I am not a breakfast person. Eating early in the morning just isn’t for me. I don’t disagree with the notion, but it disagrees with me. Thus, Little Miss I’ll Eat Whatever Isn’t Nailed Down went down to breakfast without me on our last morning in Vienna. Barefoot. In a four star hotel. But she did bring me back some pineapple slices from the dining room, so I won’t disown her just yet.

We packed up our stuff and checked out. I swear my stuff expands when I go away. Why else is it more of a struggle to get it back into my bag than it was to pack it in the first place? I can’t possibly be to blame.

Loaded up with our rucksacks, we stopped a few metres from the hotel so that I could photograph the building, to show where our room was. Just seconds later, before I’d even put the camera away again, we heard the screeching of tyres and a car came careering down the road, swerved around another and the driver lost control pretty much in front of us as we stood transfixed on the pavement. The car swung across the road and smashed into the wall, causing it to spin around. It came to a halt having knocked down one street sign and pushed another sign askew.

It was weird. We hadn’t been close enough to it to warrant any feelings of “oh my God, that nearly got us”, but as the skid marks on the road show, it was damn close. We had been absolutely glued to the spot as it came past us and - had I not stopped to photograph the flags, we could have been very much in its path. So we stood there, gaping at each other, gaping at the car and then at the driver who emerged without a scratch on him. A lady from a nearby shop came out and told us that not long ago a car had crashed into the front of her premises, where an old lady had been standing just minutes before.

The police arrived on the scene and Suzy told them what she had seen; I think she had a clearer recollection than me of the path of the vehicle. The driver was unhurt, though one could hardly say the same of his car, and seemed to be having a merry old laugh with the police. Yeah, that was really funny. Asshole. We picked our way through all the broken glass strewn across the pavement to go on to our day of sightseeing.

I think we walked across Vienna that day. We walked and walked and walked. We saw some beautiful architecture and a lot of the time we even knew what we were looking at, thanks to our lovely maps. There were museums, city gates and imperial palaces, famous shopping streets, street performers and horses with nifty little ear hats trotting along.

We stopped for a bite to eat at Café Bellaria. Though I can get a bit tongue-tied when I want to speak German, making my request from the menu is not beyond me. Pommes and another Wasser (including a finger pointed helpfully at the empty bottle) is, after all, pretty easy. Except for the waiter, Herr Umbenennung, who liked to repeat my order using different words for no good reason: Ah, Pommes Frites und Mineral”. Yes, that’s what I said.

The café was quite a ‘refined’ place, so I’m not sure what they thought of us when we were later suddenly in a heap of hysterical laughter at the table near the door. Suzy was telling me what I had missed at breakfast. She had not been alone, despite my absence, as the Austrian folk group who had come to Vienna to play with Hubert were also breakfasting in the dining room. She sat with the Hohtraxlecker Sprungschanzmusi gang and they asked “Wo ist Sarah?”. Suzy replied, “Sie isst nie Frühstück und hat nie Hunger morgens.” Adding a final “Wahnsinn!“ to underline just what she thought of that crazy friend of hers. I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so much as she told me what I’d missed.

We spent the rest of our final day in the city doing the touristy-thing, so I’ll let the photos do (the rest of) the talking …

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Let me take you back to 22nd June - our second day in Vienna and the day of the concert. We took the underground to the Donauinsel, crossed the bridge over the river - hello Danube! So, you’re the one all the fuss is about? We looked at our map, looked at our instructions, spotted a few landmarks and set off to find Hubert’s ship. In the wrong direction. We were sure we’d gone the right way, but we’d been walking more than the 7 minutes I’d been told it would take … and there wasn’t a damn boat in sight, let alone a musician. Suzy asked a bloke in swimming trunks where in the name of all that was good and holy we were. Our map was brandished, bridges were pointed at and the general consensus was that we were not where we needed to be. No shit, Sherlock.

Back we went and found that, yes, had we turned the opposite direction when we came down from the bridge, we would have been in among the festival grounds in just a few metres. The ship was still a 7 minute walk away and I was getting antsy. Which does at least bring an advantage to others in that I walk faster. We came to the (big) ship and after a quick bit of phoning (seems a bit excessive to have used satellite technology to speak to someone I could see) Hubert’s manager, Hage, came across with the dinghy to fetch us.

Hubert’s convoy that’s taking him down the Danube consists of a barge that houses a large stage, a kitchen, sleeping quarters for guests and a communal area with a huge wooden table, the Dorfplatz and a barracks ship for the band is coupled to the side of this. The two vessels are pushed by a tugboat. A pretty big affair, but as it has to be home for 20+ people for 10 weeks, it’s not surprising. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Except at the moment, it’s a pretty damn hot place to be, thanks to the heatwave that has hit southeast Europe.

