Vienna Part 3A

Before I start this post a small remark from Mrs. C-S. She claims she is the better author amongst us so I have to take the challenge! Luckily we didn't bet. Betting with Mrs. C-S come expensive. I can remember one time, shortly after I moved to Switzerland, when we still lived in Basel. With Basel I mean down town Basel, close to the Rhine, opposite of Manor. As we both have a car and only Mrs. C-S had an unlimited parking permit for our ZIP code area we decided to take her car to drive to the office in the morning. When we came back home in the evening we had to drive around in order to find a parking space. We found a pretty narrow space which I thought would be too small. Mrs. C-S claimed she could fit her car in there. I told her. "No way you get your car in that space". Then it happened. She betted a case of Moët and stupidly enough I accepted. I should have known better. She will never bet unless she is 110% sure of winning the bet. You got it! I lost and it cost me a case of Moët. Not the first case I lost betting with Mrs. C-S. I'm still paying off my losses....

Anyway, back to Vienna! Our 3rd day in Austria we started out with breakfast with Pinki and Andrea. As it had been snowing over night we decided to take Embers for a nice stroll. Andrea proposed to go for a walk in the regional vinyards to allow Embers some exercise. After a hot shower we got out and drove for about 10 minutes. Unbelievable! We were in the middle of nowhere. We viewed a landscape covered with snow and stretched as far as the eye could see.

It was darn cold but that didn't keep us from getting out of the car and confronting the cold wind.




In a positive moment I made the remark:"Luckily we have the wind in our faces now, so we'll be better off when walking back". Ooops! Winds change. (remark from Mrs. C-S :-)) We walked for quite a while and had a big surprise. Have you ever seen a schyzophrenic dog? Embers had such a moment and thought he was a cat! Believe it or not, he caught a mouse! Can't show you the proof with a picture, except for one with the blood he left....

Andrea, Mrs-C-S and I went on walking and chatting while freezing our butts off (another Mrs-C-S comment). Embers rolled in the snow, chased sticks we threw and even took the time to go belly down in the snow and litterally chew the sticks to tooth picks.


After a certain moment we had to return as Embers, fanatic as he is when being outside, suffered from the cold. Being a Golden Retriever his paws are webbed (like a duck) so snow sticks between his toes causing lumps of ice and pain. So, time to turn around and go home to "defrost" Embers' paws.





In the afternoon Mrs.C-S and I went to the "SCS". The SCS is short for Shopping City Süd . My God, this is the largest mall I have ever seen in Europe and I thought the Centro in Oberhausen was big! Just take a look yourself if you're interested in seeing what the SCS has to offer. Main reason for me to go to SCS was a nice orange Boss coat I had already seen in Vienna (After all, I am Orange-X). Vienna has 3 rather big Boss stores and I saw this nice coat at he first Boss store but decided to not buy this coat. Afterwards I regretted not buying this coat and tried my luck at the 2 other Boss stores. But here, no luck at all. The coat wasn't sold in the other 2 stores. So I had to be lucky in the SCS. After arriving at the SCS we just looked around a bit and realised we couldn't cross the whole SCS in just one hour so we decided to just shop around a bit close where we parked. We entered the Stiefelkönig, a large shoe store which has an amazing assortment of shoes. We both got lucky there. Mrs.C-S bought a pair of boots and a pair of warm Timberlands and I found a nice pair of Boss shoes (see pics below). After that we crossed the SCS to the next hall to see the Boss store to check if they had the orange coat there. But again, no luck. Nevertheless, seeing the SCS was something amazing. 270.000 sqm of shopping space is quite impressive to European standards. I bet my sweet sister would love to see it...







We drove back to Bad Fischau-Brunn as we had to go out for dinner with Pinki, Andrea and Pinki's sister and brother in law this evening. We had a booked dinner at the Steirereck. Maybe you have read the blog of The Big Finn about the Steirereck. He went for dinner in Vienna, we went for dinner in their other restaurant in the "Steiermark" (one of Austria's federal sates). An experience we will never forget, but you get more to read about it in the next blog which will come from the "better author" again... :-)