The mole

We got a new shipment of jarred sauces from Mexico in the commissary last week. One of them was for mole, and I couldn't resist. Andi and I both love chicken mole, but I do not have the energy to make it from scratch. Apparently it is quite the process, and more than 4 spices is seriously gourmet for me.

Luckily our wonderful, sweet and beautiful Yolanda, also our bestest Mexicita and resource for all things Latina, said that this jarred sauce is the next best thing to home-made, so we bought it and tried it today, and it is eyes-rolled-back-into-your-head good! Can you get La Costena's mole sauce in a jar in Oregon? If you can, then maybe I will ask you to send it to me soon, if the commissary stops carrying it.


So you just need to boil 2-3 chicken breasts in about 1 litre of water, use half a litre of that water and put it into a pot with the entire jar of mole sauce and wait until the sauce is melted through and heated. Shred the chicken and add to sauce. Then EAT!

After spicy mole, spicy mexican rice and spicy refried black beans...a glass of Gelber Muskateller is a necessity! Tomorrow...Indian Tikka chicken with garlic naan!

The strata

Yesterday at work I did my daily blog check and saw a recipe for strata on suziebeezieland and had to try it today. You prepare it the night before and then just stick it into the oven in the morning for an hour. I didn't have any ground sausage, so I just cut up some regular old pork sausage links. I think it might be better with ground sausage since you would have a better shot at getting a bit of pork in every bite.

Looks good, right? It was!

And here is a shot of Andi's new socks checking out the apartment.

The winter

We spoke of the temperatures around her a few weeks ago. I think I was complaining about -6C, am I right?

Well, for about 2 weeks it has not gotten above -12C. When I first saw those numbers on our weather channel, I kinda just froze up and refused to do the morning walks to work. I had just assumed that it was way too cold to venture out in that kind of temperature, so last week I only walked to work one day. Then I saw that the temperature just kept falling and I finally just said, screw it. Im going out there.

So even in -15C or -18C temperature, with a -24C wind chill, I have gotten my butt out the door and into the snow and winds.

You recognize this?

Yup, those little roses are all toasty warm under their coffee sacks.

Oh, and remember this one?



Nice effect with the snow flakes, right?

And here you see the Neu Donau, completely frozen over and with clumps of snow drifts all over it.



And here is one of the many self-made snow plows that run around clearing off the roads and in this case the sidewalks of Vienna.

The Deutsch Spiel Abend

As you all know, although I am living in Vienna, I do not get the opportunity to speak to a whole lot of Viennese people, hence my German is not as strong as it should be for someone living in Austria for four years. This is a problem for those of us who want to live and work in Vienna after our contracts are over. So, we came up with the brilliant idea to hold a games night, wherein we would only speak German. This way, we would get to hang out and do something that we all enjoy, but we would also be reinforcing all of our German skills. Perfect.

The evening began with the warning sign above from Dante. You know this one, right? Abandon all English, ye who enter...or something to that effect.

Then we were on to snacks and chatting.

Then the games began and kitty watched over us with burning jealousy because she couldn't understand a word we were saying. Should really get her some language training.


All in all we had about 4 hours of nothin' but German.

Househunting

It looks like Andi and I will be able to stay here for a few more years, so we are starting a househunt. Unfortunately, we differ as to what we want in a house. I have always dreamt of a charming little old home that I could slowly work to renovate over a series of years. Andi leans more toward the new homes with new appliances and flooring and windows so that once you move in, you don't have to do anything to it. Where is the adventure in that?

But beyond these differences is also the fact that any cute little charming homes have been purchased, torn down, and on that land builders have put bright orange rows of cube homes that are so popular in Europe these days. Austrians also seem to never sell their apartments, but instead just leave them to their children or rent them out, so there are not very many apartments to choose from either. So it seems that we will either have to pay a half a million euro to get anything close to what I want in a home, or live under a bridge.

Charming:

Cubic:

Charming:

Cubic:

Our street

As I said before, the morning walks that I take reveal a part of the city that you just don't get a chance to see in the daylight hours. But sometimes, when you are walking home after work, your husband calls you and tells you that your street is blocked off and three emergency vehicles are performing a mid-air rescue right in front of your apartment.

I rushed to get home to see what was actually happening, who was on fire or what was being rescued. After 20 minutes of waiting and watching, the rescue team had ridden up in their little fancy bucket, pulled out a bag and filled it with snow that was hanging precariously from a rooftop, then rode back down on their little bucket, not before stopping halfway down to chat with some girls who were hanging out the window watching the goings on.

