Random Notes From the Underground

Literally, notes from the Underground.  For me, the Underground is the U-Bahn, specifically the U-6.  That is my daily train to Mariahilferstrasse, one of the great shopping streets in Vienna.  Running from the Westbahnhof to the MuseumsQuartier, Innere Mariahilferstrasse is a wide walking boulevard, choc-a-bloc with shops big and small.  There are cafes in abundance, Turkish kebap stands, and boutiques with everything from hats to sex apparel.  It is also the location of my torture chamber, the classroom where I daily suffer the rigors of Deutsche grammar.  Everyday at eleven AM I tramp across the Liesing Fluss, past the towers of Alterlaa, to the U-6 station.  Armed with my monthly transit pass, I am wisked into the Stadt aboard one of the best transit systems in the world.  My commute complete, I engage in a daily three-hour battle with Dativ, Akkusativ and Nominative cases.

Doing battle with a language that randomly changes its skin like a demonic chameleon is not an easy task.  Sustaining oneself is an important facet of daily life.  Eat hard to work hard.  Fortunately, street food is also a part of Viennese life.

Noodle stands are as common as Wurst stands.  Here is my favorite stand on the shopping street, where I stock up on calories to keep myself going through a long class.

When noodles won't do the trick, there are Knödel, the Austrian staple that will give a brother strength for the struggle against possessive pronouns.  Pictured above are the spinach variety, complete with a nice cheese sauce.  I would guess there are about 100 calories per bite.  One cannot live on street food alone.  When it's time to pull out the big guns, My Heart's Eltern (parents) pick us up and schlep us out to Lower Austria.  Lower Austria is the Austrian state that abuts Vienna, which is not only a Stadt but its own state as well.  Lower Austria is not named for its location, but for its elevation.  It is the lower section of northern Austria that slopes down to the Hungarian plain.  So, it was off to Lower Austria for some serious comfort food in a traditional Gasthaus.

 

Vegans abandon hope.

This is the real deal, set out in a small village in Lower Austria.  What about a nice light soup to start with? 

 

 Leben Knödel Suppe.  Yes, that's right, liver dumpling soup.

The main course, Bauenbraten.  That's the Farmer's plate for you English speakers.  Fleisch, fleisch and mehr fleisch, swimming in gravy atop a sea of kraut.  And to ensure that no one leaves the table hungry, another Knödel!!  With a flair for presentation, the wurst are cut to look like tentacles.  

Alas, weekends come to an end and the grammar battle continues.  I have my small diversions, however.  There are other kinds of wurst in Wien, but they come from the dogs, die Hunde, which the Viennese love more than children.  (that is not Die Dogs, that is the German article, "die Hunde" which is plural.  If it was a single dog it would be "der Hund"  Easy, no?)

Vienna can sometimes rival Bangkok for the sheer amount of dog-doo that anoints its sidewalks and paths.  The City of Wien is engaged in an anti-poo campaign.  Bitte, put the Gackerl ins Sackerl or the fine is 36 Euro.  Based on the poo-dodging that I am forced to engage in on my daily treks, I'm not sure the city folks are making any headway with the dog-loving Wieners.

Besides grammar and poo-evasion, I enjoy my wanderings to and from class.  There is always some small new treat, whether on the street or in a shop window.

Oops.  Should have checked that shirt before printing I guess.

Spring is a slow and tentative business here in Wien.  March is still a cold and windy month, punctuated with the briefest sunny promises of the end of winter.  The wind rolls in off the Hungarian plain, biting hard.  A sunny day above fifty degrees (yes, Fahrenheit, I cannot yet think in Celsius)  is something to celebrate.  We finally got a few such days and, like the rest of the Wieners, we rushed out to soak up some rays (and dodge some Gackerl).

 

This is the tiny backyard of the Schonbrunn Palace.  That little hut at the bottom of the hill was one of the homes of the Habsburg Emperors. 

Finally, I am learning some hard facts as I enjoy my days and nights in Wien.  Here is one of them:

Che died young.  The advantage of dying young is that you get to keep your hair forever.

This is not the case with yours truly.  Nor will I ever be iconic.  Ah, well, Che fought the fight for the underclass and I fight the battle with Deutsche grammar.  I guess the declension of adjectives will cause a little hair loss amongst even the most valiant.  

That is about as random as I need to be for the moment.  Between the grammar class and the yammering of the Serial-Z characters, I am a very busy little Wiener.  I believe I will let The Reverend Squeaky-Eye take over blog duties for a bit while I struggle with Chapter 10.  I have stories to write and characters to kill.  Busy, busy little Bokononist.  So, it's Ciao for now beloved readers.

