Christkindlmarkt

So, three weekends ago mum came out for her first visit to Vienna.  After arriving thursday night and spending friday morning when i was at work (finally gettting my experiment towards something that you could call working) sightseeing we headed out to the Christmas markets.

The Christmas markets had opened the previous weekend, so the girls and Aleks (Ali was in manchester as he is super awesome) had seen some of them, but there are so many in Vienna there were still plenty we had yet to see.  The first one mum and I headed to was at the Rathaus.  This is the pretty town hall in the centre of town where the film festival and national day celebrations were held (along with anything else of note it seems)  Its the biggest and oldest market in Vienna, also the most touristy.  After a short wander around, and mum’s first Austrian bratwurst,  we wandered up to the Spanish riding school via the Hoffburg Palace in order to get tickets to see the performance the coming sunday.

After getting the tickets, we headed to the Sacher hotel for their famous Sacher torte.  Having previously only had imitation Sacher torte you can see why the fuss is made about the original one.  It was so nice, but the slice they give you is more than enough!!

For dinner on friday evening we headed to Purstner, one of the more touristy resturants in town, but still nice all the same.

Saturday morning started with a trip to the naschmarkt followed by a wander around the Christmas market at Karlskirche and crepes (incidently from the Bretange crepe company – it was so confusing, I didnt know what language to speak!!)

In the evening we headed to Shoenbrunn Palace to visit the christmas market there.  Our original plan was to eat at Brandauers (where I had taken most people for ribs) but we found lots of nice food stalls at the market, and had to try most of them!!  The highlights were raclette (melty cheese) on bread with crispy bacon and onion bits and twisty crisps.

Sunday morning dawned far too early, but for good reason, with a trip to the Spanish Riding School.  These are the famous white horses that can do clever dressagy things.   Not knowing much about horses, it was still really good to watch.  The Hall in which it was held was really impressive too.

Mum went home on monday morning, and after a pretty uneventful week at work, Stef arrived the following Saturday morning.  Our Saturday took us to Shoenbrunn market for lunch, where we had onion soup in bread rolls, and obviously a gluwein or two.

On saturday evening we headed out to the Gurtel, which turned out to be a really good night!  Sunday morning started slowly, but eventually we got ourselves into town for some sightseeing, visiting the Rathaus Christmas market and Prater Park.  For dinner we went to a reasturant just off the Am Hoff with Anna and her mum and Granny as well as Lucie.  The food was really good and followed nicely by a Glüwein in the Am Hoff Christmas Market (no i wanst kidding when i said there was one in every spare bit of concrete in Vienna!)

On monday I had to go to work, so Stef spent the day with Anna and her mum and Granny visiting Karlskurche and the market there as well as some of the other sites of Vienna including Stephansdom.  After dinner on monday evening Stef and I headed to Artis Kino to see New Moon the new Twilight film, which as much as I hate to admit it, was actually quite good.

Stef headed home on tuesday morning leaving me with three and a half days to prepare to go on our much anticipated long weekend trip to Krakow.

Equally late as the last one

A blg update from mums and Stefs visits are due, with lots of exciting Christmas marketing action.

And I’m off to Krakow this weekend as we have a four day bank holiday…

Being a bit rubbish at keeping this up to date

This is a mega blog update because since I’ve started German lessons I’ve had much less time in the evenings and I acquired seasons one to seven of scrubs from Aleks, so have been watching that a lot in my spare time!

German lessons have been going really well.  It’s nice to be actually learning German and understand a bit more of what people are saying – that’s not to say I can actually speak much!

Budapest

The weekend of the 16th October we headed to Budapest.  This was the weekend we were meant to be heading to Amsterdam but since SkyEurope went bust it was impossible to get there.  We had already booked the Friday off work, since that was when it was cheapest to go to Amsterdam, so decided instead to still use that day to go to Budapest.

Exciting train times curtesy of Aleks

Budapest is much like Vienna in terms of its architecture, but it’s not as well developed, but you can see the investment that’s gone into the city in the last few years.  After a four hour train ride from Vienna we headed to our lush apartment, paid for by the money we received back from the sky Europe flights (which also paid for Florence and the machine tickets, who we went to see earlier that week) we headed out into the town to explore what was there.