We do not have many reports of robberies, shootings or stabbings, but it certainly makes me feel like I am living in Whoville when it takes a team of firemen and three trucks to knock off the most deadly of offenders...low hanging snow clumps.

The UN cafeteria

Another great part about working for the UN is the lunches. I didn't really have a great appreciation for the UN cafeteria until I worked for the NRC in Maryland. I had just assumed that every cafeteria had a salad bar, soups, hot meals, desserts, made-to-order steaks, burgers, and a Wok counter. This is not necessarily true.

After I began working for the NRC, I quickly realized that my meals were going to consist of a bag of fritos, doritos or ruffles...a coke...and either a white bread sandwhich or the salad of the day. Those were tough times.

Of course, when compared perhaps to a French cafe, the UN cafeteria does not have the latest technology in sauce making, nor does it always have the freshest of organic ingredients. But the food is very edible and 9 times out of 10, it is delicious. Even better? I pay about 3 euro on average for my daily noon-time meal. Andi gets his duck in mushroom gravy with potatoes, I get my vegetarian curry banana vegetable stew on rice, we are both happy and we have paid a total of 7 euro. That's pretty great, right?

My office world

Let me introduce you to my office. Here is where I have sat for the last year and a half with my new best friend Hazel. Hazel is not featured in this photo, but she sits on the right, me on the left. You like how clean my desk is? I work hard to keep it so nice.

It is here where I draft web stories and fact sheets and edit project closures. I have another 7.5 months of this until...who knows what. Maybe I will be forced into early retirement, again. So far I have had a pattern of two years working, two years retirement, two years working, two years retirement. Perhaps not the best strategy for long term financial security.

You see there on the left my wall calendars for the past two years. I keep last year's because it was a year of serious travel and I want to be reminded that it is all behind me. I love looking at my 2010 calendar and seeing nothing there to take me away from my home-cave. I really need to work on my dependance on the home-cave.

You will also see that both Hazel and I have matching long gray sweaters draped over our office chairs. Yup, we are totally twins. I was born on March 6, she on March 8. Even our wedding anniversaries are a day apart. But she is British and calls lunch, dinner and dinner, tea and dessert, pudding and cafeteria, canteen and cookies, biscuits and chips, crisps and seven thirty, half seven and she gets adorably upset whenever I inadvertently use the word fanny in any context. She is great.

We also got an intern yesterday from Brazil. He will be here for 6 months and reaches for his pen when Hazel tells him to bring his chair and tells us about the snow when we ask him about his flight. It will be a very interesting 6 months.

The Sunday hike part 2

This Sunday, in anticipation of the snowy hills, we thought we would go snowshoeing in the Vienna woods. It is a short 50 minute drive to the Vienna woods and the hike was supposed to be 2 hours up and 1 hour down, but we did not calculate our getting lost and the knee high snow into that. The snow was not the right kind for snowshoeing. It was the light and fluffy kind that is better with hiking boots. But even in hiking boots the snow is a killer. You have to lift each foot far above the snow to take one step forward, and with each step down you have to force through all the fluff in order to find solid ground, so this innocent little trip ended up taking us 4 hours.

Initially, the hike was very well marked. But once we hit a large clearing, we had no way to know where the next marking was. As it turned out, it was all the way over a hill off to the left. In the spring, summer and fall, I am sure it is very easy to find your way around, but with fresh snow, no footprints and no markings, we got ourselves good and lost within the first 7 minutes of the hike.

The Vienna woods are normally full of wildlife and we saw several animal watching posts along the way. This one looked extra strange with all the snow and ice.

Once we were deep into the woods, the whole place turned fairy-tale on us. I wanted to sit here and set up a picnic, but we had already eaten our sandwiches in the car on the way to this hike, so there was no picnic to be had.

And 3 hours into the hike, exhausted, a bit hungry and cold, we were looking forward to the mountian hut to warm up and maybe get a bowl of soup. But contrary to what the hiking book stated, the mountain hut was closed until February. So here was our consolation prize.

Ah, the cold and lonely cross. It just wouldn't be a winter hike without him. But we made it back alive. Exhausted, but alive. And this morning we were both feeling it as we creaked down the stairs on the way to work.

The non-storm

Friday rolled around and there were tiny little threats of snow, but that 80cm they predicted...not so much. Here is the city on Saturday morning.

We all survived the weekend without issue. Andi was very dissappointed, he likes big snow storms. So over the weekend, instead of watching the snow fall, we played Wii, I finally finished 'New Moon' and we watched 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs'. Cute movie, if you like cartoons. New Moon, however, I will not recommend. I know that over the past year, everyone has gone crazy for Twilight and New Moon and such, so I tried to get into it too. I guess I am not too into the longing, burning, eternal struggles of love between a vampire and a teenager.

