Finding Skippy

April 2, 2010  

"A la peanut butter sandwiches!"  The Amazing Mumford, “The Muppets”

It turns out that my peanut butter DOES have a first name, and it’s S-K-I-P-P-Y.   I greeted my old friend with surprise and a fair amount of joy, as I happened to find him hanging out on the shelf at Merkur with all the other more-typical European sandwich spreads.  Merkur is a much larger grocery store than the ones within walking distance from our apartment (though still smaller than ones back home).   Ahh, selection and variety.  I have missed thee.

I’m not going to lie:  I have always preferred deli sandwiches to peanut butter ones--  especially on whole wheat bread, which we ate a lot as kids and usually found in our school lunches.  Sometimes my mom would surprise us with a peanut butter sandwich that was made with one piece of white bread and one piece of wheat bread… and a cookie cutter heart flipped over in the middle so the white and wheat were showing on both sides.  It was cute (at least while I was in elementary school), but it still didn’t make me happy to see the peanut butter.

So my happiness in finding Skippy was not so much for myself as for my children, who actually do like peanut butter sandwiches far more than I ever did.  It was a pricey little jar, but it was worth it to see the excitement on my kids’ faces at the discovery of something familiar.  We made our way home, I made the sandwiches, and cut them into quarters.  Cade, Regan and Reyna were distracted and were slow to heed my “come and eat” call, so I picked up a small triangular piece and suddenly found myself completely lost in peanut buttery bliss…and I stayed there for a while.  :-)  Then I had to make new sandwiches for the kids, which I bagged and made them eat on the road. 
   

It is hard to believe, but even though we have been here for three weeks, there are still new destinations to seek out every day.   We can now check the Rathaus, the benches in Rathauspark, the Burgtheater, the Sisi memorial and the street spray paint artist guy on Graben street off our lists.   

The Rathaus sounds like a designated residence for rodents, but it is actually the city's Town Hall and the center of the Viennese city government.  Its tallest tower is topped with the Rathausmann, who is sometimes used as a symbol of Vienna.  The Rathaus is Gothic and absolutely huge, which makes it difficult to get it to all fit into a camera frame!   Facing the Rathaus is a large plaza and the Rathauspark with oodles of benches, which must come in handy for the summer concert series each year when people can come and listen to live open air opera performances for free.  

Across the street from the Rathaus is the Burgtheater (aka "The Burg.")  The original Imperial Court Theater was actually created in 1741 by Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa to be a theater close in proximity to the Hofburg palace.  This was the building that the theater relocated to in 1888.  It is beautiful, both inside and out.  The kids were thrilled to discover that The Wizard of Oz was on the theater schedule while we are in Vienna.  They were less thrilled to discover that we were literally missing the end of the last scheduled performance of the show while we were standing right outside.

Elizabeth of Bavaria became Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary following her marriage at age 16 to Habsburg heir Francis Joseph I, son of Maria Theresa.  She is often referred to by her nickname, "Sisi," and she has her own memorial in the Volksgarten next to The Berg.   She is interesting and blog-worthy... but not enough so to keep me writing at the moment.  Her story will keep.  :-)

We finished up the day with another fun stroll down Graben, where we watched spray paint art transform a blank sheet of paper into a galaxy far far away.