Saturday, a celebration of an important event in the John X / B universe.
For it was on this day, uh,
several years ago that B was born. Legend has it when the doctor slapped her on the ass, she began quoting Goethe and complaining about the various injustices she saw around her. Including the doctor's misogynist behavior.
As a gesture of birthday love, my first act was to schlep down to the Trafik to buy newspapers for milady to read. On the way back, as children will, I detoured, taking a little hike along the Danube.
Just where tle Danube branches off to form the Danube Canal,
I spotted this guy preparing his boat for...something nautical.
In the afternoon we drove out to B's parents' house. B keeps a tiny vegetable garden there and it was time to do some weeding, harvesting, etc. There was a gentle rain---it's been cloudy and rainy for several days, off and on---and so B weeded and harvested and pointed out slugs to her father, who collected them in a bucket. I had the hardest job: I stood around watching, to make sure the jobs were done right. Which they were.
We got some tomatoes, some oregano, some chili peppers, and some lemon mint.
B had some more weeding she wanted to do so her father and I went inside and watched the Tour de France and drank this:
B's dad said: "It's her birthday, so while she weeds the garden in the rain,
we shall stay inside and drink Metaxa in her honor."
When we visit the parents, there's often a little ritual: they make a pot of coffee and we sit around the table sipping coffee and eating cake and jabbering about the universe. There will come a day when this doesn't happen any more and I'll miss it very much...
B grew up near the 2nd largest cemetery in Europe, the
Zentralfriedhof. She wanted to visit her grandparents' graves so after finishing our visit with the folks, we drove over. B lit candles and placed one in the little box on each headstone. While she paid her respects I wandered around and took a few photos.
Graves of soldiers killed in WW II
Back home after the visit, we decided to have dinner at a nearby Heuriger. I love these wine garden / restaurants, and there are a lot of them in B's neighborhood, many of which having been here for many years. This time we walked several blocks to
Heuriger-Restaurant Muth and sat in the garden under a giant chestnut tree, despite the threat of rain.
The view from our table under the chestnut tree, looking left...
...and looking right.
The food here is innovative; different from the traditional Heuriger fare, though they do have some of the familiar side dishes available like sauerkraut, potato salad, etc.
I had a bowl of soup made of red bell peppers, with two "dumplings" of cheese wrapped in thin slices of eggplant, then as a main course roulade of pork stuffed with apricots and chanterelles on a bed of rice with some kind of delicious brown sauce. B had chanterelle soup, with a main course of a pike perch grilled with a crust of breadcrumbs atop a bed of greens.
It rained a few times, lightly, but the huge chestnut tree kept all but a very few drops from us. Nearby several children played while their parents drank wine and conversed...the place started filling up when we left.
Then to
Karlsplatz for a free movie under the stars. Or, in this case, under the clouds.
Vienna has a month-long outdoor film festival called
Kino Unter Sternen. (Cinema under the stars.) Free. We've never attended so we thought it'd be fun to sit amongst the other film buffs / bohemians / homeless people.
Karlskirche on Karlsplatz, adjacent to the outdoor theater Karlskirche just before the start of the film
Just before the film started, there was an on-stage conversation with a prominent immigration / asylum attorney. B interpreted while one of the film people walked around handing out rain ponchos to the audience. I thought, shit---look at this. Free films every summer, in beautiful outdoor settings, and they even think to provide rain protection for the audience! Yep. There's your "European welfare desert," you right-wing American asshole politicians. We wouldn't want that sort of hell in our country, no sir. But two wars that last ten fucking years? No problem! The money shall flow from the faucet endlessly!
Don't get me started...
And the film? It was:
CEIJA STOJKA
A 1999. Director: Karin Berger. 85 min. engl. subs.
A very personal portrait of the then 66 year old Ceija Stojka, a singer, artist and author who is quite well-known even outside Austria. She was the first Austrian Romní to talk publicly about her traumatic experience at the NS concentration camp Auschwitz. Until today, her feelings towards her “home land” stay ambivalent: „Our roots are in Austria. It's not the country's fault after all.“
It was a powerful portrait of a strong woman. Eerie seeing her bare forearm with her concentration camp number tattooed there..
Around us, an interesting collection of folks in the audience. Most I'd characterize as hipster film buffs, but Karlsplatz has its denizens, its regulars who hang around there. Nearby was a well-known drug dealing area that has since been more or less closed down by the cops, but tradition is tradition.
Sitting in our row, a few seats over, was a woman who was obviously wasted. Several times before the film started I saw her kind of nodding off, and halfway into the film she left to go get another drink. Surprisingly she didn't seem uncoordinated when she walked, but soon after returning to her seat, during a quiet passage in the film, we heard----snoring.
Those of us sitting around her looked over and saw the woman, her head tilted back parallel to the sky, her mouth open, loud snores issuing forth. There were three Eastern European women sitting in front of us and they were drinking too, but they were conscious and kept their jabbering more or less quiet during the film. Everyone laughed.
It was getting late so we decided to leave before the film finished.
Back home near midnight, we cracked a bottle of champagne and drank a toast to the birthday girl, me wondering about that obstetrician from way back when, who never suspected what events would be unleashed by that innocent slap on a newborn's ass.
