All Hallows coming up

In the US most people know Halloween, and are only vaguely, if at all, aware that it is the night before 'All Hallows', now known as All Saints Day, which is followed by All Souls Day. That is not the case here.

Although Halloween is beginning to be observed - and cutting jack-o-lanterns has become a popular Fall activity - that is very recent.

The Austrians really do take All Saints and All Souls seriously. It is considered to be an obligation to make sure that the family grave(s) are in good shape before the holiday, and visited then with wreaths and candles.

Have you visited any cemeteries in Vienna? I am very fond of the Neustift cemetery, but there are a lot of other local ones, as well as the big 'ZentralFriedhof'. If you haven't been, it is high time you did. Each family has a plot, usually with several people buried at different depths. The plot can be covered with a stone, but more common is to have a small lawn or flowers growing in it. In some areas you will see people come regularly to care for their plot; in other areas it is more common for a gardener to be hired to take care of the work.

At any time you will find fresh graves with the funeral wreaths piled high on some graves, candles burning on others, and people walking the paths. There may be a funeral going on in the cemetery chapel. But at this time of year, the fog gives the gravestones a mystical atmosphere, and if you pass by in the evenings just at All Saints you will see all the candles burning. Do take time to do so!

Photo Marathon

An interesting idea for those with cameras : take part in Vienna's Photo marathon next week.

The idea is simple. You sign up in advance, telling them what sort of camera you have. Next Saturday you show up and are given a roll of film or a chip and a list of 24 topics. Now you have 12 hours to shoot pictures for those topics (in order) and hand your film or chip back in. There are prizes for the best pictures, but the real fun is in participating.

This is a chance to look at Vienna outside your usual box.

Or try it just for yourself, either here or on your next vacation. Set yourself a list of topics in advance (maybe with others) and see how it changes the way you see your surroundings. Mobile phone cameras cannot be used in the official one, but get a contest going between your kids if they have camera phones. Who can get the best (most original) picture of 'Animals in the city' or 'The souvenir I would have bought'. Or ' _______-eye perspective of a tourist attraction.' 'Food I wouldn't have seen anywhere else.'

Anyway, I am eager to find out what topics we are going to be assigned.

Streetcar changes

In the next week or so there are going to be a few changes to the streetcar system in Vienna. Basically, lines 1 and 2 are going to absorb the current lines 65, J, and N. You ought to have a look at the new schedules before getting on one of those lines. You might think you were going around the Ring, and find yourself off in some other part of town. Hopefully these changes will mean that people will have fewer changes, and it will be easier for them to change to the U-Bahn, but there will no longer be a line that goes all the way around the Ring.

Over the next year further changes will affect the D and 71 trams. At present it is only planned that the D will be renamed 3, but the 71 will become another tram that goes around part of the Ring instead of ending at Schwarzenberg Platz.

Vegetables galore

We live on the outskirts of Vienna, and one of the big advantages is that we can get fresh, cheap, non-standard vegetables relatively easily.

One of the reasons I haven't been blogging this summer is the amount of time I have spent in the garden. Most of my vegetables are in raised beds with large amounts of compost from our local Mistplatz. All that stuff that gets dumped in the Biomuhl containers gets composted centrally, and is then available free when you take your recyclables to the Mistplatz. Ours tends to run out occasionally during the peak garden work seasons, but it is still a great deal. Take containers with you and shovel in as much as you can transport. Even if you don't have a garden, you can grow great lettuce and herbs in window boxes kept fertile with generous servings of compost. We were in Iceland for over two weeks in June, and when we got back I hardly knew where to start on the garden - the vegetables had turned into a jungle. Wonderful problem to have!

But we have also been enjoying a lot of fruits and vegetables that I haven't grown. the flat outlying districts of Vienna are full of market gardens. The cheaper ones tend to be hard to find, have limited hours that their stands are open, and have small variety. However when you are carrying away bags of tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, and cabbages for a fraction of the supermarket price... Others specialize in things you can't get in the supermarkets. Gärtnerei Bach (22. Contiweg 165) has tiny inch long cucumbers full of flavour as well as the big ones, several varieties of chilies, white eggplants, purple potatoes and carrots (and normal ones), bags of mixed salad greens that haven't been gassed, bags of mixed veggies for soup. One green house is full of various scented geraniums, and in the spring they sell plants for the garden - flowers and various unusual edibles, too. Speaking of flowers, their bouquets are lovely as well, even if you stick to the standard floral ones. But I saw one of vegetables last week that I loved.

