Those toes!

Sabina's baptism

This weekend I renounced satan and partook of the body and blood of JC, and in more mundane matters, had brunch with the joint Kincaid-Li clan, and also, it isn't a post on the nymiscellany blog (apparently) without a photo of a cute baby (who taught herself to crawl since the last time I saw her!) in someone's lap:

Sabina time

What I did last weekend:

Holidays in the burbs

Claud and Eleanor hosted Christmas this year, and I got to meet Sabina finally! Aurally, she's channeling Darth Vader or maybe a pack-a-day piglet, because she's crazy congested, and apparently it's a learned skill to blow snot out of your nose, or also to suck it in. So she's a very crusty and heavy breather right now because all the snot just sits in her nostrils and about every five breaths she'll inadvertently let out a snort, and every so often she also blows snot bubbles out of her nostrils. She's really taking full advantage of that window in life where whatever you do, no matter how disgusting, the world thinks it's the cutest thing ever.

We visited the pediatrician and she said she's pretty sure the eyes are gonna stay blue! Also, at just over four months she weighs in at a whopping 16.4 pounds, putting her in the 99th percentile for her age/size; I'm looking forward to getting her hand me downs starting sometime around next year...

Suddenly Wien

Here I am, in Vienna a few months earlier than I had expected to be. The plan was to come visit Tante Gerda over Christmas, but when she passed away on the 19th of September, my mom and I flew out immediately. It's been a heavy fortnight, but working our way through Tante's belongings, accumulated in the elegant apartment that she lived in from 1958 until just a few weeks ago, has allowed for a sense of intimacy that was pretty intangible for me while she was alive.







Tante spent the last few hours of her life with her incredibly sweet cousin Elfi at her side. This woman is an angel. They held hands as Tante took her final breaths. The last time I saw Elfi I was a small child, and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to get to know her a little bit better during this visit.



Claud and Matthias flew in for the funeral, which was beautiful. My mom and I went out for another visit to the grave a few days later. My great grandmother, grandmother, great aunt, and great uncle now all lie there together, in the Baumgartner Friedhof.

SABINA

Claud's a dad and I'm an auntie!!!!!!

Crazy long overdue pics from August in Europe with the Li family

I started off my trip in Berlin. Here's me being a tourist at Checkpoint Charlie with Melissa, the world's best host:



After only a couple days in Berlin, I was off to Vienna to meet up with the family. Here's mom and Tante Gerda after lunch at "Zur Wuadn Goass", which is obscenely convoluted Viennese slang for "To the Wild Goat". This was the beginning of many days of potato dishes with potato sides for me. Why yes, that's Wiener Schnitzel on mom's plate. Don't pretend to be surprised! I think she ate one every other day for the entire ten days we were in the motherland.



We visited many of our childhood haunts, including the pool in Strandbad Klosterneuburg where Matthias and Claudius and I spent many happy summer days:



Since visiting Tante was the major reason for the trip, we spent a lot of time with her, reminiscing about the past, getting verbally flayed in a highly malicious manner... only slightly more of the latter than the former. Here's her immaculate dining room:



The "maid's quarters" of her apartment, which Tante has only ever used as a (pious!) dining nook:



Tante met her new grandniece-in-law (is that right??):



And promptly showed off a patch of blooming bruises on her legs, the result of a blood thinning medication she's on:



She also shared some old photos. This one is of her and her late husband, my great uncle. Onkel Walter was on the Austrian national downhill skiing team, and also competed professionally as a kayaker. What a dashing couple!



And while we're on the subject of photogenic relatives, check out this fox. She was an actress and Onkel Walter's mother. Clearly, handsome genes run in the family; it's only too bad we're not actually related by blood:



The Austrian version of tea time is called Jause, and involves (preferably home-baked... check) pastries and coffee topped with (also preferably home-made... check) whipped cream:





My favorite part of the vacation though, was our two day hiking trip over a pre-alpine mountain called Rax. We took a cable car to the trail head, and the view from up there was absolutely as idyllic as you might imagine:



Our trails took us through fields of wildflowers (we even saw some Edelweiss!),




herds of cows (omg to be able to do that with your tongue!!),



and patches of snow with enough ammo for a mini snowball fight!



It was a dreamy two days of nature-tastic fun.







Then it was back to Berlin, and more touristy photo opps:



Melissa and I rode bikes everywhere, visited an art squat called Tacheles, ran into (!) Carl and Jasmine at a falafel place in Kreuzberg, watched avant garde performance art, went dancing, hung out with a cute puppy, and baked vegan pie: