loneliness disappears at the end of a pen*

it’s sunday night and we just came back from a sexfest...

oh, sorry! i mean a sexTETTfest, kanyeshna!! which, in case you’re too lowbrow slash uncultured to know, actually means a classical music concert performed by a string sextet. and in this case, ensemble neues kunstlerforum at the camineum-saal (hofburg) performing the work of strauss, mozart, dvorak and a contemporary viennese composer, barcaba. yea, that’s me...high society n all that.

well okay, do ya wanna hear the truth? or would you rather my highly fabricated version of reality?! oh, if only i could write this blog as a choose your own adventure ~ maybe that’ll be my next project. after getting a job or two and writing a travel piece for the age and finishing the da vinci code...

shite, i didn’t think i’d admit it but, yea, i’m reading THAT bloody book. don’t ask me about it now though. according to the meticulous review system christian suggested, i will only rate books in comparison to the one or two i’ve read before it. and given that the two before it were pattern recognition and down and out in paris and london, well...i reckon dan brown’s got two chances.


truth is, i’ve had a wickedly fun AND cultured AND musical weekend which started with a surprisingly fine evening out at cafe kafka on friday. i was in two minds about going coz i don’t usually get into open mic all that much (or poetry for that matter) but i thought an opportunity to meet some english speaking arty farty types was probably a good idea.

unfortunately, or so i thought at the time, no one could be convinced to come with me. i guess it was friday night, end of the working week, waterpolo training night, scout meeting night and all that and...well, let’s face it, poetry can be rather dull at the best of times. so, i put off my departure, not quite making up my mind whether to go or not and then it was already ten past eight by the time i finished blogging to you lot.


one small thing that must be considered when you’re planning a night out in wien is that the buses from maria gugging to heiligenstadt (the nearest u-bahn/underground station) only come every half hour. and we ALL know how superfantastically good i am at missing those things with wheels, don’t we?! so sure enough, i decide to leave at exactly the time the bus is due.

shoving my feet into passion t-bars, dropping things left right and centre, hurriedly double-kissing supermum and markus their goodbyes, slamming the gate and racing time to the bus to the stop was, if not a good start to the evening, also not an unusual one. a coupla u-bahn’s later and i was at mariahilferstrasse, shopping district massive by day (see flickr pics for some idea) but at this time of night, almost a leetle threatening ~ probly just coz i didn’t know where THE HELL i was going!

cafe kafka was quiet when i walked in. someone was reading poetry...in german. and there was nowhere to sit. it didn’t seem particularly exciting, but at least it was no carl rickard "book" launch, someplace where you want to hide your head and pretend you’ve never HEARD of poetry, let alone coordinated a writers’ festival ~ that bloody apostrophe still makes my blood boil!

so, pretty soon i realised how practical it was that i’d come alone. for who, but the deeelightful sqodger perhaps (and even then only with a steady stream of amber ale), could have been convinced to stay there with me, propping up the bar whilst simultaneously drowning in a mass of nyemetski yazik of the self-indulgent kind and rapidly running out of cashola.

but i stayed, and i’m damn glad i did. after poring through a vegan magazine for wiener vegetarian eateries, gulping a stiegl or two whilst waiting out the guest speaker’s incomprehensible (to monolinguistic moi) forty minute rant and buying a somewhat average english poetry zine, this tall, kinda daggy looking guy got between me n my beer and, well, if that wouldn’t make me talk, nothing would.

after the break and some impromptu menu translation, steve performed two pieces one of which [it’s a fucking bad day ~ check out his site for the mp3] had me laughing out loud and then clapping my hand across my mouth in embarassed surprise. it was a pretty friendly crowd though and i found a guy across the room imitating me in my embarassment: grinning and putting his hand over his mouth too. steve’s second piece was “a word from our sponsors” and was about “vienna, where death is at home,” an interesting comment about this city i don’t know so well yet which, according to supermum, IS kinda obsessed with death.

so yea, there was a bit more poetry in english and some which was annoyingly introduced in english but read in german. they also announced a few other literary events that are coming up, i met a few more people and then it was time to hightail back to the u-bahn. there was a half-hour wait at heiligenstadt where the april air closed around me like an unfriendly lover and i tried to ignore it by noting down the entire bus timetable. but eventually the last bus to maria gugging came and twenty minutes of tousled hair and brake lights later i was home sweet chaos house again.


saturday morning came, apparently, but no bastard woke me up so i missed it. by the time i dragged my lazy arse outta bed the sun was high in the sky and cousin gunter was over with his maniac kids. supposedly he was asking for me but, as usual, little to no conversation ensued and he showed extremely predictable reluctance in helping me get a job in a bar. but meh, who needs his help?! well, yea, okay, maybe me...

anyway, i’m getting tired so here’s saturday in fifty words or less:
sleep
sun
soup
museum quartier
meeting victoria!
buying californian wine
drinking an apfelsaft gespritz
square time at spunky werner’s supercool flat
planet music
death metal avoidance
muchos beeros
girlie chats mit fugazi
milk plus’ psychedelic rock!!
bastard hill climb
fire on the buchberg
hiccups n home
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


you’ll just hafta wait for the malakofftorte and rudesheim kaffee update (~ yes! they really serve it in a cup like that!), patience my dear sweet things...oh no, i’m so tired i’m confusing YOU with the malakofftorte...

bed beckons, immediately!
xx

*thanks to victoria the unknown at the labyrinth reading for the quote about loneliness...