Aww, it's our three-year dating anniversary

Georg and I met at a tennis club party three years ago on October 28th, as most of you probably already know. We usually celebrate this anniversary every year, as well as our 6-month, 9-month anniversaries...

We are nerdy. But I think it's fun to celebrate being together. Some of our celebrations have been more elaborate than others, but we always do it, even if it's just a card and a kiss. Georg has taught me how important it is to celebrate even the little things. My family isn't a really celebrating bunch, so I remember I was shocked when we'd been dating for three months and he gave me a card and some flowers. I think a day later I made him a cartoon depicting us (after I'd gotten over the initial shock and realized I should probably reciprocate).

Anyway, we always look forward to these celebrations. Good relationships are true accomplishments.

This year, we decided to celebrate with drinks at the Onyx bar, a bar right downtown with a great view. Georg's mother made us a wonderful dinner at her apartment beforehand. Here are some flowers I saw in the lobby:

As you can see, the bar is located right across from St. Stephans cathedral. The windows were floor to ceiling. It really was such a pretty view.Georg looking dashing.
Georg's drink...I forgot what this was...but it featured a delicious little fruit as a garnish. It looked like an orange cherry tomato, but tasted sweet, and had that paper-like wrapping like a tomatillo. Maybe it was just a ripe tomatillo, I don't know.
I had a dirty martini...I didn't know if German-speakers would would be familiar with dirty martinis, so when I ordered, I explained it in German, and the waiter was like, "oh, dirty martini." Oh well, it was good practice.
It was sprinkling rain as we walked to our bus to get home. Once on the bus we encountered a gaggle of American exchange students who couldn't remember where they were staying. We tried to help, but they were staying on some little street we didn't know of. They remembered once they recognized a KFC and realized they were in the vicinity.

the Viennese coffeehouse

Georg and I went to a coffeehouse today and I took some pictures, thinking it would be a good opportunity to show my readers Viennese coffee culture. It differs a lot from the US. First of all, coffee is MUCH more expensive. Even a tiny coffee is euro 2.50 or so. They say you get more personalized coffee that way, but I don't really buy it. To me, it's only slightly better than Starbucks, and much smaller. It's funny how formalized the process of getting coffee is, though. This coffeehouse was pretty grand, and dedicated for the most part to just coffee. Coffee is always served with a glass of water. Georg said that if they don't serve it with water, it's not a proper coffeehouse. Haha. If that were the case in the US, then no coffeehouse would be proper!

another lasagna dinner

Georg's mom asked me if I wanted to make another lasagna since they liked the last one I made. Here's the meal I made:

Fennel salad with balsamic-lime vinaigrette & creamed mushrooms on puff pastryA sort of deconstructed lasagna: corn, spinach, and baby shimp layered with cooked lasagna noodles, topped with goat cheese sauce and parsley.
Dessert. This recipe was described as "tropical treasure meets Austrian pleasure." Strudel stuffed with lychees, Asian pears, dates, coconut, and fresh ginger. I substituted dried dates for the raisins (who really would prefer raisins to dates?) and fresh ginger for crystallized, since that's what I had on hand.
Sliced.

a trip to Sooss

Last weekend, Georg and I ventured outside the city to Sooss, in order to attend Georg's friend Walter's son's baptism. It's about 30 or 40 minutes away (mostly due to traffic). I took some pictures of both scenes from the road and scenes of Sooss, which was quite beautiful. Below is a picture of a wind turbine, used to harness wind energy.

An Ikea sign among the clouds.
Some Austrian highway signs.

Here's a picture from our car as we attempt to locate the Sooss church. We could see the steeple towering above all the other buildings, but it was a challenge figuring out how to get closest to the church so we could park. Well, a mild challenge.

Sooss church. The baptism was held here.

A view of the vineyards outside the Sooss church.

Austrian cemeteries are so different from ones in the US! Here is one outside the church in Sooss. Each grave has its own little plot of earth that can be decorated. Detail of one of the graves: one dove grieves over another. Kind of weird!


After the baptism we went to a nearby heuriger to celebrate. It's like a winery, but with a restaurant. At the end of our time at the heuriger, a woman came up to us selling different items impaled by a stick and dipped in chocolate. The variety was amazing! There were nuts, grapes, strawberries, marzipan, and even kiwi. I couldn't resist picking the kiwi, it was the biggest. Georg chose the marzipan one; here he is with it.

the Vienna Secession museum

Last weekend, Georg and I visited the Secession museum. The museum is a product of the Secession movement, which was formed by a group of Viennese artists around the turn of the 20th century. The president of the Secession artists was Gustav Klimt, one of Vienna's most famous artists. According to my little Vienna tour guide book, the Secession artists objected to the prevailing conservatism of the Vienna Künstlerhaus with its traditional orientation toward historicism. The museum showcased the artwork of the Secession artists, and serves as a sort of monument to artistic freedom in general.The inscription above the museum contains very simple words, but was almost impossible for me to translate into English because it's written in this awkward, poetic way. I needed Georg's help! Loosely translated, it reads, "To each time its art, to each art its freedom."