"Oh, I can't believe I fell in love with a vampire, but I did and it is a deep and burning love."

later that day...

"Upon looking at my love I see that although I thought I loved him before, now...NOW I know I truly love him"

the next day...

"I know I said that I loved him yesteday, but today, today is the real deal. Super-love, if you will."

Argh.

Here is another shot of the after effects of the storm that blew through here this weekend.

The severe weather warning

We got an office-wide email alert yesterday titled, 'Severe Snowfall Expected in Vienna Area.' For the Vienna area, approximately 25 cm of snow is expected on Friday, 8 January [that's today]. The intense snowfall is expected to continue throughout the weekend and could accumulate to a height of 50-80 cm. That's 1.5-2.5 ft for you Americans. It didn't look too daunting this morning. But apparently, come noon that will all change.

Be prepared for another snowshoeing entry for Sunday, I don't think we will be able to make it to any high mountains in Claudia (our Citroen C3) and even if we did, I don't think we would be able to hike anywhere.

This gives me the perfect excuse to do what it is that I love more than anything: huddle up in my home-cave, guiltfree. Just hanging around the house, reorganizing, cleaning, cooking, reading, playing games or watching movies. Is there anything better?

The three kings

Yesterday was 'Heilige Drei Koenige' day here in Austria. A day when all Austrians sleep in and then dress their children up like the three kings, one in blackface (which decade am I in anyway?), and send them out to walk around the city with papier mache lanterns. The UN does not observe this holiday. So when the alarm clock struck 6am, the darling husband woke me with a very welcome hot cup of coffee and the surprising but equally welcome phrase, "It snowed."


Boy did it!

Apparently when it is a holiday, they are a bit later in the whole 'plow the roads' thing. I was one of three people out in this at 7am, not even a car on the road.

The walk took a lot longer than usual what with the icy patches and climbing over piles of snow, so I cheated and took the Ubahn half way to work. I did make up for it by walking home after work, but the piles of snow and the ice were still there even at 6pm.

The temperature

It has been in the minuses here for about two weeks now. It was difficult in the beginning to really know what 3 degrees or -3 degrees meant. I know what to wear in Oregon when it is 75F...but what do you wear when it is 10C? How about -6C?



By now I have finally realized that between 3 and 0C you can get away with just regular hiking pants. Between 0 and -3C, you really need snowpants but only two layers on the top. Below -3C you had better cover all exposed places for threat of frost bite.

Today was a -4 day and I chanced it with a double layering of cotton pants. (flimsy excuse: my snow pants were in the wash due to the messy butt sledding of this past weekend.) I will not take this chance again. Brrrrrr...I was chilled to the bone all day and wore a sweater and scarf while huddling over my computer. But it was worth it. Another bright, crisp and gorgeous day.

The Sunday hike

Andi and I have been following in his family's footsteps and have been attempting weekly Sunday hikes for the past 5 years. First we hiked in Austria, then in Maryland and now again in Austria. This year has been especially bad for us with regard to our sense of direction.

In the past year we have added 1-2 hours onto our already 5 hour long hikes by either ignoring posted signage or missing a painted tree or rock that took us in the correct direction, and instead just assumed that a mountain road, footprints or that which could begrudgingly be called a path through the woods was the correct route. These assumtions are wrong. And this week we tested fate again, and lost.

In -11c weather, Andi and I woke at 7am and drove an hour to Rohr im Gebirge to hike the trail up to Jochart. It was supposed to have been a four hour hike, but we tacked on an extra hour when we completely lost the trail and followed the good ole mountain road, instead of the painstakingly posted markings, and hiked halfway up the wrong side of the mountain, realized our mistake, hiked back down the mountain until we found the correct path again, then hiked right back up again. After we got home, Andi checked his GPS and determined that the correct path was in fact, a mere 3 meters from the road we had been on when we realized our mistake.

Thankfully we brought along the snowshoes. Just in case. It was almost impossible to walk on the uppermost portion of the trail without them. Next time we will need to remember to bring a sled to slide down on. I think my pants won't make it through another butt sledding session.

Usually these long and grueling hikes are congratulated with a tall glass of perfect beer at the mountain hut that is inevitable at the top of any hiking path you find in Austria. But on the rare occasion, your efforts will only be met with a cold and lonely wooden cross at the top of the hill. When you are half frozen and exhausted, you often wish this was the hike with the pub, not the cross.