The Gutshof of the Schottenstift in Breitenlee has apples most of the year and other fruits in season. If you can't make it out to the 22nd district, they also sell the apples at the 'Klosterladen' at Freyung downtown.

If you want artichokes, there is a place in Raasdorf, just outside of Vienna that specializes in them. (Harvest is August-September.) The same town is full of stands selling strawberries and asparagus in the Spring. But for less exciting vegetables, almost any farm town you drive through will have signs outside the houses announcing what the farmer has to sell. Follow up on one and you may find a lovely little shop with much more than the sign promised, or a table at the entrance to a barn with two or three containers of raspberries with price labels. You never know until you stop and look.

We are in the harvest festival season, and many towns have already had a harvest festival, but many more are still going on this weekend, and the next few weekends. Tomorrow (September 28, 2008) is the harvest festival at Schlosshof. They promise to have stands of regional specialties. I will be very disappointed if I don't find at least one producer to follow up on. Next weekend is the Fall festival at Adamah , an organic grower and importer that also runs a box service. Once a week you can have organic food delivered to your home. Go out on Saturday or Sunday (October 4-5, 2008, 10:00 - 18:00) and have a look.

Garten Tulln

On Friday a friend and I made an excursion to the new Garden Exhibit in Tulln. Tulln is the Garden city of Eastern Austria. This new Exhibit is really a collection of gardens set up to teach and inspire people to do more with their gardens.

You walk along a path past (or through) gardens designed with various purposes in mind. Some concentrate on herbs and vegetables. Others have glorious flowers. Some are mostly rock and gravel. Some are for relaxing, others allow children a place to be active, others have ways for adults to exercise bodies and minds.

If you watch Universum on Austrian television, these gardens may look familiar. There was a program on how the people involved made the natural garden and the very formal garden with sculptures and a labyrinth next door to each other.

Kittsee Museum - last chance!

I would like to refer everyone to my old post about the lovely museum in Kittsee.

http://marthajeanne.blogspot.com/2007/04/eggs-and-more-at-kittsee.html

I have just read that it is closing at the end of September. I fully intend to get back there this year. I recommend that you do so as well. It may be a long time before the items on display there can be seen again.

Medieval Fun

It has been raining since Sunday. Pouring and pouring. Today was supposed to be still cloudy with some rain, but we woke up on this holiday morning (Fronleichnam, Corpus Christi) to bright sunshine. Jerry and I checked the internet until we found a fun excursion. Burg Lockenhaus has a Medieval Festival this weekend. We walked around the camp of those participating, visited the booths, watched dancing and music, and ate lunch. In the camp I saw two women working with card weaving looms. I have been meaning to get back into card weaving, so this will be an added incentive.

I decided that the stairs of the burg were too much for me, so we did not visit the whole castle, but apparently it is well worth visiting. It belonged to the Templars at one point, and the 'cultic room' has various symbols that have not been satisfactorily explained. Both general tours and specifically Templar ones are offered (at least in German). The festival is on until Sunday, May 25. There is also a Medieval festival going on in the Boehmischer Prater this weekend, if you would prefer not to leave Vienna.

When we had had enough of the crowds we drove on to the nearby Naturpark Greifenstein. We walked up to the Aussichtswarte (Tower) on the Hungarian border. And I do mean up. The forest road leads through needle trees up to the top of Burgenland's tallest mountain. OK, not all that tall, but a fair climb from the parking lot. The last thing I really wanted when we got to the top was to climb stairs, but when Steven said that there was a lovely view, I compromised and made it up the first flight. He was right. It was lovely looking out onto the Hungarian plain.

Around here it seems to be the newest thing to make walls and towers of wire cages filled with rocks. Generally I don't get the point, but this one fascinated me. The tower is filled with different kinds of rocks, and each one is labeled. As we hiked up the path we met up with big chunks of the various rocks with explanations of what kind of rock it is, where it can be found near the park, and how it was created. In case you are wondering, most of the rocks we saw are metamorphized sedimentary rocks. The explanations are in German, Hungarian, and English.

This area was once under an ocean, and some of the rocks include fossil shells. For those of you learning German, a local joke:

Wir haben Muscheln gesucht am Alpenostrand.
(We looked for shells on the ______.)

The joke is that Alpen-ost-rand is the standard word for the eastern end of the Alps. As you saw above, this is the Eastern end of the mountains. Normally you would look for shells on a 'Strand', a beach. If you divide the word differently you get the Alpeno-strand, a favorite holiday destination for Viennese who cannot afford an expensive vacation. ('Balkonia' is another.)