My last entry ended with the trip to Melk and Krems. That was fabulous, and after that break, I was ready to go back to work that week. Things went well up until Tuesday, when my stomach started feeling weird. Wednesday was super dicey, and by Wednesday evening I was a miserable wreck. I spent the next three days sleeping very little and spending sad amounts of time curled up in a ball on my bed. I managed to get some work done from home on that Thursday and Friday, and over the weekend, but sadly I also happened to miss two of the busiest days ever at my workplace. I'm still not sure what caused Stomach Disaster 2011, but since it afflicted others at work, I'm guessing it was either shared food poisoning from the cafeteria or a bug of some sort. By the following Sunday, I was feeling much better and was actually able to take a shower for longer than 5 minutes. Looking forward to a nice warm soak, I turned the handle and waited for the water to get warm. A minute later, and the water was still ice cold. Uh oh. I checked the other taps, and there was no hot water there too. And come to think of it, last night was particularly cold in the apartment. I let my landlady know, and we determined that the water heater was kaput. While they hired an engineer, I was told I was welcome to use their shower. This is where my ongoing saga with Austrian electronics continues with a daring and epic battle involving a modern Austrian shower.
A word about my shower. It is a simple shower head in a bath tub. There is one handle for water. There's a normal looking drain. Simple. Their shower? First of all, their bathroom has two showers - a big bath tub with a shower head, and then a capsule shower. I chose the later because I was not in the mood for a bath. This shower had such a confusing number of knobs, including an in-shower radio, that I stood here a minute and tried to figure out how to turn on the shower before I actually got in. Once I was encapsulated, I turned the shower on full blast. As expected, water came out of the shower head. What was unexpected was jets of water coming out from the walls. As a I looked down at the floor, I noticed, with panic, that the water wasn't really draining very quickly. I decided to try to wash as fast as possible, but the water was rising too quickly for my comfort. So I decided to shut it off while washing and turn it on only to rinse. However, I forgot which handles turned the shower on and off, and in my confusion, I must have changed the settings. When I finally got the shower back on, water streamed out of the shower head, as expected...and from the roof of the shower, which was quite unexpected. What a confusing experience.
Later that week was my birthday, which was quite lovely and involved going out to dinner with lots of MIIS folk - several of whom were visiting for a conference. I also got to meet some IAEA inspectors, both of whom had very amusing tales. Also visiting last week was a friend from a course I took last summer. We decided to go out last weekend to Laxenburg, which is the home of summer palaces for various royals (pictures on facebook). The trip out there was really quite easy and cheap. The castle grounds were absolutely immense, which was quite surprising since they're right next to a decent-sized town. I can see why someone would build a summer castle out there - it's very pretty. After walking around, we had ice cream bars and headed back to the city. The next day, I met up with Val and her boyfriend for hot chocolate and then dinner. Her boyfriend made chicken curry from scratch, and Val made an angel food cake with strawberries. Both dishes were divine, and I was lucky enough to have lots of leftovers foisted on me. I am already scheming ways to get them to cook for me again soon...
This weekend: Budapest.
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