Oh no, you didn't? Oh yes, we did!

We bought some Christmas/winter bedlinen. I think every year when it's too late, that it would be nice to have some special bedlinen for Christmas and this year when we got back from Vienna I got a bit obsessed trying to source some with a Nutcracker theme. True to form I  had  left it too late and even the multifarious versions on Amazon wouldn't arrive until after Christmas. So I resigned myself.

Then came word that M & Co had gone into administration and were having a sell everything off sale. Since we were in town the day afterwards and since  have bought bedlinen from them in the past we decided to go and see what they had and lo and behold we came out with this.

It's not Nutcracker themed but it is nice and wintry/Christmassy and we got a lot of money off it and the accompanying sheet and pillowcases. 

I would have felt a bit like a vulture going in and buying up their stuff cheap, but  when the Arcadia Group went into administration a couple of years ago we lost our business so I know what it's like from the other side. And the sad truth is that a) what it can't sell at reduced prices to bona fide customers M & Co will end up offloading to wholesalers for next to nothing and b) they will need every penny they can get to meet their liabilities, and that might well include redundancy pay for its employees. In which case we've made a small contribution to someone else's welfare. And got some Christmassy bedlinen. 

Think I will try and remember to look for some with a Nutcracker theme a bit earlier next year though!

Shining Lights

Here as promised is  a photograph of the tealight holder we purchased in Vienna

isn't it lovely?

And here's the one I purchased earlier in the year in Prague

which is just as lovely  in a different style.

And now I'm off to decorate some shortbread I made yesterday (I know! who does that?) If it's a success pictures another day!

Vienna - Christmas Markets

The Christmas Markets were a bit of a draw for the visit to Vienna, along with the opera. It's about six years I think since we went to Stockholm for the Christmas markets there and we had really enjoyed that so we thought it would be good to have a look at some elsewhere. 

There are lots of them in central Vienna, and wherever we went basically we could see one; they are strategically placed by almost every tourist site in the city so the first one we visited was the one by the Kunsthistorisches Museum. By the time we'd 'done' the bits of the museum we wanted to see the day was getting on an the market was filling up. Given the propensity of the Viennese to elbow people out of the way as we went round we found ourselves further and further away from the actual stalls which was a bit sad as it meant we had to do a bit of pushing ourselves to get into a position where we could see anything. 

It was fine. We didn't want any gluhwein, although plenty of people wee getting tipsy on it, and we didn't want to buy cheese or bread or cold meats so that meant we didn't need to look at a lot of the stalls. I did manage to by, in my best pidgin German a stick with chocolate covered pineapple pieces on it which was nice; both the thing itself and the fact that the woman on the stall understood what I was asking for. I was very very taken with a modern style wooden nativity scene, but closer inspection revealed that just the Mary Joseph and baby in the manger cost 93 euros. I did a quick conversion in my head and decided that, however taken I was with it, that was actually daylight robbery - and anyway when would I ever have a chance (not to mention the funds!) to buy the associated shepherds and wise men? So we passed on that and settled for a tealight holder with trees ad a reindeer. It's very nice. Picture later maybe? 

What I had hoped to buy to bring back was some stollen and some lebkuchen both of which were conspicuous by their absence which was a shame. 

A couple of days later when visiting The Belvedere Palace to look at Secession Art we had a quick gallop arond the Christmas market there and were disappointed to discover that many of the stalls were exactly the same. I suspect that many of them are actually outlets for shops in the city and we didn't buy anything at that one, alhugh as it was earlier in the day we were able to get closer to the stalls than on the previous occasion. 

Here's a picture 

Quite Christmassy. Overall though we preferred the Swedish ones; partly because the stalls were more varied and had people selling things that they had actually made themselves, and partly because there was more gong on; carol singing, traditional dancing etc. I think we are probably over the excitement of Christmas markets now. 

Tree is Up!

 

It's a bit earlier than we normally do it, but I was feeling in the need for some Christmas cheer when we got back from Vienna. We didn't do it all at once; tree assembled and the lights on one day, and decorated and the rest of the stuff put out the next one. For a white tree it is starting to look quite cream coloured; it may be time to star thinking abut buying another one for next year. 

I took a few close ups of some decorations, totally at random, not necessarily my favourites or the best or anything

This one features a 'pohutakawa' fairy, sent to me many years ago from a friend in New Zealand

This is one of my favourites and relatively recent; Maisie mouse sent by my sister a few years ago. So cute!

Bottom left, if you click on the photo to enlarge it, you'll see the new bauble we bought at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Not that we needed more baubles, but ....

On a related note I can report that Museum hops  in Vienna are just as good at prising open your wallet as Museum Shops in Britain. I could have spent a fortune - but I didn't. 

Anyway I'm edging towards being ready. I have two parcels for the post office, one letter to write and then apart from local stuff, I'm done. Yea for that! 

Let's Talk About Advents.

Just typing the title reminds me that I have yet to open the window on my Jacqui Lawson advent calendar for today - well I'll do it after this post.

