Sir Peter Ustinov!

I sort of fancy Sir Peter Ustinov. Though I think that his voice has probably been imprinted on me as something positive from early childhood on, as Robin Hood was one of my favourite Disney films, and Prince John is about the most fantastic villain one can imagine. (Of course, there are those villains that are fantastic for being really great at being evil, and those, like Prince John, that are fantastic for being really rubbish at being evil.)
Yesterday I found this on youtube, and I advise everybody to watch it. I lament the fact that society hardly ever produces charismatic, intelligent, talented and witty old men any more. What is wrong with society? I mean look at him:











(It's long, but well worth it.)

Manic Plans Apropos France.

Possibly, via car, in the first week of April.

Tour:


Retour, alternative 1:
Retour, alternative 2:

I will not elaborate on the fact that it would amount to a sin to be so close to Spain in the week before easter and not go there to see their mad death cult church procession shenenigans. I must somehow contain myself!

3 (Three).

First, for the sake of continuity, I have to tie up the loose threads of the Snow!-Post. It turned out it was all a hoax (initiated by the road salt industry, we believe) - the great big snow never came, and therefore I unfortunately could not witness Vienna being buried under 15 feet of pure white snow. Or even 1. Colour me disappointed!

Second, I'm taking a leaf out of dot's book (not literally, of course, I know how much she values her books) posting lists of things that make me happy. These lists, they are very good in a count-your-blessings sort of way. I am actually of the opinion that blessings work quite well, even if uncounted, as long as they still have time and space to spead out and do their thing. Sometimes, though, in all the stress and the pressure of everyday life, they get squished between dead-lines and waiting-lines, and sometimes remain unnoticed for weeks. This must not happen.
Here are three happifying facts that I saved from oblivion this week.

1. The library of the Department of Art History on campus, or more specifically its Kompaktus. This is the downstairs area where they keep books and journals in rolling shelves. Whenever I go there, I feel like I'm burrowing inside and tunnelling through a huge accumulation of knowledge, to retrieve single pieces that I can then carry upstairs to the light. I don't quite know why the rolling shelves fascinate me so, but perhaps to a certain extent it's that feeling of adventure (you never know when you're going to get squeezed to death between the shelves) and the fact that the mechanism and the movement are a bit like something from an Indiana Jones film.

2. New Yarn!

I've got new (soft, warm, lovely, colourful) yarn to knit with and needles to go with it - 8 mm thick. Heaven!

3. Ambience-Skyping. It's when you call somebody on skype but not to actually have a conversation, but just to share each others background noises, while each is busy doing work, reading, ect. Mostly it would turn out really boring, but in case you miss someone in particular, it does help to reduce loneliness in times of much-to-do. Even if in our case, it always holds a certain risk of metamorphosing into songbird like whistling-dialogues or choruses of other animal noises, it increases the quality of studious evenings alone considerably.

Stunning piece of iron work!

And amazingly, it's not plagiarism. Evidently you can't copyright a sound.

Snow!

I'm a little envious of people in Great Britain, and wish I could be there at the moment. We have more than enough snow ourselves, but up there it's always more magical and so much more special. Snow in Britain seems to liberate the child in everyone, here it just seems to give people a reason to be a little more grumpy and complain.
Apparently the coming weekend will bring even more snow to Austria and even for the capital meteorologists have predicted up to 40 cm of snow. Which would be rather amazing, because usually, snow doesn't really linger very long in the inner city area of Vienna. I'm curious how people will deal with such a load of snow, if usually half an inch is enough to make them cause severe traffic chaos. I, for my part, have already blown off all plans to go to the country over the weekend. Instead I'll stay put and watch the situation unfold. And I'll be there with a camera, in case anything is worth documenting. And should the snow really come, it also will be best not to rely on the tram to take me to Uni on Monday. Luckily I have two functioning feet and can just about deal with a 10 minute winder-wonder-walk.

Stay tuned for more snow-news. :)