Saturday, September 24, 2011

Thursday & Friday

Thursday afternoon, we grabbed the bikes and rode along the canal, then to the Ringstrasse.

The Green Party managed to get a section of the Ringstrasse closed off in order to focus attention on the plight of cyclists. This closed-off space was lined with sod and people sat on the grass listening to music, talking, or recieving / handing out info about various Green initiatives and ideas.

Ride your bike instead of driving your car!
(cough, cough, never in America, cough cough!)

Though there are bike paths along the Ring, they could use an update and a clearer delineation between them and pedestrian paths---every so often a pedestrian (usually a tourist) wanders over into the bike path and nearly gets killed. I've done it.

When I move here, I won't buy a car or motorcycle or even a scooter. Owning and maintaining a motor vehicle in Vienna is a hassle compared to doing the same in Oklahoma City. At most, I'd get a bicycle. Even at that, using a bike as transportation is a bit worrisome to me because this is still a town filled with drivers, people who insist on clinging to the automobile in a town with excellent public transportation. The fucking Austrians just HAVE to have their cars, period. And then they HAVE to drive them fast. So being a cyclist in the middle of town ain't for the weak of heart.

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Friday, we met B's dad H at his house, then hit the road for our mushroom spot 45 minutes or so south of Vienna.

 What the countryside looks like where we hunt mushrooms.

Being pessimists (or as they call it, "realists"), they didn't expect to find any mushrooms. But me, being essentially optimistic even when I have no reason to be (or as they call it, "being American") I said: "Bullshit. We'll find mushrooms."

I like hunting mushrooms. It's like a scavenger hunt, and even if you come away short, it's still fun walking through the woods.

Different mushrooms come out at different times. We hoped to find some Steinpilze(porcini/cèpes), but saw none. However, we did score plenty of Eierschwammerln, or as we call them in English, chanterelles.

What the forest gave us. 
This is about five or six pounds of mushrooms, mostly chanterelles.

These mushrooms were kind of gelatenous.
B thinks they're called "ice mushrooms" ("white jelly mushroom", actually, in English -B.) and says she's only seen them once before.

This fungus looked like beautiful yellow coral. ("Gelbe Lohblüte" or Hexenbutter - "witches' butter"- in German and "dog vomit slime mold" is one of its common names in English, poisonous - B.)
I put my finger in the shot to give a sense of scale.

Walking back down to the car, we saw a man hiking along the road.

Before returning to Vienna, we stopped at the Gasthaus for lunch.
L to R: warm sauerkraut salad, Grammelknödeln (dumpling stuffed with ground pork drippings),
Topfenknödeln (cream cheese dough, stuffed with apple and cinnamon, rolled in breadcrumbs, lightly fried),
Kaspressknödel (a cheese dumpling, but pressed flat and fried), mixed salad, i.e. potato salad with lettuce and tomato salads.

When we got back, B was out on the balcony watering her plants. She came back in and in a whisper told me to bring my camera. "It's the start of the yearly tradition," she said. Walnuts have started falling from the trees. Our downstairs neighbors, an elderly couple, gather the walnuts and then the old man sits outside shelling them. B says it happens every year...the guy's a millionaire, BTW.

The neighbor and the start of our neighbors' Shelling Walnuts Outside tradition for 2011.
Vienna does not suck, ladies and gentlemen.