the big orange sofa

okay, so in a previous post i mentioned our temporary sofa. i just had to show it to you!!
to cut a long story short.... we moved into our apartment 12 weeks ago and ordered a sofa 11 weeks ago (which was due to be ready after 9 weeks)... BUT its been delayed so the company delivered a temporary one on thursday for us to use in the meantime (as we've had nothing to sit on for the past 12 weeks). check it out!!

ha. isn't it a beauty?! (don't worry - the one we've ordered isn't orange leather - well, at least i hope not. the sales assistant spoke very little english??!!).

i'll miss you...

this is in loving memory of my great-grandma, florence, who very sadly passed away last night aged 95. she lived to a very old age and i feel extremely lucky that i was able to know her and spend so many years with her in my life.
i've been thinking about how i remember her.... not the very frail old lady in a wheelchair living in the rest home who no longer knew who i was.... but the funny, sometimes hilarious lady who used to look after me when i was little, who taught me to play card games, who took me to bingo at the local church hall with her friends, cook me fried egg and chips for tea and let me stay with her on a friday night, who let me help her tidy her cupboards and dust the little trinkets on her dressing table. i'll always remember her laughing and saying and doing silly things that always got us laughing with her.

this picture was taken the last time i saw her (in march) before i moved to live in vienna. its strange but as i left i just knew that i would never see her again.
she was a sweet lady. i'll never forget you great-nan flo.

family visit

blimey, where did that week go to?! its been a great week but i am sooooo tired. my mum and brother have been here since monday (they flew home to england last night) so its been very busy, LOTS of sightseeing, walking, eating and drinking beer! (diet not going well).

okay, here is a quick run down of our week....

monday (montag) - we went for a long wander around the ring road seeing the sights as we walked and ate yummy lunch at the museums quartier. there was something going on at the rathaus-platz (i presume for the bank holiday) which we stumbled across. it was a really hot day and i got rather sunburnt!

this last photo was taken in graben. it appears to be pinocchio with a spider hanging off his nose?!

tuesday (dienstag) - after my german course we went to karlsplatz and then naschmarkt and spent a lovely long lunch there eating and drinking beer in the sun. we then wandered around gumpendorfer and mariahilfer strasse before getting caught in a huge downpour of rain!

wednesday (mittwoch) - we spent all afternoon walking around the lovely schlosspark at schönbrunn.

and in the evening we ate a traditional austrian meal at 'salm brau' in rennweg (but i forgot to take any pictures!). they also brew their own great beer.

thursday (donnerstag) - we went to the würstelstand at hoher markt and i introduced my mum and brother to käsekrainers!

(this is me and my bro'!)

we passed a shop selling all kinds of shaped marzipan including hedgehogs and jacket potatoes. how cute!

it then rained heavily pretty much all afternoon and so we took cover in a pub/bar and stayed there drinking beer all afternoon. oohps! 

we later went for dinner at an italian in the innere stadt (pizzeria rossini in schonlaterngasse). ate a great pizza!

(this was mine with an egg baked in the middle. was really yummy!)

friday (freitag) - on their final day here we wandered down alongside the donaukanal with an ice cream (i love the graffiti art down there) over to prater and then walked around the amusement park. was fun watching people on all the rides! (hopefully i will go on a few myself next time but i was too full from the huge lunch i had eaten followed by ice cream and thought it a bit risky that i might see it again!).

and now i'm enjoying a relaxed (and very much needed) saturday in the apartment before our next guests arrive on tuesday!
we finally have a sofa to relax on (if only a temporary one) but more on that to follow later!

new addiction

i have discovered a raspberry beer here! (although i think its a low alcohol beer) but it tastes good anyway and is really refreshing on a hot day!

i've also become addicted to duplo's (little ferrero chocolate bars). seriously can't stop eating them. must stop. i'm not usually a chocolate person at all but i scoffed three one after the other.

see, this is what happens when i can't get a regular strongbow and crisp fix!!!

