wieners

i found a stag party in vienna on wednesday night. i'm so jet set (or train set, whatever). the stag party had adjective-laden cocoa powder, that i may make chocolate cakes. thank you stefan and laura, and enjoy the rest of your trip!

The hen and the stag; the stripper took the photo (ha, you know you're all imagining now. ha.)

and i had maybe the most graceful experience of my life, a hundred feet up in the air in a little chair. there will be a video on you tube, although this video habit has to stop (not watching youtube, which everyone should do all day, rather my loving-the-novelty digicam videoing. i don't like the attachment to technology feeling (he types, on his laptop, in the wifi pub...)). i would love to go back to Praterstern and ride half a dozen times, with contact lenses rather than glasses - i had to keep my head within about ten degrees of vertical or lose me spex, and the view was too good to take em off. and just like flying, nearly. (go here.)

speaking of contact, i'm in touch with this man about starting something up in BA. it may come to nothing, but it may not. comme toujours, regardez ici.

i'm going to play slight photo catch up, do forgive:

you'll remember the lovely flat i told you about previously? toto je to.

and toto je just one of the details in the next lovely flat in my series. as is the next:



and this is my standard teacup (though i was informed by my office-sharer, blissfully away this week, that it's hers, and come winter she'll be wanting it. i'm going to lick it all over). for scale, we only use A3 paper, to save trees.

Tonight was the perfect evening for strolling, so stroll i did. there is a several nights music festival in town, classical music with a blues edge today, and some gorgeous piano. you have to pay some nominal amount, or, this not being london, you can stand outside the seating bit and watch through the gapswhich haven't been stingily covered up. sadly, the promised afterparties have all been cancelled, for what reason i know not. i was looking forward to that. i'll go tomorrow though, to see bizet's ringtone overture.

having finished The Amber Spyglass (being a thousand pages, these perhaps shouldn't be gcse texts, but in every other way they should) i sat on a lamplit bench and read Amin Maalouf's Ports of Call, having found it at Robert's flat and previously liked Leo the African. star-crossed lovers, mental illness and exaggerated revolutionary heroism - right up my street. the walk down along the danube toward the national museum was less lamplit and its lovers less crossed (at least on the outside). i miss having somebody to hug. (speaking of: sam, this is for you. and anyone else, but the added value will be less. i apologise if the sound (which is the point) is not up to much. it's worth a try.)

nonetheless, a happy evening in a town with a centre small enough to be a centre, a happy town on an evening warm enough to be bustling. tomorrow, i make banana cakes.

lots of love to you, and sweet dreams. i'll be playing with your hair.