Marcelle's Blog: Friends, food and the zoo

This weekend was mostly another success, even though the weather mostly did not cooperate.

On Thursday, we had the Seibersdorf summer party out at the IAEA labs (in Seibersdorf, of course) where I work. We had a wonderful 30 degrees, and lots of sun. The party took place in the lunch "area" next to the cafeteria, little outdoor area with tables, chairs and parasols. At lunchtime, a few hours before the party, we had new visitors: swarms of dragonflies (seriously, swarms!). It was quite funny to sit at the tables and watch the insect specialists come around the corner and stop dead at the sight of the swarms. These are people that if you tell them there's a bug on their shirt, they will carefully pluck it off and examine it, then discuss. But none of them ventured an explanation for the swarming dragonflies, in fact the lunchtime conversation was relatively bug-free. Curious.

The party was not bad, although the food was medirocre. But it was nice to relax and chat with everyone. Little did we know we'd just jinxed ourselves, and that was the last bit of summer. The next day, things turned cloudy, rainy and 15 degrees cooler. Yuck!

On Friday evening, I had a nice quiet dinner with Tony and Owen at Da Capo. The restaurant is quite nice, both indoors and out. What I found funny is the name of the restaurant next door to it: The Gulash Museum. Wonder what's on the menu... I will definitely have to eat there one day!

Saturday started dull and dreary once again. But I wasn't that bothered by it. Every September when the weather changes, I get into "fall cleaning" mode. I like to go through my stuff, reorganise, clean, declutter, etc. So that's what I did for a good chunk of the weekend. On Saturday afternoon, though, I joined Owen, Jérôme and his two daughters Iris and Wilma (I kid you not) at Schönbrunn zoo. I hadn't been there yet and heard it was one of the best zoos in Europe so even with the crappy I was looking rather forward to it.

We had a nice time, spent about 3 hours there. We didn't cover the whole zoo, mostly because progress with a 3- and 6-year old can be kind of slow. We did see lots of animals, and watched the sea lions getting fed, with much jumping, splashing and hilarity.

(see below for more pictures)

I also found myself wrangling two monkeys of the human race. I can't help it, I love to play with kids and they seem to love me. And the zoo is the perfect place to do it, I can act like a 5-year-old and not get strange looks from other grown-ups. 6-year-old Iris reminded me a bit of my niece Annabelle. She has curly blond hair, is stick thin, and talks. A lot. Basically, she took about a half hour to decide I was nice and that I could speak French (her first language), and then she took my hand and started talking and didn't shut up for 2 1/2 hours. She was still talking when I stepped off the U-Bahn and they were continuing on! And Wilma was a sweet, tired little girl. I had a great time.
(Iris and Wilma)

After the zoo, Owen and I went to Figlmüller's for face schnitzel. God, I love that place! We of course went to our favourite ice cream place for dessert. (Owen is my usual partner in crime for evening walks/ice cream). Then we parted ways and I went home and read an entire book. Lovely!

Sunday morning was, you guessed it, grey and rainy. I peacefully puttered around my apartment until about mid-afternoon. Then the sun made an appearane, so I felt the need to go out. Mark came into town and we went for a bike ride. Not knowing our way around Vienna too well, we rode up the ring, along the Danube canal, and then started in a new direction by basically stopping at intersections and saying: "Let's go... thataway." Only, we ended up in a sketchy part of town. On top of this, apparently every road there goes uphill. Then we spotted a landmark we recognized, aimed for it and got the hell out of Dodge.

We ended up at the Rathausplatz (city hall plaza). All summer, the plaza in front of City Hall has been taken over by various festivals, mainly the music film festival. At night, they play music-themed movies, concerts, documentaries, etc. During the daytime, the booths are also open, offering a variety of food and drinks. There are cute patio-style seating areas and nice music. We were supposed to meet Owen and Ludo for dinner at 7 PM. Since it was only about 5:45, we sat ourselves down and had some drinks, mojitos for Mark and very thick strawberry daiquiris for me. We left just as the weather was turing cold and drizzly again. Met up with the guys at a nice Vietnamese restaurant for dinner, and even coaxed Mark into having ice cream for dessert.

What a wonderful weekend! Only one bad thing happened...

On Saturday morning, my computer imploded and/or was possessed by the devil. It ate just about all my files, and continues to do so every time I turn it off and sometimes when I log off too. It insists on thinking it's new, resetting itself to factory settings, welcoming me and offering tours of my "new" software, and reinintializing software. Considering this computer is about 6 years old, has been wiped and reformatted 3 times, has been updated, its usb ports are wobbly and its touchpad is over-sensitive, I think this the last straw. I was hoping it would survive until Christmas so that I could buy a new one in Canada. But I backed up some of my files on Friday evening (thankfully); it must have felt threatened and broke down before I could get rid of it, just to get the last word. Stupid piece of ...

The thing is, it is extremely difficult to get a laptop with international or English keyboard here, they are all German keyboard. The only options are ordering from the Apple store or going through Dell.at (Austria). But Macbooks are much more expensive than what I was looking to spend, and I'd still have to wait for some weeks for the order to come in. As for Dell, the Austrian website doesn't allow me to select the type of keyboard. I would have to call their service centre (in Ireland, I'm told!) and then again wait weeks for delivery. And none of the other providers (Dell.com, Tigerdirect, stores, etc.) deliver here. So I had a problem.

But now a potential solution has come up: I have a colleague from the CNSC who is coming to Vienna this weekend for meetings next week. He kindly accepted to go buy me a computer in Ottawa and carry it here for me. What a nice guy, I really hope we can pull this off. Otherwise I need to go to plan B, except I don't know what that is yet. Cross your fingers!

OK, some zoo pictures for you:

Fish in space!