a trip to brunnenmarkt

kev and i ventured out to a district we hadn't been to before yesterday and took the u-bahn to brunnenmarkt (which is on the other side of the city from our apartment).  so far we've tended to walk everywhere and so have only explored the surrounding areas but i decided it was about time we ventured out!
brunnenmarkt was great. a really colourful and buzzing market (i kind of felt that i wasn't in vienna at all) and its a really good place to buy fruit and vegetables.
i felt like such a tourist with my big camera so i only took a few quick snaps when it was a bit quieter.

we stopped for some brunch/lunch at a cafe called 'muskat' and enjoyed a beer in the sun. was lovely!

kev ate a delicious looking omelette with feta cheese... and i had the 'muskat frühstück' (a mixed plate of humous, avocado, roasted vegetables, feta cheese and olives)

which was really tasty except i got quite freaked out by the addition of banana, strawberries and blood orange! eek. so wrong. kev had to save me by removing them from my plate. (i love pretty much all food but i can't eat savoury food with fruit!). its just wrong!

then just after this picture was taken, kev (in the white t shirt) slipped on a spinach leaf when leaning over to pay the lady and nearly knocked over the whole two crates of spinach!! hee hee.

the good and the baaaad

okay... the new healthy eating regime started well on friday. i looked up a recipe on the internet and cooked a really low fat dinner of 'spring chicken in a pot' (bbc good food website). it was full of vegetables which is something i don't appear to have eaten a lot of recently!

but then it all kind of went out of the window when we ate steak and homemade spicy wedge/chip type things last night for dinner. it tasted damn good though!

not a vegetable or salad leaf in sight! whoops.

all tomorrow's parties festival (curated by pavement)!

so here is a little post about my trip back to england!

the festival (in minehead) was filled with lots of cider, crisps, fried egg and bacon sandwiches, burgers, cheddar cheese, sausages, pizza, ice cream.... LOADS of bands and great music, pool, laughter... and even a little bit of sunshine! basically, it was AWESOME and i loved every minute of it.

this picture of the band is really cool. its made up of lots and lots of little tiny pictures....

here are some pictures of minehead beach and the promenade...

(hope you don't mind me putting this picture up guys!)

the bands perform indoors so the pictures mostly came out really dark but here are a few to give you an idea...

the raincoats were brilliant

and so were the walkmen

i loved mark eitzel!

and strangely one of the other highlights was a performance of prince's 'purple rain' by a band i had never previously heard of!

i actually got quite emotional during the last song so who knows what i would be like if i actually saw PRINCE himself preform the album!?
i was also really excited because i purchased a tote bag from the raincoats and one of the band (ana da silva) signed it!!!!

sooo, after a brilliant weekend of bands and pigging out its now time for a serious DIET. no more eating käsekrainers!! (hotdog sausages with bits of cheese inside the meat - basically my ultimate food!). all this eating (and drinking beer) really has to stop otherwise i'm going to look like a beached whale in a bridesmaid dress in cyprus!!!!

another trip to ikea

i ventured to ikea by myself today (this is probably the fifth time i've been there in only 2 and a half months!). the special ikea bus is very handy as it stops right outside where my deutschkurs (german course) is and i needed to get some sheets for the spare beds (that we bought in ikea) before my mum and brother arrive on monday (yay!) as our UK ones don't seem to fit properly....?!
and look what i bought!

poor little unlucky plants for being chosen by me (what bad luck, eh). but i'm really going to try and keep these ones alive. honest. i'm not sure if the purple flowered one is an outdoors plant? (nan - if you're reading this, is a campanula an outside plant?!). anyway, i'll put it in the window and see what happens. fingers crossed.

i also bought this really cute tray. i couldn't resist it!

i guarantee kev is gonna come home from work and say 'what do we need another tray for?'! ikea just has this special way of getting you to buy things that you don't actually need.

i got into a bit of a pickle at the checkout because i forgot to purchase a bus ticket for the return journey before my card transaction had gone through. the ticket is only 1,55 euro but on opening my purse i discovered that i only had 1,40. uh oh. luckily the guy at the checkout took pity on me (he probably saw the look of pure panic on my face) and gave me a ticket for 1,40. phewy!