Vienna

My B&B Hostess
All the ladies out there who say that learning to use the computer and the internet is too hard, hang your heads in shame. I have met the ultimate grand dame. My B&B hostess inherited a magnificent apartment in the middle of Vienna from her mother and has turned it into a B&B. It is in an old building with one of those lifts they have in the movies, it has 4m high ceilings, 2 family sized rooms and 2 'studios' (mezzanine floors with enough room for a bed and some furniture). I slept in one of these studios, which was directly above her bed.
But, back to the internet. Her apartment is set up with wireless broadband. She has her laptop and she has set up a desktop with a webcam for her guests to use. All of her guests come either through word of mouth or through the internet.
She speaks a multitude of languages: German, Hungarian, English, 'I can't remember much French or Spanish anymore' and 'I can only read and write Russian now'.
I found her hanging upside-down on rings hanging from a doorway one morning doing stretching exercises. What an amazing old lady!
The Sites
Some of the sites I visited: Nasch Markt (Flea and produce market), Schönbrunn Palace (summer palace of the Hapsburgs, where Mozart played for Maria Theresia and then jumped in her lap), Hofburg Palace (working palace of the Hapsburgs in the centre of Vienna), Volksgarten (the people's garden), Staatsoper (State Opera House), Karlskirche (You have to pay to get into a church? No way! Didn't go in.), Sacher Hotel for a Sacher Torte (wasn't wild about it) and a melange (Viennese cappuccino with dollop of cream), Kunsthistorimuseum (Museum of Fine Arts with an exhibition of Arcimboldo's work (the seasons and the elements made into portraits using fruit, vegetables, flowers, animals, books etc. - I love the ones that look like a bowl of veggies and then when you turn it upside down you get a face with a hat)), Stephansdom & the Rathaus (Town Hall - the word always cracks me up).
The Concerts
I went to concert by the Residenz Orchestra, which is usually held at the Hofburg palace but the evening that I went, it was at the Börse Palace, which was literally next to where I was staying. It took 2 minutes to walk there and back. They played Mozart and Strauss and had a soprano, baritone and 2 dancers there to break the monotony. The soprano had beautiful dresses from the 2 eras. The flautist was cute in a nerdy way but tended to 'feel' the music a little too much. I am a firm believer that you can be 'in the zone' without having to double up in your chair, rock back and forth and nearly head-butt the oboist next to you.
An aside: I cannot let this pass without a comment. There was a man at the concert (member of the audience) who had the most grotesque nose I have ever seen. It was horrendous from every angle. It was like someone grabbed a massive handful of red Play-Doh, punctured it with lots of little holes and shoved it on his face. It was big & lumpy front-on and big & lumpy (and hooked) side-on. It was like the proverbial car crash - you want to look away but you can't help but stare. (p.s. his wife also had a big nose.)
I attended mass at the Hofmusikkapelle on Sunday morning. The Vienna Boys' Choir sings there every week. They are indeed a fantastic group. They sang from up top, unseen, until the end where they came out and sang one piece from the front.
The Original Princess Di
I didn't know that Princess Di lived before. Her name was Empress Elizabeth (aka Sissi), wife of Emperor Franz Josef. She was very beautiful, was married at 16, was depressive and hated court duties, exercised like mad to keep her figure (42-45kg at 172cm including floor length hair!) (there is gym equipment screwed into the walls and doorways of her apartments in the Hofburg palace), stopped having photographs of herself taken when she was in her early 30s so that only her youthful beauty would be preserved and was assassinated in Geneva when she was in her early 60s. She has become a legend, more popular after her death than during her life.
Poor Emperor Franz Josef. He sent his brother to be Emperor of Mexico. He was captured and executed by the revolutionaries after a very short reign. Franz Josef & Sissi's only son committed suicide at the age of 31 and then Sissi was assassinated. Franz Josef, on the other hand, woke at 3am every morning from an iron single bed, started work at 5am, had breakfast at his desk, received 100s of commoners every week and lived to the ripe old age of 86 in 1916.
Guide
What is it about me that makes people think I know where I'm going? It doesn't matter what city I'm in, people come up to me and ask me for directions. I don't know! I just got here! I'm either a suspicious character or a guide. Make up your minds, people!
The Mousetrap
This weekend, Taffy and I went to see The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie's play, the longest running play ever in the world (currently at 23,090 performances, 55 1/2 years). It is quite cute with a twist ending but I am not sure I understand why it has been running for so long.