Lucie and Anna mit Gluwein outside Church in a cave near the Citadel

We decided to head up to the highest point in the city, which was located on the Buda side of the river.  The Danube runs almost through the middle of Budapest, splitting the city into Buda, and Pest, where we were staying.  At the top of the massive hill, which we walked up whilst drinking Gluwein (not to be recommended) was a monument to the liberation of the city after the second world war, and a citadel.  Citadels are a type of prison where all of the cells are in a circle so everyone can see everyone else, or something along those lines.  We didn’t actually go inside as you had to pay, but it looked pretty impressive from the outside!

Monument with Citadel in the background

From there, after wandering around the random stalls that seem to be anywhere toursisty, we headed back down into town to find somewhere for dinner.  Hungary uses the florent as a currency. There are about 280 florent to a Euro, which makes buying anything really confusing as it all sounds really expensive.  However, we managed five main meals and two drinks each for about 60 Euros, so it was actually pretty cheap.  Budapest especially has become more expensive recently, but is still cheap compared to Vienna.  Our evening was the spent drinking cocktails before acquiring some wine, which to our defence forgetting the exchange rate sounded really expensive, but was actually a fiver for two bottles of wine and some lemonade, and heading back to the apartment.

The waitress tried to give all three girls this drink before offering it to Aleks.

Our apartment cost us about 40 Euros for the two nights we were there, but it was really nice as it meant we were all together rather than being in separate hotel rooms.  We also were able to cook our own breakfast of egg and bacon rolls, which was amazing as the Viennese are slightly lacking in proper bacon.  The only downside to the apartment was that there were only two bedrooms and one of us had the sofa bed in the living room.  This was fine by me, apart from when Lucie and I were talking sitting on the pulled out bed before going to sleep one night, and the boys decided they wanted part of the action so came and jumped on us!!

Saturday 17th October was bright and clear so we decided to head to one of the thermal baths that Budapest is famous for.  It was pretty awesome with loads of different thermal baths and pools of different temperatures as well as saunas and plunge pools.  After spending the morning there, we walked back to the underground though one of the big parks, and past the millennium monument and random statues of who we are sure were important Hungarian people, we just weren’t quite sure who they were!

Outside the Basilica

After heading back to the apartment to drop off our stuff and have some lunch (whilst watching competitive bowling on TV, which is randomly addictive…) we wandered around Pest.  In Pest is St Stephens Basilica which is a massive and really pretty Church.  There is also the Parliament which is a really impressive building, and as you walk along the river you can see across to Buda and the Castle and citadel.

Inside the Basilica

Tourists?

We happened across a random little place for dinner where a spirit called unicum was advertised (not the reason we went in but still) Unicum is the national spirit of Hungary and is absolutely foul.  However we had to try it.  To wash away the taste of the Unicum we went out for more cocktails to while away the evening.

That brings us to Sunday where we headed over to Buda castle and managed to see the changing of the guard without knowing it was going to happen.  We’re not sure what they are guarding, but it was still interesting to watch.  After a wander around the markets in the streets near the Castle we headed to the very Hungarian Pizza Express for lunch.  Soon after lunch I left the others to get to the Airport to fly home, whilst they all headed back to Vienna on the train.

D of E Gold Presentation

I went home in order to be presented with my D of E gold award by the Duke of Edinburgh (who no-one in Austria has heard of!) However that wasn’t until the Tuesday morning so I got to spend Monday seeing the Grandparents, going to Lakeside (where loads of the shops have changed!) and getting a contact lense check up.  It’s all excitement for me!

The presentation itself was in St James palace and was actually really good.  The Duke seemed interested in what people were saying, and I’m guessing having done it for the last 50 years spoke well to everyone.  He spent quite a while talking to our group, but we still only received rubbish certificates!  Ours was presented by the guy who wrote Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (his name escapes me) who had a link to the East of England as he lives in Norfolk – they try to get local celebrities to present the certificates.

