So, we’re off to Vienna for a few days, as apparently one simply must see Vienna in the winter.
I’m not going to investigate just how right-wing the current Austrian administration is; as a comfortably-off white heterosexual male I’m positive I’ll be welcomed with open arms and a bucket of gluvine. My wife has been before (she’s pretty much been everywhere) and she will surely guide me skilfully around the notoriously atmospheric Strasse and select the finest dining destinations. As she said to me once while I was scanning the wine list – ‘You choose and then I’ll decide…’ It makes my life simpler I can tell you!
I’m hoping to catch sight of the following:

  • A dark-haired chick dressed like the Scottish Widows advert quickly disappearing into a misty alleyway behind a gothic church.
  • Sigmund Freud’s consulting room in the Freud Museum. The jokes about nutters I have loved and happily lost will flow like a Colorado stream. “Zo Miss W, ven did you become einer complete binner?” “Und zo Miss H, vot prompted you to mount das pavement and aim your Vauxhall Viva at your charming ex-boyfriend?” They’d better have a shop…
  • The fucking big Klimt gold stuff.
  • Huge chunks of brutally butchered baby cow – in breadcrumbs with chips.
  • Mozart’s house; where I’m hoping they will have a harpsichord on which I can bang out my stirring version of The Leaving Of Liverpool. My keyboard playing is fabulously limited but undoubtedly enthusiastic.
  • Blokes in long green wool overcoats and ridiculous hats with a feather in them whose grandfathers were ‘slightly nazi.’
  • Very high-class prostitutes who are clad entirely in weasel fur and charge €750 for a hand-job.
  • The ferris wheel from The Third Man.
  • Snow.
  • A Christmas market that holds no danger of being mown-down or machete’d to bits by a thick religious nut job (usually Islamist but a drunken Catholic could be a worry).
  • An Austrian guitar shop. Natch…

Let’s see what the next few days brings. If I end up in an cell covered in my own bodily excretions then I’ll know it was a cracking culture-filled ‘mini break’ that won’t be forgotten in a hurry!

Oooooh Vienna!