I have four advents this year, all different. I had an Arran Aromatics one from the OH a few years ago, as you'll recall if you've been reading the blog for that long, and this year I treated myself to another one. They are a lot cheaper than they used to be; I think the one I had before was the first year they had them and I remember seeing them on the website half price by 2nd December, so possibly they learned the price point had been set a bit high. Anyway here's week one of that

I'm still playing catch up with this and the next one as I missed the first six days through being away and I thought opening 6 all at once would spoil the pleasure so I'm doing two a day until I catch up.

The next one is a yarn one and is my Christmas present from the OH. It's tricky with yarn advents because you want one where you like the theme so in theory you hang on until all the dyers you follow have announced theirs and then pick. However as they all produce limited numbers, which is sensible in view of the amount of work that goes into them, the early ones can often be sold out before you know what other people are doing. I was lucky this year as not long after I decided this was what I'd like for Christmas a dyer who is relatively new to me, Beth from Beehive Knits, announced that her advent this year would be themed around the Laura Ingalls Wilder book The Little House on the Prairie. No brainer, and the OH ordered it immediately. 

Here are the first seven minis and the two extras I've opened so far

From bottom to top the colours are: Spring Woods Awaken, Sapling, Buds and Berries, Grassflower, Wildflower Posy, Nine Patch Quilt and Rosehip Jelly. They're seasonally themed so all of the above are spring apart from Rosehip Jelly which takes us into Summer.   The extras are a packet of wildflower seeds and some honey scented tealights. I do have a pattern to use these on but as I'm desperately trying to finish some Christmas gift knitting I don't know how far I'll get with it before Christmas. Probably nowhere, but we live in hope. 

We burn a lot of tealights at Christmas which is why I allowed myself to get the Yankee Candle Advent tea light advent wreath. 

For some reason this contains only 18, rather than 24, tealights but that works for me because, as noted above we missed the first six days of  December here. So we have one a day until Christmas. I have to say they are good value as they burn for ages and have a good strong scent, quite often you can only smell tealights when you stand up! 

And the fourth one I think I'll leave describing for another day nearer Christmas. For now, after a heroic struggle with the UK cards this morning I  have an afternoon appointment with my ironing board. 

Vienna The Operas 1 Tosca

You can't go wrong with Tosca, can you? I've heard that said many times and I think the performance at the Staatsoper proves that actually you can go wrong with Tosca, and using a production that is over  one hunded years old is definitely one of the many ways this can be done. I kid you not, the production was first put together in the early 1900s; the woman who did it left Austria in 1938 fleeing from the Nazis and never went back, and yet despite its age they roll it out quite proudly. You know, there's traditional and then there's stupidly hidebound. 

After the performance the tour manager asked what I would give it out of 10 and I said 4. She thought that was quite harsh but I thought it was fair. One point for the music, one point for the scenery, one for the baritone who was excellent, and one for Tosca's costume in Act 2. 

To my shame I had never heard of the baritone, who is apparently very well known and who was presented with the honour of being named a Kammersänger after the performance. This is huge. I suspect I don't really understand how huge it is, but he got a certificate from the President of Austria on the stage so quite a big deal obviously. 

The Staatsoper is a huge renaissance style building; the Emperor or Empress who commissioned it didn't like it, thereby ruining the careers of the two architects who designed it, one of whom was so distressed that he killed himself. Well done, your majesty ....

It is much less posh inside than you might expect, with the exception of the foyer, and of course the  auditorium, which is splendid  if you like that sort of thing.

A friend from Glasgow was coincidentally at the same performance and we met up with her in the bar beforehand with another couple on our holiday, also from Glasgow and who we have met at Scottish Opera events. That was fun. 

Vienna - Coffee and Cake

 

We got back late last evening and as you can probably imagine we've got a lot to do today. I did want to start blogging about Vienna, which I'm planning to do by 'topic' and I'm starting with the Coffee and Cake one because I suspect it will be the shortest.

One of the good things (one of? maybe the only?) about the timing of my recent operation was that it meant that I could go to Vienna and have coffee and cake without having to worry about how much fat I might be consuming at one sitting and the possible deleterious consequences. I thought we might do it every day to be honest with a different cake each time.

In the end we only did it the once. This was partly due to lack of time and partly lack of inclination. I found that I didn't want to eat rich cake every day, even if I did, in theory, want to sample several traditional Austrian cakes, but you can't go to Vienna and NOT do it at least once.

Of Vienna's many famous cafes we chose to go to Cafe Central, partly because of the fantastic Art Nouveau decor and and partly because Freud used to hang out there. We had to queue to get in, but this is true of all the more famous of Vienna's cafes so that was OK. It was 35 minutes though and quite cold so it was a relief to get in at last. Once you're in though you're not mithered to leave so you can relax and make the  wait worthwhile. 

The cold was probably the reason we opted for hot chocolate rather than coffee, and it was hot chocolate with amaretto which I have to say was delicious. There were lots of tempting sweet treats to go with it. The OH picked something called a Maroni Deluxe, which is a chocolate cylinder filled with kirsch soaked cherries and a chestnut mousse, topped with whipped cream, and I went for the Cafe Central Torte - well it would have been rude not to! Two layers of chocolate sponge with an orange flavoured layer between them, stuck together with orange flavoured marzipan. 

A very  enjoyable 'once-in-a-lifetime' thing.