From there we headed for a very very nice lunch before I had to get a plane back to Vienna.  Heathrow, the flight and getting home were all exceptionally exciting, as was the next three days in work.

National Freietag

After a whole three days at work Friday arrived and Adam cane for his first visit to Vienna.  It was also Anna’s birthday, so we headed out to an area called the Gurtel for some drinking and dancing.  Anna’s love of Tequila made her slightly worse for wear but we still all had an awesome evening.

Tequila makes Anna happy

As it was the Austrians national holiday weekend there were loads of Army displays on at the Hoffburg and Rathaus, which made the whole tourist trail a bit more exciting for me, now having been around all the sites many times. After doing a day of touristy stuff, Adam and I headed to Puerstne, a restaurant we discovered recently which does lots of traditional Austrian food which is served by guys in Lederhosen.  As you can guess it’s a bit of a tourist trap, but has nice food all the same.

Doesn't he make a good tourist?

On the Sunday Adam and I had a lazy morning before heading to Shoenbrunn.  On the Monday, the national day, we headed to the Museums Quartier to go to the Leopold’s museum, to have some cultural time!  There was an exhibition of Edvard Munch (the guy that did the “scream” painting.  It was pretty interesting and a good way to while away a few hours as the weather was nice and drizzly!

The last two weeks

Haven’t actually been that exciting!  The weather has turned and so is now freezing most of the time.  There has been a bit of a poor excuse for snow, but most of the time it has just rained or been really cold!  German lessons have been taking up much of my time, and my experiment hasn’t been working out so great, meaning that on Tuesdays and Thursday I’ve been staying in work later in order to get things moving with my experiment.  Thats the way of science, sometimes it just doesn’t want to work for no particular reason!

We did however have some fireworks day fun!  Although no-one tried to blow up the Austrian Parliament in the 1600’s with gunpowder we managed to aquire some sparklers to celebrate!

We’re starting to get excited for the Christmas markets, which start next weekend!  After next weekend things start to get busier again, so it’s been nice to have some lazy weekends although I think I’ve had more lazy weekends in Vienna than I have done the whole time I’ve been at uni‼  Mum visits the weekend after next, then Stefs out for a few days, we’re going to Krakow the weekend after that as there is another bank holiday, one more weekend in Vienna and then I head home for Christmas.  It’s ridiculous how quick the time is going now.  When I come back after Christmas, I will have been here for over half of my year in industry!

The hills are alive with the sound of…

A lot has happened since I last updated my blog. So here goes:

Mancunian Invasion

The day after I got back from holiday, sept 23rd, Katy, Tom, Rach and Katherine decided Vienna was the coolest place to spend fresher’s week, leaving the SSAGO stand to pretty much anyone that wasn’t on the SSAGO committee.  After navigating the train from the airport to the centre of town (no thanks to my rubbish directions!!) I met them from work to go back to my room, which was nicely covered from loads of washing from my holiday.  After a quick tidy up and re-arrangement of the room we headed to Brandauers for dinner, which has now become part of the initiation for anyone that visits us it seems.  Two plates of ribs and a schnitzel later, we headed back to JWH to blow up the airbeds and crash.

I spent Thursday at work whilst the other four wandered around Vienna, seeing the sights and eating cake.  In the evening we had a night in as we needed to sort ourselves out for going to Salzburg the next day.  Over much wine and pizza we all caught up, chatting about our summers and how uni was going to be in final year.  (And about how much they were all going to miss me, obv!!) Friday morning again started with work for me, although with the added excitement of taking Tom’s bag to work with me (which weighed an absolute tone!) so Tom, Rach, Katy and Katherine could head over to Shoenbrunn without a massive bag.

After our respective morning’s enjoyment, we, along with Lucie and Anna, caught a train to Salzburg.  The journey was much improved by our “Harry Potter” carriage, aka. a compartment.  Enter-train-ment (after our fun times on the way to Bratislava) was this time not provided by card games but by Tom’s ridiculously annoying and addictive game where you were given a picture and had to use the shapes to make the picture.  We arrived at our lush hostel dumped our bags and booked ourselves onto the sound of music tour for the next day before heading out to dinner.  Spätzel being the most popular dish of the evening.  Spätzel is small flour dumplings, cooked in a pan with cheese and varying other things, most commonly bacon.  It’s really nice, even if it doesn’t sound it.  After dinner we wandered back to the hostel through the town, which is really pretty.

