Saturday morning I went to the Naschmarkt to get yummy fresh fruits and veggies. I also got a side order or crowd overload. I love the Naschmarkt, but then so does everyone else, especially mid-morning on a Saturday. Shopping there requires a good dose of patience and a complete lack of personal space - totally worth it!
I met Mark and Owen for lunch, and we wandered over to the Greek restaurant a block away from my apartment. By restaurant, I really mean hole in the wall, but the food is good and the tzatziki is fabulous! We then went to stake out a spot to watch the Vienna Rainbow Parade. While not a huge event, it was fairly well attended. The participants themselves ranged from Dykes on Bikes to furries, with some great (and some trashy) drag, semi-naked rainbow people and even a fetish carriage thrown into the mix. This being Vienna, both people watching the parade and those in it were all invited to drink, with drink carts on wheels and a mobile bar part of the parade. Quite fun! After sitting down with some cool refreshments (very hot day), we went to join the parade-end party, basically, another place to drink in public. On stage, there was first an anoyingly long periof of speechifying. The only interesting thing was that a guy came to announce that WorldPride 2014 will be held in Toronto. Funny, only when he started speaking did I realise there really is a "middle Canadian" accent! Then the music started. The first singer was a very... voluptuous woman with a really good voice, who belted all the songs you'd expect: In the Navy, We are Family, It's Raining Men, etc. Not bad, but after about 45 minutes of that, we decided to move on. Of course, just as we left they broke out the Grease songs and then Lou Bega came on (think Mambo No. 5, and no, he's not dead, just D-listed apparently!)The downside of this public imbibing: people here seem to just drop their refuse where they stand. So the streets were full of plastic beer glasses, cans, bottles of liquor (empty of course) etc. But this being Vienna, the parade itself was followed by the garbage detail who immediately started cleaning up the mess. Unfortunately, that takes a while. Oh well...
OK, back to the festivities. We had a time-out at a nice italian restaurant, and then wandered towards the location of one of the clubs holding the after-parties. Having never been to a gay bar before, this was a fun experience: no pressure at all to impress anyone, and zero possibility of being hit on by drunken ugly middle-aged men! We chatted, danced and imbibed (OK, mostly Mark) until about 1 AM. Then while we were sitting out on the patio-type area, a drag queen came over and complained that her shoes were killing her. Owen did the gentlemanly thing and offered her his chair, which had the effect of attracting her interest on him. And then drunk queen discovered slightly drunk Mark, and a very amusing conversation followed. :-)
I left around 1:30 and walked home. I have to say, I love about Vienna that I feel totally safe walking on the street in the middle of the night. As the club was very close to my place and Mark lives out of town, he was crashing at my apartment. He stumbled in around 3 AM I think, not sure because once I am asleep it can take a cannon to wake me up.
Sunday morning we took our time (obviously), had pancakes for a late breakfast and basically wasted time until lunch. We had plans to bike over to Donauinsel (island on the Danube) to meet up with a bunch of people for a 4th of July BBQ. I was very much looking forward to this. BBQ season is short enough to begin with. Add to that, Vienna is mostly a BBQ-free zone due to some irrational fear that BBQs will burn down the city. Only a few places are designated "grilling areas", mostly on the island.
Owen came to meet us at my place, and off we went on our bicycles. A loooong afternoon followed. First we made the mistake of letting Mark decide the direction we'd take. Seriously, the best way to get lost and/or confused is to ask him for directions! We ended up making a long detour to get to where we were going. At this point it was fine, as the weather was lovely, sunny and warm. Getting close to the supposed meeting point, Owen took over with directions. This resulted in us overshooting our destination. Quick stop, inhaling of Doritos (we had not had lunch, seeing as we thought we'd get BBQ by 2:30 or so), cell phone contact, and then it was my turn to be the leader. We finally did meet our group, thank God.
They had set things up, and the coals were getting nice and hot just when we got there. However, the BBQ police also showed up just then. This is really incomprehensible: a week ago, there had been a big festival on the island, and grilling was not allowed. But the restriction was applied from 1 week before to 1 week AFTER the event, up to and including the 4th of July. Why on earth would you restrict BBQs a week after an event? Makes no sense whatsoever. Nevertheless, the BBQ patrol was going from one group to another making them put out their grills and toss out the coals. They told everyone that we could move to the other grilling area, several kilometres down the island. The problem was that only 4 of us were on bikes . The rest had either come on foot/by U-bahn or in a single car. Owen, Mark and I offered to ride down to the new location and stake a spot for us, while the rest of the group packed up and followed. So off we went again, thinking we'd get there in about 20 minutes...
OK, may the BBQing begin! We set up the coals, but were very hungry and also set up a makeshift propane-like BBQ consisting of a camp burner and a grill balanced on top. Brad (one of the Americans) was having trouble keeping the grill balanced, so I made like Red Green and created a structure out of beer cans and duck tape. Worked like a charm! We finally had something substantial to eat, and then Owen, Mark and I set off to go home around 7 PM, wobbly with fatigue on our bikes.
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