Austria's Venegeful Reply

While I politely ranted on the previous post, my dinner was burning on the stove.
The burned items include: 1cm of jasmine rice, 1/2 cup of mixed Asian vegetables and a splash of terikaki sauce.

Guess what smelled the worst?
YES - the stink of burned cabbage.

Kraut, Kraut, Everywhere and All the Halls Did Stink

Dear Austrian Grocers and Food Manufacturers,

I'm writing you this letter with regard to cabbage proliferation. While Austria is known for producing high-quality kraut (some of the world's finest) and your farmers should be congratulated for producing such a bountiful harvest of this traditional and hearty crop, I am concerned by the overabundance of this material.

Perhaps you might not have realized cabbage is put in nearly every vegetable product here? I urge you to consider whether or not cabbage should be included as an element in an "Asian vegetables" mix. Furthermore, in many parts of the world it is not widely-regarded to be an essential element in potato salads or green beans.

There is a whole realm of vegetable flavor, pure and delicious, that exists when cabbage is not introduced into these items.

Have you ever considered the way the kitchens and restaurants would benefit if the amount of cabbage put in food was reduced? Unfortunately, cabbage, when warmed, smells distinctly unpleasant. Moreover, given the upturn in global warming that seems to be affecting your alpine summers, I would recommend a long-term policy change in order to to prevent the countryside of your beautiful country from having the aroma of a compost heap.

I humbly submit these suggestions for your review and look forward to your reply.
Most sincerely,

Laura Joost

Street Art Series II

Watchful eyes watching each other

Big Bird's watchful eyes guarding a mailbox

IMPULSE DANCE 

This isn't really street art, just really inspiring.

At times here, the clouds do seem to be shooting bullets of cold cold fire

The youth here (whose names end in 'i') don't realize that hearts are drawn differently than they are typed on instant messanger. Kids today.

"Americans Do Know How it Should be Done"

This person knows how to properly capitalize titles.

But he or she doesn't know what to write on the wall of a Ferris wheel.

How Did I Get this Lucky?

The girls are here!

We've had an incredible time walking around, 

 Even though it's rainy and cloudy

drinking coffee and composing waltzes. 

A Cousinly Composition from Laura Joost on Vimeo.

Mutti, Zum Geburtstag Viel Gluck!

Very best birthday wishes to my mom who is also traveling on her birthday :) 

I love you and wish you were here to celebrate!

Oxford (The City not the Circus)

Sunday, Wells gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of the Oxford Colleges! 

What a marvelous place!

Imagine living amongst the following:

Comic faces and buildings inscribed in Latin
This guy looks like a cross between Tarzan and Julius Caesar 

Musicians practicing cellos and ornately-painted harpsichords

(inside cathedral "chapels")

Gorgeous libraries and ancient books...

Dining halls straight out of Hogwart's

Old boats and bridges alongside the banks of the Thames

 

And peacocks that come to dinner...

London Part 2

Saturday morning in London everything was gorgeous and fresh. So I started walking down a street and ended up going 4 miles before lunch according to mapmywalk.com. This is one way to be certain you're in a wonderful place!

 

On the way, I passed by Trafalgar Square to see the National Gallery's art exhibition on forgeries and frauds! The exhibit used scientific technology like infared and uv imaging, x-rays, and mass spectrometry to find the stories behind 40 paintings in their collection. Some turned out to be fakes - copies given away by of the absence of any sketching underneath the paint or the use of color pigments from the wrong era. Another turned out to be a Raphael. Incredible!

Everything here is labeled!

 

Then headed over to the Temple Area

In the Twinings Tea shop you can smell about 150 different flavors of tea. 

It was perfect timing to walk past the Church of St. Clement's at noon when the bells happened to be ringing... (Like the old nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons" say the bells of St. Clement's.) It's possible Christopher Wren designed the steeple because he rebuilt over 50 after the great fire. It would be fun to go on a walk to find them all. Next time.

You can't really hear the bells well in the video... but you can see the gorgeous interior!

My wish for you is to be able to stand here and just smell the air. 

If only there was a way for cameras to capture scent.

Around this time, I realized I was headed in the wrong direction to meet the girls (both my housemates in France) at Oxford Circus. This is not a smart place to locate a person. It's like saying, just go to Tokyo and look for me there. Rule of thumb: Whilst traveling, never arrange to meet your friends at a place with "Circus" in its name. Be forewarned.