Saturday started bright and early so we could get to the SoM tour for 9.30.  The tour took us to some of the famous locations seen in the film.  You cant actually go to the buildings which were used for the Von Trapp house (there are two, one for the front and one for the back, the back one incidentally is owned by Harvard University) Nevertheless we had good fun seeing all the buildings and eating strudel in Mondsee (Moon lake) where the Church in which Maria and Mr. Von Trapp were married in the film.  As our tour was the most unique SoM tour (there are many tours, we chose the one that our hostel gave us discount for…) we had a stop off at a luge track.  Katherine and I and Tom and Katy both went on two person luges down the track.  I’m not sure how much Katherine appreciated my lack of braking along the track though – I’m quite glad no-one got a photo of us coming to the end though as I wasn’t sure we were going to stop in time!  The tour was really good as it meant we got to see some more of Salzburg and the surrounding lakes and mountains.

The house used for the rear scenes with the lake

We spent the afternoon at the Fortress, the domineering feature of the skyline of Salzburg before heading out for dinner, which was nice, but overshadowed by the immense meringue type pudding that we just had to get! Katherine, Rach, Tom and Katy left early on Sunday morning in order to get their flight back to the UK and then train it up to Manchester in order to get back in decent time before uni started properly on the 28th sept.

The Fortress from MOMA

After another hour or so in bed, Anna, Lucie and I (following breakfast and as much food plundering as we could manage  so we didn’t need to buy lunch) headed off into town in order to get to the Museum of Modern art, which was situated on the opposing hill to the fortress.  The walk through the town was lovely as it was a bright morning, and there were many stalls about due to the fact that it was the celebration of the patron Saint of Salzburg.  We didn’t realize it was going to be a big celebration weekend until we got there, although it made Salzburg a bit more exciting for us as lots of locals were wearing traditional dress (lederhosen and dirndls.) MOMA was actually really interesting.  One of the exhibits was a photo collection, with some really odd photos, but then there were some really interesting sculptures in other exhibitions.  A sleepy train journey later and we were back in Wien ready for another weeks work.

Lucie’s birthday

The first weekend in October was one of the first weekends we had all been in Vienna for a while, so we headed out for dinner to a little Italian restaurant Ali found when his parents came to visit.  It made a nice change from lots of meat and potatoes that are typically Austrian cuisine! After a quiet Saturday, that pretty much consisted of the girls going boot shopping to the shoe shop across the road from our flats and then to spar in order to get food for dinner, we dressed up to go to a casino in order to celebrate Lucie’s 22nd birthday with a bit of class!

Being classy on the train

The casino was really good fun, even though we only had €25 worth of chips each (which is the minimum you can go in with) we had a really good evening.  I think I had the best haul of the evening, winning a bottle goldshlaager (the one with the little flecks of gold in it) on the practice table before we even started betting with money! I came out with €30 euro, so covered my cost of entry and drinks! After the casino we headed back to our flats where we ate birthday brownie.

birthday brownie

Over the past few weeks my experiment has started to come together, but it now means that I spend lots of time waiting for other things to happen, and for reagents to come in.  Because what I’m doing is so new, we don’t have a lot of the reagents we need in house,  so they have to be ordered, which can take anything from a few days to a few months!  But never mind, it gives me lots of emailing time (Stef, I will reply eventually!!)