It was a sunny and warm day on the 22nd, a bit of cloud here and there and enough breeze to give us Boat Hair. We slapped on a bit of sun cream, but it wasn’t until we got under cover that we realised we were already burned to buggery. It was just that it was so bright outside we looked our normal pasty selves rather than the pink shiny things we had actually become.

A soundcheck took place and Suzy and I watched from the side of the stage, making sure not to take a wrong step and fall into the river. I photographed the proceedings, enjoying being unusually close the musicians as they worked and gradually plucked up the courage to venture further onto the stage out of the corner I’d tucked myself into. Some photos are in the Flickr set, the full soundcheck set can be found here.

That afternoon clouds that had been gathering in the distance made their way towards us. The awnings over the Dorfplatz were taken down and Jonas, the tour manager, told us to go to the mess if rain came - and that is indeed where we were when the storm hit. Rain was smacking against the little windows, but I really didn’t realise what was happening outside until David, the keyboardist, arrived in the mess carrying a keyboard in a soggy box, absolutely soaked to the skin. The rest of the guys began to appear, all drenched - Hage’s lederhosen shorts dripping brown onto the linoleum. Everything that had been set out on stage had been soaked by the rain/hail storm and the guys had been doing what they could to cover and rescue the equipment and instruments.

A while later Hubert appeared in the mess, dry as a bone. It was only later when I translated his logbook for the site that I discovered he’d been asleep in his cabin while the storm had been wreaking havoc. After some discussion with the various powers that be, the concert was postponed until the Sunday night - when Suzy and I would be back in the UK. Bugger.

We were not completely denied music that day though. Suzy and I headed back to dry slightly soggy land with Marlene and Maria from the band to watch Toni Porto’s gig. Toni’s a bass player from Brazil, who played in Hubert’s band for a few years and it was one fantastic coincidence that he was scheduled to play at the same festival on the same day as Hubert.

While we enjoyed Toni’s music and danced about and cheered him on various drunken delights swayed in front of the stage, or wherever their legs happened to stagger. Beer was sloshed, glassy-eyed attempts were made to focus and all the while I wondered how people could do this in public. Maybe I’m too prim and proper (ha!) but the certainty that these people weren’t going to be embarrassed by their behaviour the next day bothered me. The leaflet distributor who tried six different times to give us his advert also bothered me a little too. Toni, on the other hand, was great.

Suzy and I went back to the boat for a while before taking our very tired leave and heading home. We were utterly exhausted and desperately wanted a taxi to take us back to the hotel. It took a while to get out of the festival grounds and then we seemed faced with only a main road. We ended up at a club set up and away from the road where the staff ordered us a taxi. While we waited we (by which I mean Suzy) talked to the Bulgarian bouncer about languages. I was falling asleep on the concrete step until finally an invasion of ants the size of my head sent us packing. The taxi was evidently not going to arrive and Mr Bulgaria showed us how to get down to the main road.

Dragging ourselves along the road an empty taxi finally came along on the right side of the road for us to hail it. We were at last on our way back to the hotel and used the journey to practise our German with the chatty taxi driver. It turned out that taxi-driving was actually only the driver’s “hobby”. His main employment was as driver for the Israeli ambassador. Rather disappointingly though, he had no classified secrets to share with us.

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The very lovely Rayne, queen of surreal tangential thoughts, has very kindly bestowed upon me a Thinking Blogger award.
See? There it is:

She also said some very nice things about me. Well, I’m going to take “Romancer of Gourds” as a compliment, whichever way it was intended. Though my days as a Madam Pumpkin may be over, as there were three female flowers open this morning and there were actual real-life bees buzzing all around, going from the one open male flower to the three ladies. Then there was me in my clodhoppers in the middle of it all, trying not to stand on anything important, ripping open old, dilapidated male flowers to see if there was any pollen left with which I could sprinkle the ladies. Just to be sure. In case those bees were just winding me up and were actually dropping all the pollen on the ground just to spite me.

Technically I’m now meant to bestow the Thinking Blogger Award upon five bloggers I feel are worthy of the honour. But I’m not sure I can bring myself to make that kind of decision without some sort of breakdown. So, how about a story about a toilet instead?

I went to the big Bluewater shopping centre yesterday as Meg the MacBook needed a new battery. I’d left her asleep for too long and her battery had dropped below the minimum charge. Be ye warned. ‘No battery’ said the battery menu. “Nuh-uh,” said I, “Battery.” “No battery”, Meg repeated. We glared at each other for a little while, but we had reached an impasse. Putting John’s battery into Meg worked - the battery from his MacBook that is, not his own personal battery - but on giving Meg back her own battery, she was still having none of it. I could only use her when she was plugged into the mains. Mmm, portable.