We ate a yummy lunch in a pub hooked onto Liberty. I ordered Bubble and Squeak (turns out to be 2 eggs over easy and vegetables).  Then, we battled the crowds down Oxford Street. Imagine giant department stores that still are 40% too small teeming with bustling capitalist frenzy.

The thing about crowded streets in London is that there is NO consensus on which side to walk on... Londoners think left, while foreigners not from the Commonwealth think right. Chaos reigns, and so it's the law of the jungle instead of the order of the empire. We actually heard a vicious fight break out in one store. When the security guard went over to the girls, he ended up watching instead of breaking it up.

After that kerfuffle, we collapsed in Hyde Park until it was time to go Caroline's house for dinner. Her mom cooked us an English Roast Dinner. Fascinating meal. You form a multi-layered pile of food on your plate and then douse the whole thing in gravy. It's like the Thanksgiving they eat every Sunday without turkey or sweet potatoes and with something called Yorkshire Pudding (which is not pudding but a kind of savory bread cooked in the roast pan). Mmmm.

Meanwhile back at the UN

Drew came to visit Tuesday! We walked around to the water-side Copa Cagrana (pun on the neigborhood's name - Kagran) down the street from the UN (see background).

We ate at a Greek restaurant serving the most delicious fresh seafood (half price at lunch!) and these napkins that teach Germans how to speak Greek. You, dear readers, can learn both.

And then followed a tour of the city and dinner at Da Capo's and a walk around the Ringstrasse. So good to see him! Yesterday we went for a turn on the giant Reisenrad at the Prater (of The Third Man fame)

In addition to having a great view, the old ferris wheel cars had rather amusing graffiti and a rather amusing Canadian family that was in town for the AIDS conference.

We paid 50 cents to see hard we could hit the hammer at the fun fair... Drew made it to 300.

However, the machine did not register the mighty blow I dealt it. How insulting.

 

But Drew did! 

 

It's been so wonderful having him here... and Amanda, Aimee and Holly arrive tomorrow!!! These last few weeks are going to be so wonderful :).

London Part I

Ok - at long last - here is the update on the 4-day weekend in England foretold by my atomic alarm clock. This vacation necessitates a blog post series because so much occurred (all wonderful once I made it out of Austria).

I typed up an extensive and detailed itinerary to guide me through the hazards of solo travel (even in an anglophone country I'm well familiar with, in the company of friends) because the last time I tried to travel somewhere by myself it just went poorly. Peter was very impressed with my scheduling. Of course, irony of ironies, I forgot to print my itinerary at work and had to go on an excursion to bother another intern late in the evening during time allocated to pack!

As you can probably sense by the snide remark in the first paragraph, Austria did not want to let me go. Of course, Easy Jet does not have the reputation for being prompt and reliable. In short, it was the most disorganized boarding procedure you can imagine - waiting in 3 different wrong lines because they had improperly posted instructions or shifted the crowd. The security screening wasn't until we were getting ON the plane at the gate - so it took about an hour for everyone to go through the detector that was on our plane, one by one, after we were already delayed. We were 3 hours late in the end, but it seemed like 2 days.

But once in London...
The desk clerk told me I was eligible for a free promotion - an upgrade from a single room in Kensington to a king room in Mayfair... and transportion via a complementary black cab ride through central London. They probably overbooked, but this was the divine hand of providence.

My giant room was a 5 minute from the gorgeous pub where Caroline was with her friends.  On the way, I happened to pass by the University College of London.

Which is where Jeremy Bentham rests... He is the father of utilitarianism and coined the words "international," "codification," and "maximize." In order for the college to inherit the sizable sum of money Bentham left in his last will testament, one eternal string was attached. Bentham requested to be stuffed and maintained in the college. During meetings, they record him as "present, but not voting." Apparently, arch-rival King's College of London stole his head in 1975 and used it as a football (gross) so the one you see here is wax.

Sorry it's not rotated properly. I wouldn't have made a beeline for this wondrous attraction, but it had been tucked away in my head as something awesome to see if I ever happened to be near. There was also a really cool print collection. The nice thing about repeat trips to London is each visit decreases the amount of time spent in tourist traps and increases the amount of time just enjoying the city.

Anyway, so Caroline and I had a joyous reunion (throwing arms and running across the street and dropping handbags - actually the handbag was just me) and ate at a perfect little Italian restaurant and wandered the banks of the Thames at sunset to a pub cozily called "The Founders Arms."

