You’d be forgiven for wondering what on earth I’ve managed to create a blog post about this time, given the fact that all the usual sites of my adventures are well out of bounds and my University experience currently consists of hours spent on BigBlueButton (the University of Vienna’s slightly more sophisticated alternative to Zoom, and always pronounced with a wonderful Austrian English accent). This post is severely lacking in the profound reflections department, and is almost The Tab level journalistic rubbish, but unfortunately these terrible puns are all I’ve got left to give you at this point, for which I do apologise.
annAdventlog?
This past week saw my university friends back home celebrate Bridgemas (or not – one group postponed it because they had too much work, which is just Cambridge/Engineering student efficiency in a nutshell) – a couple of days of festive cheer to mark one month until Christmas and the end of the term. Bridgemas in Vienna, or rather just Weihnachten, is likewise getting underway, although admittedly it is quite hampered this year. I’d much rather have any Christmas hampers sent from Fortnum & Mason than by Covid-19 restrictions, and so I’m understandably a little upset by the fact that the prospects of the Christmas Markets opening any time soon are looking as bleak as the Midwinter. Luckily there’s a whole liturgical season to get us through though and hopefully Advent will be a fruitful time of waiting and preparation for Christmas Day. We made our Advent wreathes at the weekend – a beautiful custom that is especially common in Germany and Austria. The third candle on the wreath is traditionally rose to mark the joy of Gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent, and contrasts the more penitential violet of the other weeks. You can however get wreathes with candles in all kinds of colours nowadays, which would explain why one group of housemates had nabbed all the rose candles for their wreath! The mystery of the missing rose candles was therefore solved (and candles subsequently swapped) as we retrieved it to be blessed at Mass in our Chapel, and that concludes the story of the most scandalous thing to have happened so far. Very on brand for a house full of Catholic girls in lockdown.
Blessing of Advent Wreathes for the First Sunday of Advent. (Each floor made their own as we're separate households, in case you're wondering why there are so many!)
Netflix and Chill(ed to the bone)
When I first arrived in Vienna you might remember it was a balmy 25°C, warm enough to go for an evening swim in the Donau and enjoy an iced coffee. Family and friends had warned me about the cold Austrian winter, but I couldn’t possibly imagine what they were on about – until this week. It has been a bracing 1°C for the past week or so, reaching to a formidable 3°C, if we’re lucky. I sunk to a whole new level of cold earlier this week when I decided to go out for a walk, got to the end of my road, and was so frozen that I just went to the supermarket instead, and took the tram back. (I'll acquire some warmer clothes as soon as the shops open, don't worry!) With outdoor possibilities thus rather limited, I finally caved on my resolution to spend my evenings on noble intellectual pursuits and logged into Netflix. I have since watched Season 4 of The Crown and all of Emily in Paris. The former is to be highly recommended; Emma Corrin’s superb performance of Diana will surely be award-winning, and each episode is filled to the brim with the historical, political, and familial tensions which characterise the series. I would say however that at times it was quite difficult to watch, and some of the more graphic scenes made for quite uncomfortable viewing. (No more details – no spoilers here!) Emily in Paris on the other hand is just complete rom-com trash stuffed full off French stereotypes, and I’m so ashamed that this is what my language degree/year abroad has come to that I’ll just end this paragraph right here and move on.
An iced coffee overlooking the Votivkirche on one of my first Sunday mornings in Vienna!
Beserk Bezirk finds
With museums, art galleries, libraries, pools, and restaurants shut, my guilt about not spending every free afternoon at a worthy cultural venue has vanished into thin air. I can however say that I have found a couple of lockdown safe-spots lurking around my neighbourhood, in the form of tram-depots and Churches! Although public Masses are just as suspended as a Tube line on a bad day of signal failures, Churches are open for private individual prayer, and are mostly completely empty. This weekend I finally went to the beautiful Servitenkirche in the 9th District, Alsergrund, as well as Annakirche in the 1st District. It made me very happy to discover that Annagasse (Anna’s street) has beautiful Christmas lights, a stunning church for St Anna, and a Burger King. What more could I ask for! The tram depot, complete with a special yellow repair-tram, was likewise a highlight of another dreary day of lockdown.
Wiener Linien Tram Depot, discovered on a quick lunchtime stroll.
Frescoes of the Servitenkirche.
Bake it till you make it
This twist on the classic piece of advice has definitely become a slogan of mine in 2020. Feeling drained by too much screen time? Want to cheer up your flagging flatmates? Looking for a way to while away another afternoon of lockdown? Cake is always the answer. Baking away from a home has improved my improvisation skills almost as much as a decade of language oral exams. If you ever find yourself attempting a cake in a student kitchen in Europe, don’t worry if you can’t source half the ingredients or equipment the recipe says you need – turns out self-raising flour is simply a capitalist invention for those lazy enough not to chuck in their own baking powder, and you can bake everything in one cheap loaf tin – such as this delicious Chocolate and Soured Cream loaf, a Carrot Cake to remind you of those National Trust Cafes, or if you really must, the classic lockdown Banana Bread. In fact, you might even lack so many of the listed ingredients that you decide that following a complex recipe is simply not worth it, as we did with our free-style lasagne last weekend, which turned out to be quite the success.
Everyone seemed to have spent their Saturday afternoon baking! Quite the spread for one of the girl's leaving dinner this weekend. Spot the Almdudler...
I’m not quite sure how I’ve hit the 1000-word mark, but there we have it – an incoherent assortment of thoughts, musings and niche references from another week of Viennese lockdown. Sincerely hoping that the next post will bring us back to the desired level of Austrian adventures and maybe, dare I say it, all the way back to Stansted Airport and cosy London suburbia in time for Christmas.
Bis dann!
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