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!)
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 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.
All around Vienna you see these signs in winter.
They always make me smile because “Dach” means “roof” and “Lawine” means “avalanche”. Seems like such a dramatic way of describing the snow that slides off the roof.
I had an appointment near the Freyung this morning. This photo is from about 11.30 and it is still snowing now at almost 2 p.m.
ecbinvienna 