And then I collapsed in a huge soft bed for the best sleep I've had in months. It's hard for me to sleep unless I'm relaxed. Walking down the ancient streets of London town, I felt literally 12 months of stress release from the back of my neck and shoulders and everything just seemed perfectly right with the world. Don't know a creative way to say that. It was just wonderful and brought back all the happy memories I've shared in the city with family and close friends.

Back from Merry Ol'

So much happened in 4 days in London!! Not quite sure how to put it all down in blog format yet - but will try very soon. But today, my friend Drew gets here to stay for a few days (those of you who followed laurasinfrance when I was actually in France will remember him fondly). It's a good thing he's visiting or I might not have returned at all. It's always sad coming home from a trip and going back to work. Oh well, I shall go with a nursery rhyme in my head and piper's song in my heart. xx

[As I've just returned from England, I have the overwhelming urge to put 'x's after all my sentences a la Britain.]

Happy Birthdays!

And also,

Happy Birthday today to my brother, Patrick and Happy Birthday yesterday to my grandpa, Paddy!!

I love and miss you both!

Patrick seems to be aging faster...

My Alarm Clock Lives... and Listens...

My alarm clock is alive. And it listens in on my conversations... There is no other explanation for the story I'm about to tell you. Nothing else makes sense.

I have a really awesome travel alarm clock. My grandparents gave it to me one year for my birthday and it has some sort of radio satellite device that knows what time zone its in and always displays the correct time without needing me to adjust it.

So this morning, when I woke up it read 4:40 am. And I thought "Oh! this is terrible," but got out of bed and went downstairs. Well, the clocks down there said 5:40am, but this didn't register in my sonambulant state.

Things made even less sense when my computer later said it was 11:30 pm (because it's still on Texas time, which is 6:30 am in Austria). Are you confused yet? So after checking my alarm clock, I realize it has re-set itself to be on UK time [because a UK has replaced GER], which is one hour earlier than Austrian time.

Is this happenstance? A technical malfunction? The NSA messing with my alarm clock?

No. I'm leaving for London tomorrow!! My alarm clock knows!! And it adjusted based on future travel plans (albeit 24 hours early). And that's just weird. The most reasonable explanation is that the clock has obviously overheard my conversations and is really looking forward to the trip to jolly ol', too.

I'm not sure how much I'll be able to blog until Monday.. but I promise lots of good pictures upon return!

Am sooo excited about this trip - will get to see Caroline and Jen and Megan and Jeremy Bentham and Wells. It's vacation at last! So far this summer, I haven't made it out of Vienna except for going to the heurigen last week.

 

The best part of the above sign was this -

They must not want to disturb the grapes.

Fresco Grill or Finally, a Taco

At least twice daily the bus and I go past Fresco Grill Burritos | Tacos | Bar. Peter and I always talk about how we need to go by there one day after work... so today we did.

I have missed black beans and pepper jack cheese all summer. Walking into Fresco Grill is like walking into the Freebird's World Burritos in College Station, Texas. There are exposed bricks and pipes and chrome seating (no foil statues, though) and the employees wear black baseball caps and have tattoos.  How perfect.

It's hard to explain how excited I felt watching the girl heap black beans on a chicken taco, then cover it in guacamole and shredded gouda.  It was like watching someone wrap the most wonderful birthday present you could hope for and then having them give it to you right away.

Biting into the tacos was less exciting. Let's be honest - these tacos didn't taste like much. But standing in front of the glass bar and confidently deciding how to assemble the tacos was just so wonderful.

By the way, there were 2 Jeep Cherokees parked outside Fresco Taco and 1 man wearing a UPS uniform.

And on the way home, I saw a man standing in a kiddie pool trying to teach/convince his dog how to do the same.  Later, I ran through an abandoned sprinkler on a side street because it's 95 degrees outside and nothing is air conditioned or klimatisiert. It's been a good day. Things just move so much slower when it's hot. That's how an Austrian woman explained to to my roommate: it's okay that it's hot, you just need to go more slowly.

[Note: Klimatisiert is one of my favorite German words to finish anglicizing and use in conversation. Others include WAGEN HALT (the words that flash when you request a bus stop) and Aroma Proof (what indicates that food packages have been sealed).]

A Mathematic Postulation

After living here for a month and a half, I have developed a mathematical theorem to describe the likelihood of me catching or missing the bus.

In a perfect world, a person would be equally likely to miss the bus by 1, 2, 3 ... 12 minutes? Mathematically, this probability would be represented as
                                    P(1) = P(2) = P(3) = ... = P(12)
Well, if one didn't miss the bus at all because it's a perfect world.