I had done a bit of research - Google query: “my battery’s gone bugger up - WTF?” - and found that other people with the same problem had been given a replacement battery by Apple, no problemo. So, I made my appointment with the Genius bar at the Apple Store at Bluewater and took Meg along in her smart red case. Bitch broke my shoulder, having to lug her around all afternoon, but she does at least work properly again now. The Genius took the gone-deaded battery out, scanned … something, went tappety-tap on his keyboard for a while, disappeared, came back with a new battery, put it in, started Meg and - whoopee! - she deigned to accept the presence of a battery. In all this, Mr Genius had spoken roughly two words to me. I guess he was going for the aura of “silent but brilliant”. I signed for the new battery, paid not one magic bean for it and headed out of the shop.

We did a bit of shopping and I got a spritz of some DKNY perfume or other when we went to Boots. The spritzy-woman told me what was in it, but I wasn’t paying full attention at first. I remember she said grapefruit and vodka too, so I was basically wearing a cocktail. But it smelled rather nice and actually stayed on me. I really need to stop being so tight and buy some proper perfume rather than cheap crap. That way, it might stay on me for more than 5 seconds.

Anyway, the toilet. Like the old woman I clearly am, I thought it wise to spend a penny before we headed home. I went to the disabled loo and shut the door. There was no bolt in the lock. A sign on the door told me that to lock the door, I should press the “Lock/Unlock” button on my right. I looked to my right. There was a big silver pad with “Press to open” written on it. Hmm. I poked it and tried the door to make sure. It swung open.

I looked around me and saw that over by the toilet was the aforementioned “Lock/Unlock” button. Clearly, you’re not meant to give locking the door a moment’s thought until you’re already ensconced. I gave the seat a wipe, finding that the yellow bits were actually permanent stains. Great. Reading a notice on the wall, I noted that if I was unhappy with anything in the facilities, I was invited to use the telephone to call management to let them know. The phone that had been removed, I assume.

I came to wash my hands and the tap was neither broken nor spewing forth scalding hot water as has sometimes been the case in disabled loos. Above the sink and above my head-height was a roller towel. Just high enough that it was awkward to pull on the towel to move it around and just crappy enough that I had to pull on it with sufficient oomph to make myself wonder if I wasn’t about to bring the whole thing down on my head. Worn out, I smacked the stupid “Lock/Unlock” button and escaped the adventure in inadequacy.

the phone rings
Me: Hurro!
Him: Hurro!
Me: What do you want?
Him: Two things.
Me: Aaand when do you want them?
Him: NOW!

At last, the male flowers on my pumpkin vines have decided that opening would be a jolly game. So this morning I had - *gasp* - an open female flower and a number of male suitors lined up ready and waiting. I could have relied on insects to, err, spread the love, but I prefer to play Cupid myself to make sure the job gets done. So I snapped off a male flower, tore off its petals (which smell nice) and used the stamen as a kind of paintbrush to dust the stigma of the female flower with pollen. Now grow me a pumpkin, dammit.

We’ve had a fair amount of rain recently, with a huge downpour this morning. Somehow the sun has made it out from behind the clouds after all these showers and rainy periods and so my veg patch has been in a somewhat euphoric state.

The sunflowers are huge and most have multiple heads on them. I guess that’s what comes of being too tight to buy “proper” packets of sunflower seeds. Well, why should I, when there are clearly hundreds in this big sack of bird seed we already have?

The sweetcorn are huge too and if you compare the photo I took today with the one I took six days ago, you’ll see just how much they’re enjoying the rain. I’m not sure I could easily walk between the plants any more. Though frankly I’m not sure I want to either … because of the aliens that might lurk within. What do you mean I’ve watched “Signs” too many times?

My five pumpkin plants (nope, I never did manage to get a sixth seed to germinate - I gave up after the fourth attempt) are going great guns, with one vine in particular heading off out of the patch. I’ve had several female flowers come and go and though there are lots of buds for male flowers, none have flowered yet. Meanwhile, the women thus far have all given up waiting and have dropped off. I can see a few more female flowers developing - they’re the ones with little pumpkins ready behind the flower heads - but they’re down the ends of the vines, rather than up near the base of the plant like the first flowers were. Thus making them just that bit more of a nuisance. Assuming that the male flowers actually pull their fingers out and open, allowing me to germinate these female flowers, the pumpkins will be growing at the ends of the vines, in among the sweetcorn … rather than in their nicely allotted space. I blame the men.

I think the potatoes are doing well too, only I don’t see them all that much, being as they are, well-hidden by everything else. And the garlic I shoved in the ground? I don’t know, I keep forgetting to look. Though I kept walking on the one that I planted over in the right-hand corner, so who knows what it thinks of that.

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