Lunch With P. Then, A Castle

We met P, our friend from last night, at the fabulous Cafe Weimar, a funky old coffeehouse / restaurant. Never been there before, but now I think it'll be one of my new favorite joints.

Checked the weather today and learned, via weather.com, that the HIGH in Vienna today is LOWER THAN the OVERNIGHT LOW in OKC. In other words, perfect. Sunny skies with lots of fluffy white clouds, and about 76 F. Nice to sit outside with P and talk about stuff.

It's not about the food you eat or the wine you drink----the food is really just an excuse to get together and have a friendly intellectual adventure; a meeting of the minds. Some time ago my buddy George The Greek told me about a dinner party he attended in Paris one time. Then I forgot his story and accidentally stumbled upon the website of the guy in Paris who's been holding these open dinner parties every Sunday for over 30 years. I told George and he reminded me he'd been there and had a good time...and then I got the idea to do little dinner gatherings in my own home, on a much smaller scale. And they've been more or less successful and fun.

P has an interesting project based in Uganda, helping orphaned street kids there. I'll post about this separately sometime because I'd like you to know about P's work and be thinking of ways we might be able to help these kids. Anyhow, that's what we talked about for the first half of our lunch, then we moved on to other things for the second half.

Sitting on the patio of a 110-year-old coffeehouse, eating lunch and talking with friends. It does not suck.

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B had the idea to visit a castle called Burg Kreuzenstein, about a 25 minute drive from her house, located on a hill outside the village of Leobendorf. It was a great day for a drive, and we got there just at 3 PM for the last guided tour of the place.

Burg Kreuzenstein

From the website: "History: The first mention of certain Dietrich von Grizanestein can be identified in a document dated 1115. In April 1645 a Swedish army under Field-Marshal Thorstenson occupied Kreuzenstein. The Swedish were defeated by the emperor's troops, and this sealed the castle´s fate. It was systematically leveled to the ground; all that remained being an uninhabitable pile of rubble. In 1874, it was Count Johann Nepomuk Wiczek who embarked upon the rebuilding and restoration of the castle . The new castle, which was completed in 33 years, is modeled on similar edifices dating from the time of the emperor Maximilian I (1459 - 1519), the last of the knights."

The Count was a big collector of weapons. We couldn't take pictures inside the castle but we toured a huge room where there were all kinds of pikes, swords, crossbows, and other kinds of stuff----enough to arm 300 men, according to the guide. One of the most interesting weapons was a modification of a shepherd's tool----a kind of a loop made of metal on the end of a long pole. It was originally designed to grab sheep by the neck. The loop had an opening and was expandable so you could slip it around the neck of a mounted knight, and then when you pulled, the loop closed and pulled him off his horse. The guide (who reminded me of Isaac Asimov in appearance) told us the knights really feared this weapon, because untrained people could use it to great effect.

 Part of the inner courtyard of the castle.

This castle is still owned by the descendants of the Count, so some parts of it aren't on the tour, like a private chapel and some other rooms. This Count dude had coal-mining interests in an era when coal was like oil, and he was very rich. He was also at least a little socially conscious, and was instrumental in founding Austria's first ambulance service...he even personally drove an ambulance during WWI.

Back home later, B made an excellent dish---some cooked spinach mixed with egg and cheese, then rolled up into large crepes, which were then put into the oven and baked with a little cheese on top. Tomato salad with basil and just a hint of olive oil, salt, and pepper. White wine to drink.

Again, there was no suck-ification to be detected on my Suck-O-Meter in the experiences of the day.

Socializing

Went to my "Deutsch in Park" lesson yesterday, except it looked like rain, so we had the lessons in a nearby school.

Then, during our break, the school maintenance guy wanted to lock up and go home early, so we had to figure out what to do. We schlepped over to the Hauptbücherei (the main library) a few blocks away and got introduced to this fantastic place. Thousands of CDs, DVDs, and of course books, in several languages including English. Not to mention, the view from the top floor was fantastic.