Kochen mit dem Hausmann

Over the course of my journeys, I have had the great pleasure of sampling the wonders of cuisines from across the globe.  On our recent journey to Sri Lanka, we were able to bring some of those flavours back home to Vienna.  One way to offset the gloomy gray of a "Spring" day in Vienna is to loose the spice of an exotic foreign island.  So, without further ado, here is how I choose to brighten the day.  I am going to show you how to make what turned out to be a brilliant eggplant curry.

 

Preparing the eggplant for cooking is one of the most important parts of any good eggplant dish.  I peel and cut the eggplant to the desired shape or size, in this case into cubes.  Place the eggplant cubes in a colander and then salt them generously.  The salt draws out the inherent bitterness of the eggplant and closes the spongy pores so that the stuff doesn't soak up too much oil and turn greasy.  The eggplant needs to sit under the salt for at least an hour.   Don't be stingy with the salt, it is all going to be rinsed off before cooking.  This is a good time to chop up ingredients and get ready for the rest of the cooking show.  Here we have 500 grams of ripe tomatoes, 200 grams of onions, hot and mild paprika and the wonderful Madras curry powder we brought back from Sri Lanka.  Into the the curry powder I added fresh ground black pepper from Kampot, Cambodia and a bit of turmeric.   The eggplant has already been salted, rinsed thoroughly, and coated with a mixture of fresh ginger and fresh garlic.  Now we are ready to begin!

The eggplant is sautéd for about five minutes over medium heat, keeping the cubes moving all of the time.  

 

Once the eggplant has softened nicely, add the big heap of tomatoes and let them cook for eight minutes.  The thinly sliced tomatoes will cook down into a nice paste.  Now we are getting to it.

Add the onions and a mix of hot and sweet paprika, cooking the entire mixture for another five minutes to soften the onion.  I know that many of you would start with the onion, but resist the urge.  We aren't trying to fry the onions here, just to soften them and add to the blend.  If you want to make the curry even hotter, you can substitute Kashmiri chili powder.  Hey, it's curry, there is not a wrong way, just different ways.

After all of this pan work you should end up with a fairly creamy mix that looks something like this.  I can tell you that at this point the kitchen is already smelling damn good.

This next part is really the only tricky bit in the whole process.  This is where we mix the curry powder and spices to the Greek yogurt and then add that mixture to the soon-to-be curry.  The problem is adding the cold yogurt to the hot eggplant mixture.  The yogurt can "split" and leave you with an unattractive mix of curds and liquid.  

To avoid splitting your yogurt, let the yogurt warm up to near room temperature.   

 

Before adding the yogurt to the spice bowl, throw a few spoonfuls of the hot liquid into the spice.  Not only will it smell fantastic, as it cools it will buffer the temperature, easing the yogurt towards being added to the pan.  

Now spoon in your nice thick Greek yogurt.

 

Blend the spices and the yogurt until you have a nice thick paste.

Slowly add the yogurt and spice mix into the eggplant mixture, stirring constantly and gently until everything is nice and creamy.  Reduce the heat to a simmer and place a lid on the pan.  

Now is the time for all good Hausmänner to put the rice on and then go have a cigar, or whatever other pursuit floats ones boat.  The curry needs to simmer for about 50 minutes, with an occasional stir.  In the picture above you will see the sliced chili and chopped coriander leaves.  Just before serving the curry, remove from the stove and add the chopped coriander.  The last thing before serving is a pinch of garam masala stirred into the lovely curry.  The sliced chilies are served raw at the table, to be added by those lucky enough to be sitting down to this feast.

I hoped you enjoyed the little cooking show.  If you would like this recipe, I would be happy to write down the specifics and send it on.  Now, please excuse me, it's time for a lovely late lunch.  

Meine Tage

Ich bin ein guter Hausemann.  Yes, I am a good house man, running my errands, exploring the neighborhood, cooking meals.  This when I am not writing my serial novel and being harangued by my characters.  They are a pushy bunch.

I have been back in Vienna for ten days, three of which were compromised by jet lag.  I am usually able to reset my circadian rhythm fairly quickly, but I was not able to do so this time.  I think that the last two months of frenetic activity had literally kicked my ass.  But that is all over now, everything is stored, sold or rented and I am back home in Wien, where I belong.

So, what does a lazy writer do when he is not arguing with characters about who gets to be in the next chapter?  Well, I cook meals for My Heart.  If she mentions, for example, that she would like to try a lamb curry, then I have a mission:

 

I have other Hausemann duties, such as going to IKEA to return the drawer dividers that were the wrong size.  Yes, I get to learn new things, such as the variations in standard European drawer sizes.  

 

Oops.

Other Hausemann projects go swimmingly, such as the magnetic message board that My One desired to adorn the kitchen wall.   With all the ingredients that go into a good curry, or a home-made garam marsala, one needs somewhere to right down the shopping list.  

