Happy belated New Year everybody!!!
All right, it has been another month. But that's a better score than last time. See, I am making progress... Anyway, I obviously need to tell you about December and Christmas break. December was fortunately a short month. I hadn't realised how horribly tired and stressed out I really was until I had two weeks to relax and do nothing. I was actually so relaxed that I got incredibly lazy and did not do a thing! Not even update my weblog, for which I am paying the price now! No, seriously, my Christmas holidays were amazing!
Things have been tough at work lately. It is not that I am not enjoying my job or that I feel like changing it, but the company has been in financial distress for just too long and I am sick of it. I hate working in an atmosphere where everybody is uptight and strained as bowstrings to find more work and sell more courses. I also do not agree with how the company is run and am seriously getting annoyed by people not doing the jobs or not doing them right. I mean, there is only so much I can do and if people do not learn to do their own jobs but just do what they want, I am going to quit someday. They procrastinate, think ages about every little thing they do but there is so little that actually comes out of their hands. And then they are never there, come in late, do not come in at all, complain about all the things they have to do instead of actually doing them and then go through the same list again the next day because they still have not accomplished anything. And this is not an easy financial climate to be running a business in. One of our biggest clients has frozen its budget and it is unclear when and how many courses we will be providing for them and we are not having much luck finding new business. Anyway, I would just like to go to work one day without worrying whether I am actually going to get paid this month.
My irritation and fed-upness reached an all-time low the week before Christmas and I even lost control and shouted at one of my colleagues for fucking up something I had put a lot of time into. That was not good and not very professional of me. But then, fortunately, the Christmas holidays arrived and though I am still annoyed I have at least managed not to think about work for two weeks and am better able to handle it now. Today was my first real day back (I did some preparatory work Monday afternoon) and though it sucked from a practical point of view - it is snowing like crazy here and this fucked up all lessons as the whole city is blocked and no-one can get from a to b - it went relatively well from an irritation point of view. Well, saddle up...
On to good things, on 12th December we (the management team of my company) decided enough was as far as money trouble went and we had our lavish Christmas party consisting of a dry pizza, lots of booze and dancing the night away. I enjoyed that immensely, especially because I finally got to meet our Rome teacher who had been flown in for the occasion in person. The next day, Olaf and I took a weekend trip to Trapani in Sicily which was very interesting. Basically, Sicily is beautiful, the food is good and there is a lot to do and see - except in Winter time. There was zilch public transport and we only managed to walk around the town (which was nice enough but quite small) and go to Segesta (gorgeous Greek temple and amphitheatre on a hill in the middle of nowhere). As you can read on Olaf's weblog, we should have hired a car. Oh well, this leaves some good reasons to come back some day in spring. For pictures, see Olaf's weblog.
Then the Christmas holidays arrived and I slept, slept and slept. Then Werner and Jose arrived and we spent some lovely days together. Olaf surpassed himself once again by cooking us an 11-course dinner consisting of delicacies such as (in random order) tuna carpaccio, grapefruit carpaccio, clams a la Portuguese, mint spoom, home made chocolade truffels and arancello, cashewnut soup and goat-cheese puff pastries followed by a chocolate fountain and a heavenly cheese platter. Among other things, I got a very nice edition of Dante's Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise with beautiful pictures and a kettle. Olaf got music, a language course of choice to work on his French or Spanish and of course the 'Alles-went-behalve-de-Wentvogel', thus named by Werner:
Isn't he cute? Olaf is absolutely smitten with him...
After that, Werner and Jose went on to spend some days in Venice together and Olaf and I had some well-deserved time to ourselves. His university was closed and though he had to work at home at least we could spend some time together. As he was working anyway, I decided to continue my long-term project of reading Homer's Iliad in Greek and finished book 4. We spent the nights eating and drinking together, occasionally going out, but mainly watching lots of movies and episodes of our new favourite TV series, The West Wing. Olaf left for San Francisco on 31st December for a conference and several job interviews so I am keeping my fingers crossed. I spent New Year's Eve with Belinda and Enrico and we spent to this totally random party with lots of people I did not know. It was fun though as these relatively well-educated yuppie Italians all turned out to speak English quite well. Oh, and I got to eat my fill of zampone and lentils, the traditional Italian New Year's Eve food. Lentils are supposed to bring wealth, well bring it on!!!
I did not make a late night of it though, as I was flying to Vienna to meet my mother there and spend a couple of days together. It was great seeing her again, I realised we hadn't spent some quality time together for a long, long time. We ate, we drank, we walked around the city, learnt a lot about architecture, how the Habsburg emperors lived at court and painting through the ages, visited a multitude of churches in different styles and Jugendstil building and drank loads of wine and beer. Vienna is beautiful, it is a big city but incredibly spacious and green, even outside the historical centre which is small and specked with sights. I could spend days in the Kunsthistorisches Museum and just walking around. You can really tell it is an imperial city because it is, in one word, grand. The people are very nice though and it was very nice to hear people speaking English to foreigners. The city is incredibly well-organised and the public transport system is amazing. I liked it so much I told Olaf to find a job there... I will upload some pictures as soon as I figure this damned camera out!
All in all, I had a wonderful time, although a three-day visit was really too short to do the city well. The flight back was a bit of a drag though as we were delayed by two hours and we were then sent to Pisa because there was too much fog in Bergamo - only to be loaded onto another plane which took us to Bergamo which was bathing in clear skies and shiny stars... Weird story, I still do not know what really happened and am not sure I want to know. Anyway, that meant I did not get to Bergamo until 3.30 am and that I had to wait for another hour to catch the first bus to Milan. I did not get to bed until 5.45, destroyed yet satisfied. I worked for a couple of hours that afternoon, just to get some necessary admin and spam mails out of the way only to be able to really relax yesterday, as the Epiphany or Advent of the Magi is obviously worth being a public holiday...
And that brings us back to today. I am lonely and stuck at home because of the snow, waiting for Olaf to come back. He has been away too long, and I am a devoted housewife ;-)
The Kunsthistorisches Museum
Artyfarty fountain with Neoclassicistic reconstruction of a ruined Greek temple in Schloss Schoenbrunn gardens
The gardens of Schloss Schoenbrunn, the summer residence of the imperial family, currently a public park with statues, fountains and even a Zoo
The Hofburg, the imperial palace
The 11th-century Ruprechtskirche, the oldest church in Vienna
Die Griechische Kirche
Lollipop pink and vomit green twisted columns in the over-the-top Rococo Jesuitenkirche
The Gothic Stephansdom with its mosaique roof and lovely views
The modern Haas Haus with reflections of the 13th-century Stephansdom in its glass walls, apparently a perfect contrast.
The Baroque Karlskirche
Random building with angels
Emperor Franz Joseph I's private metro station, unfortunately he only got to use it twice.
