On Friday we drove to Schloss Grafenegg for the wedding of one of Cate’s colleagues. This is a truly delightful fairy tale setting in the middle of one of Austria’s main wine producing districts.
Schloss Grafenegg
The wedding was in the Chapel – complete with two opera singers – and dinner was in the library.
It was a magical evening that had us out in the garden at about 11:00 PM wondering what we did to deserve to be in a place like that. It was one of those ‘pinch yourself to see if you are awake moments’ (apart of course form the usual hordes of smokers).
Mercifully there was no smoking (or reading) in the library where we had dinner.
Everything was in German of course but we got the hang of what was happening and just went with the flow.
The grim realities of life became apparent once more when we returned to Hotel Sparta in a nearby town where the only additional item – apart from the bare wooden furniture and a steam-driven TV – was a sliver of soap - roughly the same size and thickness as a communion wafer.
It was (of course) not air conditioned so we evicted the Finns who were using it as a Sauna and slept with the window open. I woke at about 4:00 AM with the most astonishing allergic attack that I have ever experienced. I sneezed approximately 163 times (I lost count) and must have woken up the entire hotel.
These were not normal sneezes – they were more like detonations and my ears flapped my and teeth rattled as they occurred. Had I used contact lenses these would now be somewhere near Linz.
My eyes started streaming and the cacophony of explosions scrambled my brains leaving me incapable of rational action. I wandered around sightlessly crashing into walls until Cate wrapped me in a Tuchent, tied me to the bed and held a pillow over my face until I lost consciousness.
I woke with an astonishingly bad Migraine and collapsed into bed as soon as we got home. I emerged briefly to go to Spar to buy fruit for Cate’s breakfasts (She says I can have a day off when I die – or when she dies – whichever comes first) and then collapsed for the rest of the day.
I have joined a site called Livemocha which is a language learning site. It’s free for the basic course and is one of the best I have seen.
Since joining I have received a number of messages - like the following – which I received on Friday (I have taken the liberty of correcting the spelling, grammar and punctuation)
“Hello, I am Juliet! how are you! hope you are fine and in perfect condition of health. I went through your profile on Livemocha I took interest in it, if you don't mind I will like you to write me on this ID:(julietshbn40@yahoo.com) hope to hear from you soon, I will be waiting for your mail because I have something VERY important to tell you”.
What do you think Juliet has to tell me that is VERY important? I can’t be that she fancies me because my picture (in silly Turkish hat) is on my home page. Could it be….gasp….Juliet wants my credit card details? (Shriek!) Oh the scheming trollop!