Best Housemate in the World (but don't tell him!)

I must have the best housemate in the world (but don't tell him or he'll get a big head).
Last Friday, my luggage failed to appear when I got to London City Airport (still only took me 20 minutes to get from the plane, through immigration, wait for all the luggage to come through to determine that mine wasn't there, lodge a report with the baggage people to emerge out into the street - what an airport!).
This created quite a problem for me as I was due to visit Harry & Jenny in High Wycombe for the weekend. I waited for a phonecall all evening (played some terrible badminton in between) to no avail and called them in the morning to find out what was going on. An hour later, they called back to say that it had been delivered through to the airport.
Dilemma: wait for an indeterminate amount of time for luggage to do my laundry for the next trip on Monday morning or go visit friends.
Solution: ask Taffy to do my laundry for me when the luggage arrived.
The luggage hadn't arrived by the time he left the house for the day so he had to battle through an idiot concierge to get it ('Has there been any luggage delivered?' 'No, haven't seen anything.' 'Well, it was supposed to have been delivered today.' 'No, nothing.' 'Was anything delivered this morning?' 'Oh, I don't know, I just got here. You can go look in the back.' And there it was...).
Once collected, he had to struggle through the smokey stench that had been smouldering in my clothes for 1 1/2 days since our team decided to go to a pub for hours on end on Thursday night.
When I arrived home on Sunday afternoon (having spent a lovely weekend in Henley on the Thames (where the regatta is held), passing through Reading to Marlow (where Jenny works), and then dinner & lazy breakfast in High Wycombe), my laundry had all been done and some of it had already been folded. What a legend!

Geneva

Instead of going back to London for the weekend, I took myself off to Geneva. The train ride from Basel to Geneva is just under 3 hours and passes through a lot of Heidi countryside.
Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) is incredibly beautiful and Geneva, especially at night, looks spectacular, with the mountains in the background and the lake with its famous Jet d’Eau in the foreground. The original Flower Clock is not really that much better than the Melbourne version, though (a partisan view, perhaps).
Before visiting Geneva, I knew nothing much about Jean Calvin & John Knox, barely knowing of their existence. Geneva is full of references to them. St Peter’s Cathedral (with a most fabulous chapel that is very poorly advertised – one tiny little sign pointing the way was the only mention of it anywhere) was central to their teachings and the Reformation Wall (a huge monument commemorating the Protestant Reformation) is in the Parc de Bastions.
I visited the UN, which was also very poorly signposted. You walk past several of their gates, which all point the direction to the guided tours but when you get to the gate you are supposed to enter through, there are no signs and it looks like it is shut. The building and grounds are much grander than in New York (the old marble building dates back to the League of Nations) but for sheer wow-factor, NY leaves it for dead. Having a story about how one General Assembly was held there because Yasser Arafat was invited to address them but the US would not grant him a visa to attend in NY just isn’t as exciting as all the stories about the Security Council etc. Also, I did have a much higher ranking ‘guide’ for NY than the lowly run-of-the-mill guide I had in Geneva.
Taffy had suggested the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum as a good place to visit. The Lonely Planet had said that it was free. Well, it cost CHF10 and, it was, to use one of Taffy’s favourite phrases, ‘boring as batshit’. The one interesting snippet of information for me was that the Geneva Convention and I share a birthday, it just being >100 years older than I am. ; )
While at Cat, I spent 5 months working on a project with Sana via email and the phone as she lives in Geneva. The closest we got to meeting was her going to Singapore and then to Sydney just after I had left for London. Well, we have finally met! She took me to a steakhouse where she filled me in on the success of the program that we developed. In her words, ‘it went very well and if I say that others will tell you that it went perfectly.’ Awesome! She also kept telling me that she asked Rod several times why he had let me leave. : )