The Adventure Continues...

Rants, raves and random observations from an itinerant epidemiologist.

  
100 in 1000
  1. Spend a week up a mountain learning to ski
  2. Visit Karoline's place in Moravia
  3. Hold a conversation in Czech (only)
  4. Drink 500ml of each of the following beers:
    1. Pilsner
    2. Staroprammen
    3. Budvar
    4. Velke Popovice
    5. U Fleku
    6. Gambrinus
    7. Krusovice
  5. Respond to at least one GOARN request (WHO and MSF are also acceptable)
  6. Travel across the Atlantic
  7. Return to South America
  8. Read a book to, or with, an impressionably aged child
  9. Participate in one NanoWriMo Challenge and come within at least 10,000 words of the goal length
  10. Have my nose pierced
  11. Have my next tattoo drawn
  12. Purchase the perfect jeans (x 2 pairs)
  13. Attend a spin class 3 times a week for 8 consecutive weeks
  14. Bake Viv's cheesecake
  15. Make David's casserole
  16. Make David's Chicken Cashew-nut Stirfry
  17. Invite 4 people who don't know one another too well to dinner
  18. Ride from Vienna to Venice on a motorbike (pillion acceptable, those less desirable)
  19. Attend a book group for at least two books
  20. Go on a choir weekend (learn and perform difficult piece in two/three days)
  21. Visit Madame Tussaud's (in London)
  22. Take an architecture appreciation course
  23. Join an all-girl group and sing a solo
  24. Publish in a scientific journal (top two authors)
  25. Cook a duck or other 'waterfowl'.
  26. Locate the Al-Timimi's from Doha Veterinary Practise
  27. Have a pedicure
  28. Maintain a Brazilian (ouch) for three months.
  29. Find a trustworthy Czech hairdresser
  30. Treat my inner-6-year-old twice a week (at least)
  31. Do the liver-cleansing diet properly (12 weeks)
  32. Don't eat out for one month
  33. Find a flat and flatmate
  34. Purchase one Joseph sweater
  35. Purchase one of the following pairs of designer shoes (they MUST also be COMFORTABLE, and be able to be worn with 4 different outfits and 2 types of occasion): Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks, Christian Louboutin (Ebay or 2nd hand are acceptable)
  36. Send 5 books to the booksphere and track them.
  37. Go hanggliding
  38. Read 10 'classic' books (from 1001 Books to Read before you Die)
    1. Moll Flanders
    2. Everything is illuminated
    3. Madam Bovary
    4. Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
    5. Catch-22
    6. Odysseus
    7. On the Road
  1. Run (non-stop!) for 5kms outside (preferably in a street race thingy)
  2. Send Christmas Cards on time
  3. Make a collage/mural out of street lights on my wall
  4. Buy a bed, build it, and sleep soundly in it
  5. Go to Africa
  6. Host an 'event' (classified as and when)
  7. Organise a 30th Birthday Party
  8. Wear a costume
  9. Sing on stage
  10. Buy a painting that evokes memories of Prague (cannot involve queues!)
  11. Learn a god-damned card game that stays in my memory (other than fish/snap)
  12. See sunrise. Be sober. Have woken for it. Excludes months Nov-Mar
  13. Take a walk and flip coins at each intersection
  14. Win something
  15. Draft a will
  16. Take a roadtrip
  17. Go to Italy already
  18. Sea Kayak around Abel Tasman Park (NZ)
  19. Get plants
  20. Take a train to another Eastern European Destination (accession countries are acceptable) alone preferably.
  21. Get UK to give me a provisional motorcyclists license and simultaneously get a 'card' license.
  22. Go SCUBA diving again - at least two dives lasting 30mins each.
  23. Go to a dentist. *sigh*
  24. Do a Czech Wine Trail. And live to tell the tale
  25. Make an 'outbreak emergency kit'.
  26. Go to bed prior to 11pm every night (inc weekends) for four consecutive weeks.
  27. Marvel over lack of tiredness
  28. Dine at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant (or Nobu)- preferably for free.
  29. Bet on the nags
  30. Do something for charity (applying and getting a 'red card' will count)
  31. Walk along the Champs Elysee
  32. Do 100 sit ups in a row
  33. Do 50 pressups (arms in tight)
  34. Make branston pickle (or nearest substitute)
  35. Cook something 'new' and 'adventurous' at least once a month
  36. Find a mentor
  37. Be a mentor
  38. Learn what mentoring is all about
  39. Meet an online person in real life
  40. Resist the flirt. Once. Just one night. It's okay if people don't immediately succumb to my natural charm. Really it is.
  41. Spend time at a spa (spa towns in the CR don't count)
  42. Send a care package to someone
  43. Get a Tata Bojs CD
  44. Take a French/German/Dutch course and SPEAK THE DAMNED LANGUAGE WHEN I HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES ME SOUND LIKE AN IDIOT!
  45. Order new contact lenses.
  46. Make a list of things I take with me when I pack for different occasions
  47. Eat lobster. Prepared by someone else.
  48. Back up the blog
  49. Put everything onto an external hard drive
  50. Find a DDR mat and console and 'dance, I say dance!'�
  51. Go to the beach and lie on the warm sand. For an hour. (with sunscreen on, natch)
  52. Take and complete a course in either: Tango, Salsa or Flamenco
  53. Join the Municipal Library of Prague
  54. Move to another country
  55. Go to a live concert of a band I actually like
  56. Pay off debts (student loan excl.)
  57. Send thank you cards for every gift I receive (other than the gift of happiness, blah blah blah).
  58. Get an agent (literary or theatre)
  59. Go to a sports bar without cringing, by personal choice
  60. Ride a rollercoaster
  61. Hold a snake
  62. Spend a day wandering around a museum (not art gallery!)
Vienna – further East than Prague. Yeah, right! pt II
Thursday 6 September 2007
Getting up so early had clearly addled my brain, and I thought I’d do the same thing the following day, to see the Vienna Boys Choir – those little squeakers. I was marginally disappointed, when I read: having rested (and I guess some of them, matured their way out of the choir) over the July/August summer months – they only start up again mid-Sept. Marginally gutted.