So, last weekend, (9th Oct) we went for dinner to a very Austrian (but touristy) place for dinner (Mum, we’ll go here, Brandauers is now to cold!).  I had an awesome beef fillet stuffed with camembert with roast potatoes.  Aleks had a schnitzel as big as his plate! We then headed back to JWH for some guitar hero action – which both Anna and I are still petty rubbish at! Anna and I spent most of Saturday at Wien shopping city süd, the apparently biggest shopping mall in Europe.  It was big, but didn’t feel as big as bluewater where you walk around in circles for ages.  This was more like a long row of shops, just not in a straight line, you went around random corners.  I managed to get an outfit for my D of E gold presentation that I’m heading home for next week, so it was all good.  However, we won’t be heading back there on a Saturday any time soon! (Roland, my supervisor at work,  laughed at me when I said that we had been on a saturday, apparently they look on it much how we see lakeside on a saturday)

That brings us to this week. I started my German lessons last night (no I can’t speak any more German than I could yesterday before you ask.) The lessons should be ok, although we have a bit more knowledge of German than some in our class, we are no means experts, and I’m sure we’ll start learning new things pretty quick!

Long overdue blog update

It is on its way, honestly.  Blame Lucie and Anna as they said they would write it so i wouldnt keep writing same old thing about what I do at work…

Holiday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After much waiting, and frantic re-booking of flights two weeks ago after sky europe went bust,  the time came for me to go on holiday!

Needless to say it wasn’t a boring start.  The original flights were to leave flughafen Wien (Vienna airport, just far more interesting sounding!) at lunchtime, so I wouldn’t have to get up to early.  That all changed with the second set of flights as my flight was at 7.30am and its the best part of an hour to get to the airport on the train.  So I ahd a lovely early start to the airport on the first train of the day.  My flight (uneventful, although in a plane with propellors, jet engines are overrated apparently) took me to Geneva airport (I realise this is the opposite way to Greece from Vienna) where I sat around for two hours, unsucessful in my search for a bacon sandwich.  McDonalds are overrated too it seems.

My second flight was on a ‘proper’ plane, where I even got an in flight snack.  I arrived in Athens at around 3pm, and got the bus to where we were staying on Omonia square, realatively near the centre of Athens.  I spent the afternoon wandering around the area between syntagma, or constitution, square and Omonia square.  There were lots of pretty buildings but most of it looked not too dissimilar from basildon (concrete).  I spent the rest of the evening waiting for Adam to arrive, as he was flying out from the UK and didnt land til about half past 8. 

We spent our first day (weds) signtseeing around the town, where we happened to see the changing of the presidential guard outside the presidential palace on Syntagma square.  It was odd with their odd marching!! (photos to come later when Adam sends his photos over.  My camera didnt leave the hotel room as we didnt see the point of taking the same photos twice)  From there we headed through the big park in the centre of Athens which was lovely after the heat and humidity of the streets.

We also went to see the original Olympic stadium, which is huge and very white!  Its an odd shape though, very long with only a small bend at one end.  Its a straight track (Archery was held here for the Olymics in 2004) without one end, so you can see straight into the stadium as its open to the road.  From there we headed to the 2004 Olymic park, which was impressive archtectularly, but really eerie as nothing is going on there any more.  It all looked a bit forlorn and not looked after.  There was lots of space, obviously now not needed there arent many events happening there.  Its a good job I never swam there as I dont think mum would have been able to sit on the balcony, being higher and steeper than the upper tier at Crystal Palace (to explain, imagine ridiculous steepness without many barriers, much like the top tier of the O2, but outside as well)  Still it was nice to visit and say we’ve seen it

On thursday we had a lazy day and headed to Lybetacus hill, the big rock in the centre of Athens, where you can get a really nice view of the acropolis, when its not chucking it down with rain!!  With all the rain we decided to go to the brand new acropolis museum, where lots of the artifacts found in and around the acropolis are now displayed.  It was actually really interesting, with descriptions of how the parthenon was built and how it ended up in its current state (basically many wars and lootings).  It was impressive to see how much had been so well preserved especially as some of the exhibits were from 500BC or so.  The visit was made even better by the fact that EU students with an ISIC card get in for free!! (however i was kind and paid Adams entrance fee of €1 for him, his  excuse being he had no change!!)

Friday was our acropolis day (where I also got in for free!) we had seen some of the sights including Hadrians arch and the temple of Olympian Zeus earlier in the week so we headed directly to the foot of the Acropolis, where we joined lots of other tourists to head up the hill to the parthenon, passing the theater and Nike temple on the way up (I’m sure Adam will tell me this is wrong, but he kept my freebie book of sights in athens – best blag, apart from the city map, from the tourist info at the airport!!)

