Sweeeeeeeettttt Suite Dude

No matter how cold it is, they just won't keep those jackets on

Do you copy?  This is Evil Queen Bitchface, coming to you live from her suite.  Yes!  I won I won I won!  I don't even care so much about the room, it's far more the principle.  Although it is a seriously good room, and  I am congratulating myself most heartily on this occasion. Unfortunately, it is in fact my last night here, so in actual fact I did pretty shit.  But I think my dogged determination to get a freebie is a big turning point in my life.  I look forward to many more.  I've been trying to analyse my turn around.  I think it's basically this.  Before, I really wanted your average stranger to like me, to think I was a swell gal.  The over friendliness, the putting myself last, the "they look too busy to ask for another coffee" attitude to life.  That shit is over.  Now I don't care if they all hate me, I want my cappuccino hot you fuckers,  HOT.  And not reheated in the microwave.  A new one.  NOW.

do your jacket up you little minx

Not again!

Vienna has grown on me.  Initially I was really feeling the Italian/Austrian difference, and not in Austria's favour.  I missed the warm character and enthusiasm of the Italians.  And of course, the general atmosphere.  I also missed the coffee, and surprisingly the filth.  Austria was so clean,  it's people so cool.  Bordering on snooty.  Now I'm growing fond.  I forgot how nice it was not to have to engage with everyone you passed by.  It's also a great improvement that there are toilet seats on every toilet.  That's one thing I forgot to discuss about Italy.  Where are all the fricken toilet seats?  From Venice to Sicily, all you get is a rim.  For me it's ok, those upper thigh muscles need the workout that comes with doing the hover.  But for my three year olds.  That shiz don't fly.  I think I've seriously done my back in from holding them over the bowl.  Plus I've copped a significant amount of urine on my hands (Just when you thought those days were finally over.....).  One of them hates the Mummy-held-hover, so I must clean down that filthy rim with anything I can get my hands on, before her pure little backside presses into it.  But I couldn't help but wonder about the mystery of  Italy's toilet seats.  In my opinion, it's a right, not a privilege to have somewhere to sit.  Even if you have to craft yourself a little layer seat of toilet paper over the real seat so you don't get AIDS, I still want a seat dam it.

It was in the train station next to the Vatican that I finally discovered what happened to Italy's toilet seats.  I couldn't believe my eyes, there were actually seats in some of these toilets.  However they seemed to be sort of rotting away.  On further inspection it seemed that the seats were made of a woody cardboard sealed in a kind of vinyl material.  However, this wood-like substance had began to expand and burst through the outside vinyl sealant.  Thus exposed, the toilet seat began it's descent towards oblivion.  It all became clear.  Once there were toilet seats throughout Italy, but over the passing sands of time they had all since disintegrated into nothing, and nobody had bothered to replace them.  Why bother when they will just become sawdust once again.......Although you could say the same thing about showering, and also wiping your bottom......

Guten Tag Little Rats

Yep, Austrian toilets sure are clean, so are the streets and the public areas in general.  The people are impeccably dressed, but in my opinion, lack that flair for looking simultaneously scruffy and amazing that so many stylish Italians have.  There aren't many fatties here though.  The older ladies are bringing it home with tight butts in leather pants.  That seems to be the dress code at this hotel.  So far I've noticed that the only people staying here seem to be gangs of mature women cackling in the corners, and groups of business men browsing newspapers.  Not one child.  I feel a little embarrassingly out of place.  Especially considering the table manners my little sweeties possess.  Thank god I like them again though (my children, not their table manners).  This blog was going to start off in this type of vein;
"Children take everything good in your life and trash it.  Actually they take everything good in the world and shit all over it and then make you eat it".
That's pretty child hating stuff right there.  I guess that happens when you suddenly become a single mum in a country full of pricks.  But of course I'm not a single mum.   No where near it.  In times like this, I really get down on my knees (figuratively of course, the floors are a bit dirty) and give all those mums admiration.  How on earth do they do it every single bloody day?  I'm exhausted after three.  Luckily for me and them (mostly them), the hatred for your offspring doesn't last long.  It must be built-in biological default program.  As before you know it, you're posting 130 pictures of them on facebook and telling funny stories to anyone who'll listen, about how one led her "dog" through the streets on a "lead"(jacket belt) today.  She refused to answer to "Valli",  and would only bark in reply to her dog name that Cordi invented.  The "dog" kept stopping to sniff things.  I shut the game down after "Dorius" ate a piece of bread off the street and sniffed an actual dog's piss on a pole.  I'm serious.  People were staring anyway, and upon viewing that little display, their amusement soon turned to horror.  I became a target for scorn due to child negligence. And breeding grotty little freaks I guess.

