I had a good gallivant around Austria. I returned to Graz
and caught up with some old friends named gluehwein and feuerzangenbowle. No
longer sure the latter is my friend, but I’ll warm up after another few days.
Oh, I also saw many human friends, who I do miss. Then Steyr, and then Baden,
near Vienna. Even the little villages have their Christkindlmarkt, or baby
Jesus market. Yet, as I mentioned last time, not even Vienna had a market for baby Krampus, even though
the Austrians believe in Krampus about as fervently as Jesus. I proposed
Krampuskindlmarkt on Facebook and then, after the enthusiastic reaction of at
least one very drunk person (who probably misunderstood me), I tried to
encourage the locals to actually implement it. I mean, it would take less
effort than a booth in Christkindlmarkt, since you don’t have to worry about
quality. It would be a great way to unload badly made gluehwein, rotten bread,
poorly crafted (ideally dangerous) wooden toys, old clothing, badwill, stress,
and every Austrian’s latent desire to terrify children. Why Krampus, if they
don’t like scaring kids?
Christmas market in Vienna.
Santa Claus is typically fat and jolly. So Krampus must be even bigger so he can intimidate and overwhelm Santa. We need a really scary Krampus with the muscle, temerity, personality, and language skills to not just beat up Santa but ensure that fat fuck never puts on a suit again. Ideally, someone who once played football for the Graz Giants and gloats about bench pressing on FB. And if he smells bad and has poor fashion sense and terrifies children just being himself, why, all the better. Yeah. You know who. No, Clemens. Not you.
Austrians also have bowling. Sort of. Actually, a weird 9 pin variant with smaller bowling balls. You only get one try to knock down pins, and they are connected with strings to facilitate resetting. Otherwise, pretty similar to western bowling. I went out with the g.tec team in Steyr and our team won. I had declared that the winning team gets a hug from Christoph Guger, but he refused, so I transferred it to Gerv instead.
Austrian bowling near Schiedelberg.
I made Mexican food for the gtec office in Schiedelberg. I didn't really bring any enchilada sauce, or any Mexican ingredients, so had to make do with whatever I could buy at the local Inter-Spar. I put out a decent buffet, with tortillas, taco shells, fresh guac, sour cream, taco sauce, 2 kinds of shredded cheese, lettuce, ground beef, and chicken. And nothing spicy. They seemed happy. I'll have to remember the enchilada sauce next time.
Mexikanisch essen.