat the egg thoroughly before eating.
Given the choice between selling more eggs and trying to prevent the waste of food the Austrians have clearly come down on the not wasting food side of the debate. Perhaps that is what happens when you still have people in your population who remember the cold and hunger of war?
I have just had my first ice cream cone of the season–chocolate and strawberry–at one of the best ice cream places in Vienna, Bortolotti’s at Schüttauplatz, in the 22nd district. That’s special in Vienna because most of the smaller ice cream places close from October to March. (Some of them even turn into fur coat shops for that time.) It’s the family’s only chance to recover from a relentless summer season and it fits the Viennese idea that there is (still) a season for certain things. Well, I am old-fashioned and like that. It means one appreciates those things more. 🙂
… as Joni Mitchell reminded us in “Big Yellow Taxi”. Well, it works in the reverse, too–you don’t know what you don’t got until it comes back again (that just doesn’t scan as well).
This afternoon when I went out for a round with Mylo I was stunned by the beautiful blue sky and almost blinded by the sun. It was in that moment that I realized how gray our weather has been for weeks now. It turns out that this winter we have had the least sun since 1903. Not a statistic one really wants to live through if one has a choice as Vienna typically doesn’t get much sun in winter in the best of years.
For a number of years now the City of Vienna has set up an ice-skating rink in front of City Hall. Friday evening at about 10 p.m. Maylo and I walked by and this is what we saw.
A joke just sent to me by a friend for people who know the layout of the Ringstrasse:
Franzi (a little boy) asks his father, “Papa, how can you tell the Museum of Art History from the Museum of Natural History?” (In Vienna they face each other across the statue of the great Empress Maria Teresia.)
His father answers, “That’s very easy, Franzi. The Museum of Art History is about art and culture and that is near the opera. In the Museum of Natural History you find asses and monkeys. And that is near the Parliament building!”
ecbinvienna 