 

Of course, I spend a good bit of time running my errands on foot and exploring the neighborhood as well.  A typical shopping loop would be something like yesterday.  I walk up the Liesing Fluss, the little river that runs near our apartment.  Lovely trails run up and down the Fluss and I like to start my day walking along the river.  Yesterday I headed upstream until I had to turn off towards the Bäckerei Schwartze, which is located in a quirky industrial neighborhood.  There are abandoned factories, a very creepy building that looks like it could have been a jail, and the main bakery for the Schwartze chain.  These nice folks bake the Nussbrot, or nut bread, that is a favorite of My Heart.  So thence to fetch the bread.  

Along the way is a building that is being transformed into a new refugee center.  Several NGOs have gotten together to turn this old administration building into a center for up to 750 Syrian refugees.  Not all of the neighborhood is happy about this.  There were some heated public meetings regarding this new center.  The Syrian refugee situation continues to be a serious issue.  The main refugee route has been from Syria to Greece to Macedonia and then on into Europe.  Just this week the border at Macedonia was closed, trapping something like 30,000 refugees on the Greek side.  New rounds of negotiations will determine the fate of the refugees, but it is unlikely to be good.  

 

There are always discoveries to be made, little hidden gems in the neighborhood.  For instance, I found this bronze statue of a little calf.  Who knew that there would be a memorial to a brave calf who helped to lift the siege of Vienna in 1683?  The Turks were outside the walls of Vienna, trying to tunnel into what is now the Alt Stadt, or Old City.  The brave Viennese were on the walls trying to stop the Turks from taking the city.  It was your basic siege.  During the course of the siege there was a bit of backdoor trading between the Turks and some of the Viennese women.   The Turks would barter fresh foodstuffs for the bread made by the Viennese.  This trade was overlooked by the officials on both sides.  

One day, as the story goes, during a trading session conducted at one of the gates in the city walls, a calf got loose from somewhere inside the gate.  The animal dashed out into the no-man's land between the hostile Turks and the city walls.  The trading session was quickly brought to a close as hostilities were about to be resumed.  The calf, meanwhile, was running around out in the open.  The Turkish sharpshooters decided to use the calf for practice, but it dodged and swerved so handily that the Turk's musket balls could not bring the little beast down.  The sight of the Turks shooting at the defenseless calf so enraged the Viennese defenders that they mounted a sortie to rescue the beast.  In a rain of musket and arrow fire, a hardy platoon of Viennese soldiers issued from the walls and rescued the little calf, but not before making a discovery that saved the city.  Under a hail of enemy fire, one of the soldiers fell through the earth into a Turkish tunnel.  He was pulled out of the tunnel by his fellow soldiers and everyone rushed back to the safety of the walls, dragging the bawling calf with them.

The timely discovery of the Turkish tunnel prevented a disaster for the defenders.  The Turks, like any other good siege army of the day, would use sappers to tunnel under the walls of the city or castle that they were besieging.  Then they would undermine the walls while simultaneously shoring them with oil-soaked timbers.  The timbers would then be set alight and the sappers would retreat.  As the timbers burned away, so did the support for the wall.  The walls would then, in theory, collapse and allow the attackers to breach the defenses.  

So, the brave calf led the defenders to the discovery of an heretofore unknown Turkish tunnel.  The tunnel was blown up by the Viennese sappers before the Turks could damage the walls and the city was saved.  

Editor's note:  Much of what appears in the preceding four paragraphs is a complete flight of fancy on the part of the author.  There are some historical truths in the details of the Turks and the Siege of Vienna.  The part about the calf, however, is crap.  He just made that up.  Who knows why there is a statue of a little cow in the local neighborhood.  

Author's note:  The Editor is a bastard.  What does he know?  There COULD have been a little calf at the Siege of Vienna.  The Author admits there is no evidence that there was, but it could have happened.  The Author's mistake was taking the photo of the calf from far enough back that the Editor (who is a bastard) could see that there was not a plaque depicting the achievements of the heroic little calf.

Editor's Counter-Note:  There were no achievements on the part of the calf.  If that calf was at the Siege of Vienna, it was eaten.  End of story.  

Author's Note:  Whatever.  It was a fun story.  Stupid Editors!

My errand loop often ends up at what we call the Turkish Market.  We call it that because it's a small Turkish family business, unlike the chain stores Billa, Spar or Merkur.  I love the produce bins, where I can pick over apples or pears for the choice selections.   These nice folks also have a real butcher shop.  From here it is a short walk back over the pedestrian bridge and through the park area around Alterlaa.  

This coming Monday I start language class.  Five days a week, three hours a day, I will be wrestling with the labyrinth of German Grammar.  This will cut into my Hausemann duties, but I have to be able to pass the German Language proficiency test for a residency title.  Plus, a good Hausemann should speak Deutsch.  

It is very good to be back in Vienna.  I will try to keep the blog moving forward, amongst the other writing demands of Serial-Z and the language classes.  Ciao for now.