The Parthenon, when you get there, despite being surrounded in scaffolding and heaving with cruise ship tour groups, is impressive.  There is also a really good view of much of the rest of Athens, including Lybetacus hill and the Ancient Agora (marketplace) .  It was however the most ridiculously hot place ever as there is very little shade, and it seems we went on the hottest day of the holiday!  We also visited the Ancient agora, and had a wander around Monastiraki where randomly there will be ruins walled off between houses.

We ended up heading home at about 3pm, hot and tired after our early start, and it turned out we headed home at the right time, as the heavens opened not long after we got in.  We had a lazy afternoon befored heading back to the acropolis area to search out some dinner, wandering through the littel streets of Plaka at night was really good as there are lots of little stalls selling all sorts of tat.  The best meal we had in Athens was found in Monastiraki, looking over to the Acropolis.  It was a massive mixed grill that we shared with really nice kebabs and strips of meat in different sauces.

On sunday we headed out by flying dolphin (like a caramaran type boat but for lots of people) to the island of Agistri.  We found a little hotel owned by the barmiest, but highly amusing, brit guy who ran it as it hobby it seemed.  It was a really pretty hotel, much nicer than the one we were staying in Athens!!  After spending the afternoon on the beach we had drinks and dinner at the hotel.  I had Octopus for dinner, which was really nice.  It was odd as you can feel the suckers as little rings when you eat them, but its really nice as its all muscle, there is no gristle or bones.  Considering the last time i was force fed octopus by dad i thought it was horrible i was impressed by how nice it was!!

After a day on the beach we headed back to Athens on monday evening before getting some presents and packing ready for our trip home on tuesday.

My flights were uneventfully boring.  Geneva is the most rubbish airport to spend 4 hours in as there wasnt much to do there, as like most airports it seems, they are continually doing everything up!  I managed to find an internet cafe, and after aquiring some swiss francs whiled away an hour catching up with the world, before sitting and reading my book for most of the rest of the time.  I did however come back to Vienna to be offered dinner by Anna, which i was very grateful for not having eathen properly since breakfast at the aiport with Adam.

It was back to work on wednesday, and I was joined by Katy, Tom, Rach and Katherine on wednesday night who are fitting a visit in before uni starts properly next week.  We’re off to Salzburg this weekend for some sound of music action!!!

Essex invades Vienna

Prety unexciting times, and rubbish weather the week after dad and Olie went home meant we didn’t actually get up to much.  My expeiment continued to fail on almost a daily basis because one of the reagents I was using was rubbish.    However, since going through every single reagent i have and changing them, I found out what was wrong and now have an exeriment that pretty much works, I think.  Most of the time…

The weather being so rubbish last weekend meant that we couldnt do out normal weekend thing of either wandering around town or going to the pool, so we decided to finally embrace our cultural sides and visit one of Vienna’s many museums.  After asking around at work and being told that all of the art museum were only to be visited if you like art (or were that bored), we decided to go to the natural history museum.  Being the adults we are, we found the kids section, only after hunting for kryptonite in the many many rooms full of rocks.

Aleks and Ali as cave men

As museums go it wasnt the most interesting, but served to amuse us anyway.  We also went to see inglorious bastards at the cinema, and found a new bar that did some nice food on Schweedensplatz.  A sucessful saturday!  An equally sucessful sunday followed with lots of sleeping, cleaning my flat and doing washing before Graham and Charlie were to arrive the following wednesday.

So Graham and Charlie arrived on wednesday, and spent thursday and friday sightseeing whilst i was in work.  Gnome arrived on friday to complete Essex’s invasion of Vienna.  After a quiet afternoon, we went out for drinks and dinner.  Saturday was actually the nicest day we had in a long while, so we took the oppotunity to get out and about in Vienna, seeing most of the big sites including a trip on the prater wheel.

Charlie and gnome go "swimming" in the pond in front of Karlskurche

On saturday evening we headed out to U4, a club on the outskirts of Meidling (a town on the way into Vienna)  Following a few happy hour cocktails we were ready to dance the night away to cheese much like they play in Jaks.