You will see the palace, you will pose in front of the palace, and you will love the palace

7 year old Marie Antoinette in 1762

I tried to get the girls out of our previous tiny room as much as I could, and took them off to do activities.  It's always so much more effort than what it's worth.  How much do they complain about everything?  It's phenomenal.  And they always over-react.  A high pitched screech sounds out - you run from the bogger with your pants around your ankle to be greeted by "I can't get my shoe off".  Fuck you kid.  We did see some sights of Vienna though.  A trip to the Schönbrunn Palace (which was the summer palace of the royal family of Austria from the mid 1500s until 1918) was a pleasant outing.  I even managed to get the girls to hold it together through 40 rooms of restored palace treasures and furniture.  I was loving it.  I saw the room where a 6 year old Mozart had given a performance to Marie Antoinette and her mother in 1762.  Having visited Versailles before, and always being fascinated by the French Queen's life at court, as well as her downfall - which of course led to her eventual beheading at the hands of the revolutionaries, I was losing my load to see where Marie Antoinette grew up with her fifteen brothers and sisters.  They have done some incredible restoration work there, and you can see tables set in the dining rooms and all the furniture, the beds, bedspreads, the paintings, the ballroom.....What a history nerd I am. Love it.  I am also dragging the girls into my obsession as there is a part of the palace where children can dress up as royal princesses and set an imperial table for dinner.  It was closed for our visit, but never fear I will be back within the week to have them play "Queenie".  Oh, and after four days in Austria, I totally get why poor old Marie Antoinette supposedly said "let them eat cake" - The cakes here are insane.  INSANE.  And everywhere you look is cake.  The breakfast buffet is jammed full of it, and the streets are packed with cake shops.  The girls keep licking the glass in front of the displays in these shops.

But despite Marie Antoinette being a royal princess of Austria, The Austrian royal of the moment, is the Empress Sisi (Elizabeth) who was Empress from 1854 until 1898.  There is Sisi crap all over the joint. The girls have Sisi colouring books, and I eyed off the Sisi "violet chocolates" in the supermarket tonight.  Apparently candied violets were her faves.   I even bought myself an historical novel about her.  Briefly I will outline a few interesting facts;

A 14 inch waist needs some serious corsetry

Sisi was the daughter of Duke Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria. He was an amateur zither player (a musical instrument like a sitar), who once climbed the Great Pyramids. He forced a group of his servants to climb behind him, yodelling, so he could pretend he was climbing the Alps. He returned with three severed mummies’ heads and a group of children he bought at the Cairo slave market.  Must have been an interesting homelife for young Sisi.

When she was 15 she married her cousin and became Empress.  She was obsessed with her beauty and in order to preserve it, she slept upright in a steel frame, while wearing a leather mask on her face.  This mask had slabs of raw veal underneath, pressing onto her skin.  She also slept in clothes that were soaked with vinegar.  Mmmm..... nothing like the smell of vinegar and raw meat to give you a sound slumber.   Not to mention being upright and strapped to metal bars.  Sisi also had a gym installed in the palace, and did her exercises compulsively for hours everyday - this was in the 1800s remember, ladies did NOT sweat.  She had extremely long hair (down to her ankles), and after her hairdresser finished arranging it (for three hours daily), the terrified woman had to present any hairs that had fallen out in a silver bowl to the reproachful Sisi.  She rarely ate, and if she did, it was the juices squeezed out of meat, and sometimes milk and eggs.  She was completely obsessed with remaining thin and was horrified by fat women.

The Empress was a bit of a tragic figure.  Obviously mental, and often depressed. She had poor health and travelled excessively, being constantly away from her husband and children.  Later, her only son was involved in a suicide pact with his 17 year old mistress, and his death devastated Sisi, and is said to have been the beginning of the collapse of the Austrian monarchy.  If that wasn't enough, poor Sisi was stabbed at the age of 60, by an anarchist with a small sharpened file.  Her wound was so little, that blood leaked out of the tiny hole in her heart before anyone realised something was up. Her last words were reported to be "It is nothing".