However, this is not a perfect world. In fact this aspect of life is completely skewed. I find I am least likely to get to the bus when it's only 4-5 minutes away. Slightly more probable is that I will be at the bus stop when there are 10 minutes to wait. Even more probable is that the bus is 2-3 minutes away. But overwhelmingly, the most likely event is that I will be less than 30 seconds away from the bus when it drives away. The closer I get to the bus (less than 20 feet), the more likely it is to be driving away. The relationship between the probability of me missing the bus and the distance I am to the bus actually increases at an inverse, exponential rate.

                        Thus, P(4) < P(5) < P(10) < P(7) < P(3) << P(.5)

Based on these observations, although the bus is unpredictable, I find it unpredictable in a predictable way.

You might be thinking, "Why Laura, just get a timetable. Putting the problem you create in the form of an equation does not make you more intelligent in this regard. Stop complaining about your poor planning." However, the bus does not arrive exactly on time. And my bus stop is minor and difficult to see. The bus briefly halts there for 15 seconds only if the driver sees a person. Moreover, the bus will not stop to wait if it's running ahead of schedule; instead, the 40a will cruise straight on to the next, more important, stop. Aye, there's the rub.

SO if I go outside at 4:31 expecting the bus at 4:34 and it doesn't appear, I may have already missed that one. Or I could randomly catch the 4:27 bus if it's running late. So although many factors are at play here (including the number of times I have to run back into the house to grab my lunch or an umbrella), there is still a pattern at work here I can't figure out how to master.

If you are still reading this, thank you. As you can tell, I have lots of time to contemplate these matters while waiting for the bus (there is a 18% chance I just missed one by 1 minute).

Many thanks to my grad school statistics prof and all the engineers in my family. Who knew that math class would ever be so useful at understanding the world around me?

Lois the Corpse Flower

If I was in Texas, I'd be in Houston right now. Sara just sent me the link to this amazing flower named Lois that lives at the Museum of Natural Science... It's called a corpse flower or bunga bangkai in Indonesian and this botanical celebrity even has its own webcam.

Apparently corpse flowers can grow over 10 feet tall... they only flower infrequently in the jungle and even less frequently when cultivated. BUT Lois blooms tonight, and the museum will stay open until midnights so people can see.

Interestingly, the flower's fragrance resembles that of rotting meat (hence the name). It was also the official flower of the Bronx until 2000 (replaced by the much less impressive day lily).

This is what they look like in bloom.

Impressive, no?

Street Art Photo Series

One of my favorite things about cities would have to be the funny graffiti, posters and street art. I've been surreptitiously collecting these pictures over the past month...

 

A Ghoooooooooost Palace

Augustus Gloop, Caught in the Wall
No more schnitzel. 

An Amoeba Reaches?

Apparently drawing mustaches on pictures is a universal norm

Whose boss carries a donut and a spear?

Why did the artist draw this caricature inside a bus stop?

Not sure what this image and auto insurance have in common

More bus stop art by Bauernfeldplatz

THANKS & PEACE!!

Spices and drindels and lamps, oh my!

The Naschmarkt is a huge open air market for produce, spices, antiques, and just about anything and everything a chap can unload.  I've been trying to come here for the last several Saturdays but kept getting lost en route. This time, I just followed a small stream of people trailing off from Karlsplatz. And sure enough that worked. A market has been located at this spot since the 1700s.

Today it looks like this

Please, continue to feast with your eyes

So you get the idea. There are loads of restaurants and stands (and people). And everything smells amazing (except some of the people). Never have I ever wished to have 4 stomachs so badly before in my life. You walk by vendors selling every kind of cheese and smoked meat. You walk by vendors selling fresh seafood, with octopus on ice, and grilling 3 euro fish sandwiches. You walk by vendors who sell only spices and teas. Some have fresh breads from local starters. Other sell antipasti like hummus and dolmas and grilled veggies and dates stuffed with cheese. If only there was a way to capture smell.

It was hard to decide what kind of hummus (chumas) to choose. I settled on wasabi and red bell pepper. Then if you give a girl some hummus, she has to buy marinated black olives and flat bread. And if she has black olives covered in herbes de provence and flat bread and hummus, there will have to be a dinner on the roof. As you can see , Peter and Chase scored the best apartment out of any of the interns. We would be more jealous if they weren't great hosts who share their roof.

Because this is the view from the roof

I also found a vendor selling antique postcards! These are my favorite souvenirs to collect, as they are small and lightweight. What a beautiful and relaxing day!