Following a late start and full cooked breakfast – or as close as you can get with streaky bacon, eggy bread and fried tomatoes; we headed off to Shoenbrunn for a wander around the park.  We also went into the maze and labyrinth for much childlike fun, before heading home to dinner cooked for the first time totally by the boys!  The rest of the evening was spent between playing uno and reminding gnome she didnt have to shout uno so loudly the other block could hear!!

Gnome, Graham and Charlie headed off to Bratislava for the day on monday, and did the same sightseeing tour we did when we visted back in August.  On their return we took them to Brandauers for the same ribs that Dad and Olie had when they were here.  The main difference between

 

Me and Gnome with our ribs

the visits being that whereas Dad and Olie both had their own portions, Gnome and I shared and both struggled to finish our halves!!  I dont know whether that says more about our inability or Olie/Dad’s ability to eat that much meat and potato in one go!

 

 

Gnome with her gummy bear blue smartie

Whilst in Vienna Gnome found the smarties here, which arent quite normal smarties. Instead of having chocolate insides, they have gummy bears, and still include the hyper inducing component in the blue colouring!!

So after they all headed home on tuesday I’ve had a pretty standard week.  I’ve got some nice results and I also did a presentation to the rest of my lab group on the work I’ve done so far as its really cutting edge science.  Its so new that we regularly change the specifics of what we are doing as new papers are pubished.

This weekend has been pretty relaxing for me as Anna is still in Amsterdam, Aleks is in Prague with some friends from home and both Ali and Lucie have friends here for the weekend.  I went swimming on saturday afternoon to Amilebad in Renumplatz, which is possibly one of the prettyest pools I’ve ever seen.  I had an awesome evening in last night watching transformers in my pj’s having a properly slobby evening.  Today hasnt been much busier, I’ve just been packing for my holiday to Athens on tuesday and being generally domestic.

Holiday time soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lab shoes

My Lab shoes arrived today and they are so cool I thought they deserved their own post, and a photo:

My funky Lab shoes

Dad and Olie come to visit

Since last time I wrote I haven’t been up to much until this weekend just gone (its monday) Last weekend we went to the Aquarium (which was a bit of a disappointment after the excitement of the Zoo) to Prater Dome in the evening, and then spent sunday around the pool.

The intervening week carried on much the same as before, although highlights included my experiment failing twice.  And possibly will fail again today.  How I love science…  Aside from my moans work is still interesting and I’m still enjoying it,  even if the nature of my experiments mean that I have lots of odd half hours whilst waiting for the reagents to do something before I can move onto the next step.  Lots of emailing time!!

So,  Dad and Olie arrived on thursday afternoon, I met them from the station after I finished work before heading to mine to unpack the two bags of my stuff that they bought over for me.

We headed over to Brandauers in Heitzing for dinner, where Olie and Dad both went for the massive chopping board full of ribs and fried potatoes.  Needless to say it was enjoyed by all (I wouldn’t have eaten my own one, so I stole some of theirs!)

Needless to say Olie was please with his ribs

Friday started slowly for olie, who stayed in bed sleeping whilst I was at work and Dad headed out into town.  I met them for the afternoon where we went to the pool.  They both approved of that too!  We headed into town for dinner, to a little Austrian Place near the Belvedere and Russian liberation of Austria monument.  Dad and Olie both had Schnitzels whilst I had a beef and dumplings thing, which was really nice.  From there we headed to Schweedensplatz, where sand and deck chairs have been put along the side of the Danube canal.  This soon became Olie’s favourite place as he had a beer and they played reggae music.

Chilling at the pool

Saturday also began slowly with a lay in for me and Olie (Olie’s considerably longer than mine), whilst Dad went off wandering around the Belvedere palace gardens.  We started off heading into town for mock Sacher torte (the posh Viennese cake, just cheaper and around the corner from the hotel!) and then followed the walking tour of the city that Anna Lucie and I did a few weekends ago.   After wandering around the Hoffburg, and up to the Rothaus, we headed over to the Donna Park, where the Sky tower is.  Walking through the UN buildings it started to rain, which wasn’t great as none of us took waterproofs.  We still headed up the Sky tower, settling for a drink in the revolving restaurant rather than looking at the view from the outside deck!  We went to 1516 for dinner, where both Dad and Olie again enjoyed their food.

big ones, small ones, some as big as your head? The 16 year drinking age was also approved of...