None of this was eluded to in the Sisi colouring books I bought the girls...It was all about the horse riding and outfits......hmmmm.  Still stuck on the veal slabs in the leather mask while encased in a steel frame????? Me too.  It's very Hannibal Lector. Imagine if you were a palace guest and took a wrong turn into her bedroom on the way to the toilet.

I know I put my meat mask around here somewhere

Let's see, what else have we been up to.  Sausage eating.  Horse viewing - no carriage ride yet, but it's on the cards.  They pull real glass coaches.  See, this is the great thing about having children.  You get to do all the lame activities you would never be caught dead doing, and pretend it's all for them.  The other good thing is that whenever you need to go to the toilet you just barge into a cafe or hotel with one of them in your arms and say "Please, my little baby girl needs to use the toilet" with a look of desperation in your eyes.  They never refuse, or try and make you buy a drink or anything.  Just as long as the girls don't pipe up with "No I don't Mummy, you need to". It will happen.  I dread that day.   Rightio, what else? Ah yes - the imperial zoo at the royal palace.  Reported (by itself) as the "World's Greatest Zoo". However, it was, in fact, your typical crap zoo.  Basically it sucked and you leave with a heavy heart about seeing the elephants freezing their trunks off and wandering round in their own filth.  Why do I do it?  What an idiot. That's why zoos are still in business.  The girls enjoyed seeing a little red squirrel hunting through the leaves next to the cages far more than any of the animals. Elephants really stink you see.

Fish just don't inspire much sympathy do they?

Yesterday we visited the Butterfly Gardens.  The girls seemed so excited before we went in.  Once we got in though and the huge things were flapping around them, they were screaming their bloody heads off and chasing them, trying to slap them down.  It didn't bode well with the other butterfly enthusiasts, who were relaxing on wicker chairs and revelling in the experience.  Plus it was a million degrees in there.  The sweat was running, even though the coats had long since been off. I was carrying all coats, scarves and hats. When you're unprepared for it, that level of heat can really mess with your enjoyment of the moment. Why don't they mention the temperature issue in the tourist information?

I'd promised that butterflies would land on their heads.  Right now seriously pissed off it didn't happen

When we finally made it home. we were blocked from the door by a huge group of Palestine supporters having an anti-Israel rally.  They were really going for it.  They even had a bit in English that I could chant along to if I so desired.  It went something like this "Let Palestine be free, from the rivers to the trees"  Or was it seas?  It was enormously loud, and basically their message was "Fuck Israel.  Israel Sucks".  While it sounds like they are simply saying "Free Palestine", and your average person is like "Freedom? Yeah I can dig that"; what they are really saying is, "blow Israel off the face of the earth then we can have all the land from the rivers to the trees/seas".  Apparently it was a "Day of Rage" though, so I was expecting the Molotov's to be brought out again.  But it filtered away to nothing.  Call that rage?  Pathetic.  At least break a few shop windows, get arrested, something.

Shut up chanters.  I'm trying to read about Sisi's meat mask

Anyway, because yesterday was a day of sobs, it put me off doing much today, and as I said we had this suite that I wanted to make the most of.  Made myself a few nespressos, put my feet up on the glass table.  Watched everyone go past from the giant balcony, all freezing their stubby little noses off.  There was even an X-box with all Disney games and stuff to keep the girls occupied.  I've never used one before.  It was extremely entertaining watching them swing their arms, trying to hit rubber chickens into giant purple bubbles, and brush panda bear cubs with funny patting motions.   But Papa is back tomorrow, and we move out of this glorious short lived pleasure into an apartment.  We have decided to stay put for a little while and spend 10 days in Vienna.  Driving around and visiting place after place is brilliant, and of course an incredible privilege.  But sometimes all you want to do is stay home where it's warm, and eat cake.  And do your washing.  Oh gawd the washing.  Besides, if I don't get out of this hotel soon, the masses will turn on me and it really will be off with her head.  I can feel popular resistance building. The trays of treats have stopped coming to our room.  The manager ignored me at breakfast this morning.  The bitchface stare is losing it's power.  The Queen's short-lived, yet brutal reign of tyranny is coming to a close.  I must say though, it's been great while it lasted.

Can you believe the rolls are this big. Obviously the pigeons scored that afternoon