Back in Austria somebody once asked me to find out if the people on the British Islands walk stairs on the left or right side.

Well, the short answer is: no.

Everyone who took the London tube, will have noticed the signs instructing you to stand on the right, so that people in rush can pass by on the left.

But then, that is like overtaking, and on British roads you overtake on the right. On there motorway the right one is the fast lane.

So do people over here walk stairs on right then? Well, no. Like everywhere else on the world, people tend to be lazy. So they take the inside lane. If the stairs do a left turn on the way up, people will tend to walk up on the left side and down on the right one.

What happens if people meet on the stairs, they might give way to the left? Nope. Just like on the continent both try to make way to the outside, then notice that the other one already moved there and go back again to end up in this strangely awkward situation.

I am not sure if this helps, but hey, here yah go.

A week ago we had some friends over for coffee and served them a traditional Sachertorte.

To make a Sachertorte one needs the following ingredients:
Flour, powder or icing sugar, butter, dark chocolate, eggs, vanilla flavoured sugar, baking powder, apricot jam and milk.

Weight 160 grams of powder or icing sugar.

Idealy Vienna sugar.

Add 160 grams of butter.

Separate the yolks and egg whites of 6 eggs. Add the yolks to sugar and butter and put the white on the side for later use.

Add 20 grams of vanilla sugar and stir all thoroughly for at least 300 seconds (5 minutes) with a mixer or in your kitchen food processor.

Take 160 grams of dark or cooking chocolate, put it in a microwave dish and heat it at 480 Watts for 45 seconds. Check if melted. If not, put it back into the microwave for another 30 seconds. Make sure the chocolate core temperature does not exceed 314 Kelvin (41°C) to prevent it from solidify the egg yolk in the dough. If you lack and appropriate thermometer, you can use your finger.

Add the chocolate to the dough and sir until you achieve an uniform chocolaty brown colour.

Mix 7.5 grams of baking powder with 160 grams of flour and (optional) 100 grams of grounded almonds.

Take the white of the 6 eggs used earlier and whip them till they become a semi solid foam, usually referred to as egg snow. The snow should stick to the bottom of the bowl even if turned upside down.

Put the egg snow and flour mixture as layers on the dough. Stir them slowly together with a big wooden spoon. Don’t stir too fast or you may collapse the egg white’s structure.

Empty the dough into the a backing dish. It would be of significant advantage to lay out the dish with parchment paper.

Put the dish into the cold oven and heat it to 433 Kelvin (160°C) for 2700 seconds (45 minutes).

After the 2700 seconds (45 minutes) have expired, remove the cake from the oven and let it cool down.

Cut the cake in approximately half height and coat them with an 1 millimetre layer of apricot jam on the top and 3 millimetres in the middle. For the gloss melt another 150 grams of chocolate and mix it with 50 grams of icing sugar and 80 millilitres of milk. Melt it thoroughly. It has to be very fluid to form a nice homogenous cover. Just pour it on the top of the cake and tilt the cake until all the top and as much of the side surface is covered with chocolate. You can help covering the side surface with the rest of the melted chocolate and a knife, but you should never touch the top surface with a knife

Let it cool down and serve it with whipped cream.

We also made some home made Apfelstrudel. I would love to post the recipe, but Gucky refuses to convert the family recipe into SI unites.

I was not exactly happy when my boss told me that I had to go to Chicago to give a talk at a conference, because in my opinion the USA treat their guests like criminals at the moment and I don’t want to be treated like a criminal. But, as I found out, the whole process of taking finger prints and pictures is just one more - and little – nuisance in the whole flying pain in the proverbial behind procedure; boy, I get cranky again while writing about it! Another thing I have in common with Newro: I hate airports!

Anyway, Chicago proved worth the trouble. I really liked that city. Being stationed in the Hilton, in a room about as big as our apartment here in Cork, did not hurt either. I had two double beds and two (!) bathrooms all for myself. Total overkill! I nearly got lost in there! (No, just kidding)

And they had tea and coffee making facilities in the room (mind, only one cup per day complimentary, the rest you pay for). I wanted a cup of coffee badly enough to go for the instant Lavazza (it’s Lavazza, so how bad could it be), but when I opened it it was worse: a coffee bag - for crying out loud!

It held only traces of coffein, so I went down for a double espresso later.
But the weather was gorgeous and really warm already and since the conference started in the afternoon, I took a long walk and loads of pictures

I also found the famous elevated railway. Blues Brothers here I come!

One morning it was a bit foggy, so I can show you the difference a little sunshine makes

I took another long stroll in the evening and found the millennium park – nice!

And of course the skyscrapers – is there a European who can resist, who is not impressed by their sheer size and the artificial gorges they create?

And in Chicago you can find both old and new skyscrapers right next to each other, which gives a nice contrast.

I think I might go back for a solely recreational visit with Newro. Yeah, I would definitely like that.

In Austria the first of may is a national holiday, day of work to be precise. And just like in Bavaria people put up maypoles all over the place.

All very well, in the meantime I had my first day at work over here. That’s right, the first of may is not a holiday in Ireland, in fact there are very little religious holidays. But that isn’t a bad thing for two reasons. Instead there are a bunch of so called bank holidays. For example, the first Monday in May is such a bank holiday, and unlike the 1st May, the first Monday never falls on a weekend. Over here, even when one of the fix holidays is falling on a weekend, like St. Patrick’s Day, the next Monday will be off instead. So even if there are less bank holidays in Ireland then there are official holidays in Austria, they tend to be spread more evenly throughout the year and never get wasted. Which is nice.

The other advantage is a bit more subjective. There is no Konkordat, contract between government and church. Now Ireland is a deeply Catholic country, even more so then Austria, but they never signed such a contract. Now at the time when Austria signed it, there has been a neutral benefit to each party, but that is no more. The more I think about it, the less it makes sense that a single religion should have advantages.