Apparently the Viennese are fond of calling this structure "the golden cabbage."
The hair of the Medusae forms reptiles!
Small turtles form "feet" at the base of a huge mosaic pot in front of the muesum.
I was sort of disappointed in the quality of the exhibits at the museum. It has one very interesting and very famous permanent work which is showcased in the basement, Klimt's Beethoven Frieze. But the other exhibits were kind of....lame. One was a butterfly exhibit featuring a single butterfly on a fake flower bouquet, which, as you can see, was pretty, but a bit underwhelming.
This was another little exhibit...various deli meats encased in layers of glass.

Naschmarkt

On our way...

Naschmarkt is a huge open-air farmers market not far from where we live. It's kind of touristy; it's included in all the tourist literature that you read about Vienna, but the day we went there were also a lot of locals there. It's fun to go and browse all the exotic fruits, vegetables, and spices, as well as meats and cheeses. There are cafes set up intermittently so you can sit down and eat breakfast or lunch, or have coffee or a glass of wine.

Pumpkins, leeks, parsnips, and celeriac for sale!

After shopping, we stopped at a cafe in the market for a drink. Here's the view from our table.

At the market cafe, we ordered Sturm, which is a special fall beverage here. It's made from yeasted grapes that have been only partially fermented. And here it's served in these cute little glasses which I thought to be quite retro. Our Naschmarkt finds: a bit of dried sausage and a dragonfruit! I'd seen dragonfruit before in pictures, but had never tasted it. Honestly, it's like a kiwi with no flavor, and just a half dragonfruit cost me 2 euro! It is much better to just admire its beauty in pictures. Trust.

Chestnut dessert

I wanted to share with my readers a food that is relatively new to me, being from the midwestern United States: chestnuts. Well, here, they are called Maroni. It's not that I didn't know chestnuts existed, I just never knew how to get my hands on them. Once I saw Nigella Lawson, on her show Nigella Bites, make a lentil soup with pureed chestnuts. It looked so delicious and I wanted to make it, but the only place they had chestnuts was at Williams-Sonoma, and they came in a vacuum-sealed jar for 15 dollars apiece. Since I was about 17 at the time and had only a part-time job at Panera Bread, it was a little too expensive for just one dumb soup recipe. Yes, I was mad. I was mad that the secret world of chestnuts was closed off to me because of economics.

Now, here I am in Vienna, and chestnuts are everywhere! There are stands selling roasted chestnuts on nearly every corner. You can buy chestnuts to roast yourself even in the cheapest of groceries. There is an abundance of chestnut ice cream. We went to a restaurant on Friday night for drinks and dessert, and they served us chestnut mousse atop a berry sauce with little noodle-shaped pieces of chestnut paste on top (pictured above)! It's like a miracle! I guess it's not, since I believe most chestnuts come from Italy, and Austria borders Italy, so they're easier and cheaper to import. Still, I am grateful to have the experience of discovering a new food.

some culture for you--lange nacht der museen

View from our street on our way downtown.

This reads, "Long night of museums...Culture has many facets! Today we show you all of them!" For ten euros, you get a ticket to pretty much every museum in Vienna for one night. A pretty good deal.

Marzipan museum! Priscilla Presley and Elvis' wedding cake. I caught the Priscilla part for my Priscilla.


This is for my dad, who loves Bill Clinton. Here's Bill in marzipan. Much to my surprise, there was no George W. Bush. I must say I was thoroughly disappointed.

Clock museum. There were grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, and everything else in between. We arrived at 9:15 and stayed until 10pm just to hear all the clocks go off at the same time, but for some reason they didn't :(. I think they turn a lot of the clocks off to preserve them.
St. Stephan's Cathedral. We happened upon it walking from museum to museum, without me even expecting it--even though in the back of my mind I knew it was somewhere around there (it's one of Vienna's most famous sights). It's beautifully lit in the evening and really takes your breath away.
Here is a mini-field of roses we encountered walking home. Pretty!

Our humble kitchen and a meal I did not make in it

The first picture is the view to the right of the kitchen, the second the view to the left. I feel thankful to be here, but I wish I had an oven. Luckily, Georg's parents live three floors up and they have an oven.

I made everybody dinner on Friday night, and I wanted it to be decidedly fall-like. I used the fig jam to make little toasts with goat cheese and sprinkled them with lemon zest. The main course was the squash lasagna I made for my mother's birthday. For dessert, I made a fall version of the almond/apricot cake, this time with plums and ground walnuts. Europeans measure in grams, and all my recipes were in cups and ounces, so that posed a bit of a problem. I was too lazy to convert everything to grams, and then try to learn how to measure using grams (I don't think they have a kitchen scale), so I just eyeballed everything. I was nervous about the cake turning out because baking is more of an exact science, but it baked up alright.