The whole Michaelerplatz area does make you think: “ooh, royal apartments” though. The buildings look kinda like apartment buildings, but it’s all terribly palatial (click on the flickr badge to see photos of the statues that adorn everything). It’s a much more impressive area than our castle in Prague – even if our one is the “largest operating castle in Europe”. Whatever that actually means (I think there must be people running around in scrubs, performing complex surgeries…but I MAY have misconstrued things).

Wandered the streets for hours – took in the Gothic Cathedral in Stephansplatz. Meh. This is where hanging in Prague totally ruins you. As you’ve probably noticed – Prague has become my yardstick for measuring all else. And frankly, St Vitus has WAY more grandeur than St Stephens. It might be the symmetry, or it might be it’s geographical placement within the castle grounds. Whichever. I was a bit “seen one gothic cathedral, seen ‘em all” by this time (hunger struck). Three candles – odd to change the number after all these years.

Found myself a supermarket (ice cream is good for lunch, no?) and a bottle of bubbles and headed off to State Park – the park with the largest number of monuments and sculptures in Vienna. Loads of them are composers whose names did not make into my fragmented musical knowledge. Others (Schubert and Strauss) had such statues that people were (neatly) lining up on one side to have their photos taken in front of them. Tidier than the Warsaw Rising melee from two weeks ago, but just a little weird.

Anyway, this park has wide open green spaces surrounded by lush trees and flowering shrubs – very Garden Force. Due to the “no dogs” signs and the obeying nature of the Austrians, I was in no danger of tripping over or lying in dog poo (hoorah!). I found a green spot, laid out and drank while reading my book, warming my tummy in the sun, texting everyone I knew about how good life was. Happy and warm, I even slept a bit, returning to the sensation of being a normal person on the grass – just as though it were my backyard. Until a dark shadow passed over me. A dark shadow dressed in uniform (this is not going the way of a ‘good dream’!), who said,
“something something something verboeten!”
Austrian sounds angry.
“Er, I’m sorry, um, I’m English.” I stammered – in a VERY good imitation of Hugh Grant.
“English. Verboeten.” (what? the entire language?)
Hmm…I wondered if he knew that verboeten isn’t ACTUALLY an English word.
“Oh, here? Verboeten? Me?” I pointed wildly at the ground, at me, and at the sun.
“Yes. Sorry.”

ARGH!!! Europe! Where you can’t even lie on the grass!

Well, not THIS patch of grass at any rate. THAT patch (about 5m away) was fine. Apparently, I was messing up “Strauss Lawn”. Quite.

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posted by Nomes @ Thursday, September 06, 2007  
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