Weird things Austrians… eat… the liver paste… bunny?

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Liver paste bunny

A while back I was in the supermarket and something in the deli cabinet caught my eye. Nestled among delicious slices of salami and prosciutto with the tang of pungent cheese wafting forth, I came across… the Liver Paste Bunny. Is anyone else channelling Donny Darko here? Because as far as evil bunnies go, this one takes the cake for me… or the paste… or whatever.

I don’t know if there’s a story behind this bunny. Here’s what I know:

  • It’s apparently made of liver paste
  • Someone or something at the deli made a conscious decision to fashion liver paste into a bunny
  • A interested consumer decided that an ‘bunny ear’ of liver paste was what they wanted to take home and eat

I also know:

  • It is not the only time this kind of thing has happened
Liver paste mouse

Because another time I was there and behold… the Liver Paste… Mouse? I’m not sure if this one’s a mouse… or just a different breed of bunny. Obviously the artist is improving because this guy looks pretty suave – he’s got a bow tie and all! But the spoon looks decidedly heart-wrenching… as if someone is slowly caving out the inside of his skull at the back where you can’t see…

I recently returned to this supermarket with the sole intention of sniffing out possibly a third critter, or to glean some more information as to… well… why?

Sadly this time the bunny/mouse was absent.

So I leave you with the question… why?

Wanna go out for Banguet? How about Gordon Bleu?

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Chinese Banguet or Banquet

It’s the classic when you go to a foreign country or just a restaurant where English is not the native language, to spot spelling mistakes in signs and menus. It keeps us in good humour, somehow, to titter over other people’s errors.

So much so that back in Oz, a friend of mine and I stopped going out for Chinese Banquet and went to Banguet instead. To this day we never use the proper word “Banquet”.

So when I came to Austria I picked up ‘Gordon Bleu’ pretty quick. Did they really think it started with G? Is it the way they say it that makes it seem like it’s a G?

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Why do sad movies make me happy?

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sad emoji

Like many others in this world, I’m a sucker for a romance movie. I’m a sucker for a rom-com. I’m a sucker for a drama. To be fair I’ll give just about anything a go.

Whether or not it’s embarrassing to admit, I’m going to say that the romance movie is probably on the top of my list of favourite things to watch. A great romance movie is worth its weight in gold. But when you add heartbreak into that movie, then I’m all the more in. I don’t live for happy endings, I live for the drama. I live for the guy walking away in the end because he knows it’s the right thing to do, even if it breaks his heart. I like movies where people die, goddamn it!

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Coming out of Covid

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Eating out after covid

Many countries in the last months have been dealing with the rocky ride of transitioning out of hard lockdown into something a bit more normal. In Austria, the official date was May 19th. And yes, I took the afternoon off work to go to the pool… and yes, it was freezing but I went anyway.

With the opening of the restaurants and so on, they introduced the 3G rule. That is… Getestet, Geimpft oder Gesund. Basically if you want to eat at a restaurant, have a haircut, visit a pool or lake etc. you have to be able prove that you have either a valid negative Covid test, have been vaccinated (3+ weeks) or have recovered from Covid (in the last 6 months).

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Red Alert! – it’s a heatwave

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Pool party Austria summer

We are currently in the midst of a heatwave here in Austria. And yes I know, I do tease the Austrian folk about how much they complain the second the temperature goes over 25 degrees, but I have to say, this heatwave is a good one. It’s been consistently over 30 for more than a week now. And while that may be fairly ‘normal’ in Oz, it only tends to happen once a year here (if we’re lucky) – and it’s only June!

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Shuffle that iPod Classic!

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Following on from my post last week about my obsession with music, I undertook an experiment. I attached my iPod Classic (with its 4584 songs) to a speaker (using an actual cord because it was invented before Bluetooth), and I wrote down the first ten songs on shuffle… just to see how eclectic the mix would be. I must admit I was nervous… there’s a lot of crap on there… but I think it went pretty well. And here’s the big reveal, from 1 to 10.

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My obsession with music & playlists

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iPod Classic

Everything I do has a soundtrack. I hate sitting in silence – be it in the car, eating dinner or working – if there’s no music playing, I’m just ever so slightly edgy.

I understand that plenty of people find it difficult to concentrate with music on – but I’m the opposite – I find it difficult to concentrate without it on. There are some situations where silence is required, but for me, they are very few and far between.

I consider my taste in music to be epic. And I consider my music collection to be extensive. Extensively epic, obviously (this is my blog, I can write what I want). Of course most of it sits in what one might call the ‘alternative’ sphere – and in that sphere I’m quite mainstream with a bit of quirk on the side. I don’t really do hip hop or rap or jazz or classical or metal or dance – my passion sits in what I might call light alternative. To demonstrate, here’s some of my favourites: The Living End, Birds of Tokyo, Bloc Party, Radiohead, Nirvana, The National, Muse, Ballpark Music, and the list goes on.

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Mixed Tapes – the technology has progressed but the concept stays the same

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casette tape

Having my first year in Austria free meant I had a lot of time to devote to my many hobbies: dog walking, writing, exercising… but of course a lesser-known hobby of mine is making mixed tapes. And even if I do say so myself… I consider myself quite good at it.

I started off very young… mixing cassette tapes off the radio: sitting for hours in my room with a tape in deck… waiting patiently for my favourite songs to come on and pressing play at exactly the right moment (kids these days have no idea!). As I got older, I progressed to purchasing tapes and mixing them together on blank ones… and of course making custom-printed covers for them on the computer!

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Covid goes on… it’s not so bad… is it?

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Masks at the pool - covid

With the news of Victoria’s flash seven day hard lockdown last week, I’m reminded again what a yoyo of an experience this whole thing has really been. On one side I’m in Europe where measures against Covid were relatively mild… and I say relatively because the flip side of that coin was Australia where life in my home state basically stood still for months on end. At first I was thankful I was in Europe, where we were coming into summer and were safe – this thing would be over soon. It was lucky I wasn’t stuck in Australia in a hard-core lockdown. That would be awful. But then it flipped again. Europe hit the cooler months and Covid raged… while in Australia it was back to business as usual.

And there’s these words I keep hearing again and again… it’s not so bad…

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Sunburn shame

debbiekaye19806 Comments

Even in these times of awareness about the dangers of UV and the sun, there’s still plenty of sunburn going on. Of course, we can’t protect ourselves from everything, and we do need our vitamin D, but as an adult, there’s no reprimand if we stay in the sun too long. Nobody yells at you. It’s more ooh that’s going to hurt later than what an irresponsible individual you are.

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