Sunday started a bit earlier with a trip to Prater, the funfair on the outskirts of Vienna.  It’s a bit like Peter Pans, but better.  There is an old school ferris wheel, one of the oldest of its type that we went on, much to Dads delight when it started swinging when everyone moved from one side to the other when we went over the top!!  Olie and I also went on a laying down roller coaster, and all three of us went of a dingy ride (the big doughnut things, like the rapids things at Thorpe park) apart from the fact you get taken up in a lift, and then go down a twisty chute, so you spin ridiculously fast, and much like continental health and safety, feel like you are going to go over the top of the sides.

We <3 Austrian health and safety!!

We made it down alive anyway, and much to Olie and dads amusement, I got a lap-full of water as we hit the bottom from going down the slidey bit.  From there we headed back to mine to cook dinner for as Anna, Lucie and Aleks had been to Frequency festival, and Ali had been in Salzburg.  Whilst dinner was cooking Dad and I headed over to Shoenbrunn (hence the muchos photos on fb) whilst Olie stayed behind and rinsed my internet (I only get 3GB internet a month, which really isn’t a lot).

Dad and Olie flew home monday morning, and I continued to try and make my experiment work, which it is starting to do… slowly.

going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

After a pretty quiet week at work since my supervisor was on holiday for most of it, we headed out to town on friday night, in an attempt to find some new places…

After much walking, because the place we were trying to find was closed, we stumbled upon an ice cream parlour, and it would have been rude not to stop, so we had some exciting looking ice creams before heading further into town to the Museums Quarter, where we hadn’t been before.

Aleks clown ice cream

mine and Lucies spaghetti bolognaise ice cream

Walking up to the museums, we saw some massive yellow bench things so we decided to sit down for a bit.  This was stupidly before wandering into the museum courtyard, where we were to be greted by about 10 bars and loads of nicer places to sit.  It was then we realised that sitting outside were Viennas underage alcos.  (It was much like being in Moonies!)  Asides from that inside was really nice, and we managed to bump into the guys that we had been tree climbing with who were out celebrating Pauls last night in Austria before heading home to finish his Arbourcultural dimploma.

We ended up heading into a club/bar in the museums quarter and had a really god evening, despite te crazy dutch guy that tried to consecutively chat all three girls up, without realising we were laughing at him the whole time.  Aleks wasn’t much help in saving us either!!

So after a late start on saturday, we bought a picnic and headed to the Zoo in Shoenbrunn, where among other things we saw koalas (who looked really grumpy compared to the ones we saw in Oz)

I can have photos of koalas too!

Meerkats, who were really small; a really hungry panda, penguins and the most exciteable polar bear.  the polar bear gave us heaps of amusement spending ages looking at a ball in the water, and jumping up and down as though he was trying to break the rock he was sitting on off into the water to get it.  Just when we thought he had got bored, the polar bear leaped into the water.

To to the day of we made an awesome spaghetti bolognaise, and headed into town to go to sand in the city.  Sand in the city (one part of) is a collection of bars and deck chairs along the danube canal, which was really nice to go and chill at.

Sunday started off slowly as we all needed a lie in.  Lucie, Anna and I then headed into town in search of the tourist tram.  We eventually got on it, paid our €6 and were treated to a tour of the outer gurtel, the ring that originally was the city walls.  We then followed a walking tour of the city, patching together where differnt parts in the city were.  Vienna isnt actually that big, its just where we had been getting the u-bahn into differnt areas of town, we didnt actually realise how compact most of it is.  On our tour we saw some of the bigger sites we had yet to come across, including Karlskirche, a massive baroque church.

Karlskirche

Since the weekend, this week has been pretty uneventful, althought for me it will probably get busieras roland (my supervisor) gets back from his holiday tomorrow.