Zombified and fit to burst

I had a lovely weekend with my British visitors, attended an entertaining office Christmas party on Friday night (everybody who claims to have some "talent" or other was encouraged to share it with the rest of the inmates. We had a Japanese wannabe Luciano Pavarotti, a karate demonstration by someone who's a chef in his day job, a rather dissonant orchestra and Big Boss singing country songs. You get the picture.), went to the farewell-dinner of friends who are going to Paris for six months and at each of the above events had lots to eat.

On Sat., we took our visitors to Kurkonditorei Oberlaa, one of Vienna's best and most prestigious pastry shops. We insisted they try Turkish Delight's favourite cake, the incredibly delicious Schokomoussetorte, an Oberlaa classic. Unfortunately female English friend had a craving for something with apples and male English friend does not like chocolate. Let me just repeat this. He.does.not.like.chocolate. Was he gang-raped by viscious chocolate manufacturers as a child or experienced some other traumatic event which made him go off chocolate? He claims that he just doesn't like it any more. I truly hope it's not contagious! Well, TD and I indulged in the orgasmic chocolate-mousse cake anyway:

After our "light snack" we went to the Christmas market on Rathausplatz/town hall square. If you want to see just how claustrophobically crowded it gets there, you can play with the webcams on their site. You can actually zoom in on people to an eerily accurate degree, allowing you to almost see the pores of their skin and count the coins in their wallets... I hadn't been to the Rathausplatz market for at least 3 years and was once more reminded why I didn't like it. In fact, it was truly horrible. While our visitors were looking at baubles, I bumped into a friend from school whose daughter was trying to get her to buy her things from at least 10 stalls simultaneously.

I also half-heartedly looked at some bags but the omnipresent stench of artificially flavoured mulled wine and punch and greasy langos (fried pankake-shaped batter with tonnes of garlic, dripping with fat) can put even the most hardboiled of retailtherapists off shopping.

Getting to bed very late (or early, depending on how you look at it) is taking its toll on me and I'm sitting in the office in a rather zombified state today, more or less sleeping with my eyes open. Not that anyone has noticed, of course. I got a chocolate-filled doughnut, 2 pieces of very rich cake and a box of chocolate-covered candied oranges (also from Konditorei Oberlaa) from various colleagues first thing in the morning. I've only eated half of each cake and put the rest of the calorific gifts in aluminium foil to take them home as a doggy bag for TD. With gift-exchange dates taking place every single lunch-time and evening every day now until I leave for my well-deserved (?) vacation in KLU on Thursday morning, I am afraid I'll burst and explode into a zillion tiny little pieces way before Christmas eve...Watch out for retailtherapist-shrapnel there!

Purchases: Got the rest of my gifts on Saturday. Don't ask me what I bought, the question should be what I didn't buy. The list would be endless and make me relive the unbearable crowds and endless queues at the cash desks so I'll spare us the pain and won't go into detail.

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