Took the subway to Simmering and B picked me up in the car, and we drove to Schloss Thürnlhof, a pretty cool restaurant in an old castle. The link will lead you to a slide show of the interior of the place. Evidently there's some kind of Napoleon connection, because there are paintings and statues and even three death masks of the guy. We sat out in the courtyard with our friend Margit and enjoyed a really nice meal, starting with a really fantastic mushroom soup. Don't think of the tasteless white things commonly thought of as "mushrooms" that we often find in American markets---think of delicious wild mushrooms, rich in taste.

Chicken breast wrapped in prosciutto on a bed of noodles, with bits of pear.

Leaving the restaurant, we saw this in an alley.
The graveyard of coin operated rides for children.

Then to the Altes AKH, which used to be a hospital complex but now is part of the University of Vienna. The courtyard part of the complex features a park and some restaurants. We were invited to join our friend P and lots of his friends for his belated birthday celebration.

A nice place to sit outside and enjoy drinks with 25 of your closest friends.

As usual with big gatherings, people break off into smaller groups. We talked with a couple of interesting guys, V and G. Both spoke excellent English.

G and P went to university together, lo these many years ago, and part of that process involved a year of study in America. G ended up in Lawrence, Kansas at the U of K. 

"It was an island of creativity and liberal thinking in a sea of conservatism," he said. 

"Yeah, the contrasts can be kind of stunning," I said, thinking of OU in Norman as compared to, say, the guys at the Nicoma Park feed store. When you gather thousands of people together, with the idea of getting them to learn stuff and think about stuff, you're obviously going to have a different vibe than a population whose main goal is to find a grindstone to shove their noses (and minds) against, people who might think: I've got it all figured out. And if I don't, so what? My thinking is good enough for now, and forever.

But G wasn't criticizing his time in America. He was just pointing out what might be called tribal differences among the natives.

V works from home for a big American pharmaceutical company. He has friends in the states and was encouraged by his company to move to Indianapolis, but he said fuck that. I didn't get to ask him specifically what he didn't like about Indie, but the general idea was that the place was unlivable.

He was born to Austrian parents but raised in Spain and speaks fluent Spanish, along with English and German. He and B were talking about the influence of mass media and how it's shrinking the global village and influencing public perceptions, sometimes for the worse as the "outside world's" opinions can affect the culture of the "target country." He cited bullfighting as an example. Because he was raised in Spain, he sees bullfighting completely differently than most of the "civilized" non-Spanish world. He and B were talking in German about this as I talked to G in English, but later she told me the guy made a decent defense of bullfighting, if not entirely convincing to her.

He doesn't watch television except for viewing the occasional DVD. "After you've been without it awhile, when you happen to see it in a pub or at someone's home, it shocks you how horrible it is," he said. 

"Some of it is pretty decent," I said. "But like with anything else, you have to wade through an ocean of shit to find a pearl. And the ocean's getting bigger while the number of pearls is shrinking."

"I don't mind missing out on the pearls to avoid the tsunami of shit," he said.

V has a 5-year-old daughter and he thinks America is a more child-friendly country than Austria---Americans tolerate children's antics better, I guess he meant.

With elections coming up in Austria, talked turned to politics. V and B differ on taxation in Austria. Both agree the tax rate is high when compared to the US, and both agree that they get a lot from the country for the taxes they pay, but V tends to think he's not quite getting his money's worth---and they're asking for more. For instance, the subways don't run 24-7; they shut down about midnight or 1 AM and start up again at 5 or 6. But now the politicians want to offer 24-7 subway service. An improvement? Yes, but is it worth the extra cost? How many people actually need to use the subway between 1 AM and 6 AM? 

All this is interesting to me because it illustrates that people are more alike than they are different. We might tend to think of Europeans as "liberal" "tax and spenders" when compared to the US, but they have their "conservatives." And we in America have our "liberals."

Ultimately these labels are meaningless. After a while you tend to think of a "decent society" as an interesting concept, something much easier to imagine rather than to actually experience. There are forces at play that "don't care" about the ideal society we might imagine---these forces just kind of operate independently of our desires. Build your house of straw, but the wind might blow. Build it of sticks, and it might catch fire. The best you can do is react, or do what you can in advance to minimize damage.

I just keep thinking about Daniel Quinn's BEYOND CIVILIZATION. Give it a read sometime.