December: Wiggy Festwochen Date

From Diciembre Rob wants to see great performances while in Vienna. He's not content to attend the fluffy tourist concerts being hawked by men in Mozart coats. But he tries hard to find things I can understand too. Consequently we have seen some interesting, but offbeat things. In 2005 we saw something called "Amnesia de Fugar" (Amnesia of Migration?) for which the audience had to be at least bilingual. It was a play in Spanish and Hindi being simultaneously translated into German (the Spanish) and English (the Hindi). It was fantastic.
Last night's language was theoretically simpler: Chileans speaking Spanish with German supertitles. It was a dystopian play with three actors set in 2014 with a Chile who is at war with Peru and Bolivia. A soldier, Jorge, is at home visiting his two sisters, Trinidad and Paula. Trinidad is a hippie pacifist and Paula is a warmonger. Family dysfunction reigns. At various points both sisters are so mad that they rip off their wigs.
The acting was incredible. Each person came on at one point as another character and they were phenomenal. But more amazing was their ability to talk for about five minutes straight. Neither Rob nor I could keep up with everything that happened in the last 20 minutes because it was so rapid fire that I couldn't keep up and the supertitles just kept flashing on by. We tried to piece some of it together afterward. It was the last of our Festwochen tickets this year and we're sorry to see them go -- we were just commenting that we've never seen a bad performance with them; plenty of things that went way over our heads, but always an amazing event.
Then we walked back through the city (no strollers! no whining!) a new way and went to the Grieschenbeisl. This is one of the oldest establishments in Vienna, and Will and I found it on one of our walks in 2002, but I'd never been there to eat. I thought we didn't have time, it being already 10pm, but Rob asked the host if we could just come in for a 'Moor and his Shirt', and we were seated and had it in front of us within 5 minutes. I guess you know how to run a restaurant when you've been in business over half a millenium. There was barrel vaulting. There was accordion playing. There was a large man making ribald comments about the items on the menu ("Bavarians!" cried Rob like a true Berliner). It was a pretty fabulous example of Moor and His Shirt -- a little more modern presentation with the cream on the side, a little crunchy even around the edges. A little darker chocolate sauce. Very satisfying.
One of our students is on Strudelquest 2009, to find the most amazing, most affordable apple strudel. I'm definitely more in search of the end-all and be-all of Mohr im Hemd.

Comments

Curtis said…
I've never heard of Moor im Hemd. It's now on my list. And the sugar-free kick will be out the window.
5:22 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Trip Home: A Report Card

Image
Our Itinerary: Stuttgart to Atlanta and Atlanta to Salt Lake. It was a good schedule, flying out at 11:00am and getting in at 9:00pm on the same day (flying back across 8 time zones too, so about 23 hours of travel door to door). German taxi driver: A+. cheerful, knowledgeable, efficient and with candy for the kids Stuttgart airport: C-. inefficient, poorly-designed, and not very helpful; had to show our passports 5 times in 5 different places. took 1 1/2 hours to process us from curb to gate. ugh. Delta: B-. The flight attendants all looked "rid hard & put away wet" and the bare bones service just can't keep up with their [government subsidized] European counterparts with their dewy-skinned attendants, steaming towels, toys for the kids, and gourmet meals instead of astronaut food served in foil pouches. They got us there and did it on time, but it feels more and more like riding on a bus with a lot of rules. German Family With Four Kids Who Sat Next To Us On The
Read more

Mohr im Hemd

Image
I finally got up the nerve to try my own Mohr im Hemd. This was the dish that we always ordered if we found it on the menu. It translates as "The Moor and His Shirt" which is so politically incorrect that it isn't easy to find, even though it is a traditional Viennese dish. It is a steamed pudding, like the Christmas dessert I grew up on and it is very moist and very chocolate, though not as sweet as an American dessert. It was successful enough that Rob had me make it twice more in the same weekend. Happily, after learning how to make it, I feel less guilty about eating the stuff. How often does that happen? Here is the recipe I used, as opposed to the top secret family recipe that I don't even have, or the recipe from my Austrian cookbook that asks for 'gratified butter': MA's Mohr im Hemd 3 bread rolls, crusts removed and cubed 1 c milk 3/4 c unsalted butter 1/4 c sugar 8 oz best and darkest chocolate you can find 8 eggs 1/2 c sugar 1/2 c walnuts,
Read more

Blue and Gold Cake Contest

Image
Have we mentioned that Rob is now the Cubmaster? It was something of a shock, but it has been great for getting the boys excited about scouting (and let's face facts: Rob and I are lukewarm at best on a paramilitary, homophobic, psuedo-Hitler Youth organization, so our boys were destined to embrace it wholeheartedly from the start). One of the first arguments that Rob ever won with his parents was over scouting. They had moved into a neighborhood with no other kids his age, and so his eagle project would have been almost entirely solo (with some help from his younger brother). He proposed that instead of getting his eagle, he work towards becoming a Sterling Scholar in foreign languages at OHS. His parents finally agreed, and he did make Sterling Scholar at OHS, and went on to become the statewide foreign language Sterling Scholar. So my husband is one merit badge and an eagle project shy of his eagle, which just so happens (Freudianly?) to be exactly the same as my brother, Mr. T
Read more