The Famous Schlob, and other stories.

Funny how easy (and therefore likely) "mega"-picture articles became since the bashing of the whole procedure. Do you even recall anymore the olden days of yore, back when articles with over fifty illustrations were a big fucking deal ? Yet... that's been the lay of the land for a good ten years by now.ⁱ

Anyways, today's lengthy retelling shall cover the tail end of Vienna, then proceed to Linz, and then Salzburg, from whence across the border (no kidding, they pulled us over) to Munchen, and besides Spessart, and finally we end up in Frankfurt am Main! It all happened in just a coupla days, too, and it all happened under the generous aegis of the Great Grand Schlob, towards which we move below :

But what is a Schlob ?
And where could it be ?
And why does it have to
happen to me ?!

Notwithstanding what it is (or what it could possibly be), let it be clearly spelled out and particularly specified that the Schlob takes nothing but cash.

No IOUs, no government scrip, no Autumn leaves you found or carefully pressed, no baseball trading cards, no notes from your mother, no bullshit and especially no plastic cards, be they with or without chips, with or without magnetic cards, colored thus or therefore, in whichever way manner or trickery proferred or presented -- if it ain't cash, it ain't good for the Schlob.

Because the Schlob, let any and all get it clear, will take cash only, NUR BAR!

Above, the Great Grand Schlob from the front ; below from the side. All these people paid cash to be here, or otherwise had no money by them, so they're stuck haunting forever.

But enough of the Schlob for a moment ; let's all go instead and visit Vienna's landmark cafes, and see what we see. Before we proceed though, we fortify with really small bottles of (not really all that great) liquor and novelty chocolates, vaguely reminescent of the Little Red Riding Hood medallions we used to get back in teh days of childhoodry (not really all that good chocolate). Good thing we've schlept (abschleptendienst!!!) imported rum across rheumatic Europe, what can I say.

The statue's on the way to the famous cafe we're going to, and as you can see -- they've Schlobd't it!

Supposedly cafe Landtmann's the bee's knees, and we even had a table reserved!

Sadly, they didn't have my first preference. Nor the second. I got a couple of things anyway since we came all the way, but can you guess what those preferences'd have been ?

The interiors are nice, but the atmosphere unpleasant, a terrible mix of stuffy pretentiousness carved in wood and smegmy mass market carved in bunions. Trying to run a pretentious cafe on ten dollar cakes and no WoT just doesn't work out in practice, you end up with all these schmucks in jeans and geci cu puf coming and going every which way all the time, it's altogether unpleasant.

And, what's infinitely worse, the cakes just aren't all that good, industrially produced cheap whatever. They're not outright hydrogenated-oils-with-hydrogenated-oils-on-top, but it's not really that far off ; I've had infinitely better desserts dozens of various places.

And, incomprehensibly, the guy that delivered our food (different from the guy who took us to the table and the guy who took our order, because hey, high class joint) carried about the world a facefull of pimples the likes of which I've not set eyes upon in quite the while. I don't know how to say this without squishing something, but it is simply not possible to hire the pustulent for cakery table service. It dun fucking work, what.

The menu also shows the place back when it opened, in the late 1800s. It's right across from the University, and it evidently was purely student wot-based back in the day, when it worked. There's some gentlemen-wannabes playing pool, it evidently works out. The woman understood nothing, and then passed it on to the dude.

The coffee however was quite good (once one peeled away the pile-up of misery they seal it atop with).

A small musikschule, rather admired in the neighbourhood.

Vienese peisage, we're headed to... another famous landmark cafe, for more dessert. Because we can, that's why.

Further more Vienna, and... but wait, what's this ?!

Parken in der city. Das ist soooo Deutsch....

Why the fuck der city when it's die Stadt anyway ?!

Aaand here we are, Cafe Schwarzenberg.

The coffee is okay, the desserts not bad, but honestly... leaving aside I have way the fuck better in my own harem whenever I deign to so order -- I've had way the fuck better commercially, and all over the world. The famous landmark Vienese dessert shops are turning out quite the... well, not exactly disappointment, I wasn't exactly appointed in the first place, but the... mediocritude, let's say.

More Vienese peisages, and then on to the gay-famous Cafe Savoy.

As per tradition the waitress (who was a guy) fell all over herself in a half-hearted quest to not make it too obvious she'd totally fall right into my lap ; so we gave him a chestnut (you have to try the chestnuts here, by the way, they're superb).

It turns out Savoy's a perfectly practicable (if perhaps a little on the expensive side) place to have breakfast.

In case you're wondering, by the way, the bimbo's not with us. She's instead shipped off to Linz, by herself, by train, with naught but a most exquisitely unwieldy and inconveniently broken piece of hand luggage I specifically selected for her protracted disconfort. She waited for us in the Linz train station to maybe show up just about half a day, after spending a day or so in the oubliette for the very serious offense of having fucked up my Saturday night through critically inept navigation.

What's your guess, do we pick her up ?

Oh no, it's dat Schlob again!

Bottle of Sisi-schnaps I bought at the Schlobstore.

Its... well, really, it's not all that good. I didn't even drink it in the car, I just tasted it.

Not really worth drinking, I don't think.

This'd be the Sun setting over the Danube in Linz.

And this'd be the city seen from up on the hill, by the Postlingberg Schlobl.

To be honest I found Linz pretty close to fucking unbearable. In part because of the incredible degree to which the locals are spatially challenged and vehicularly inadequate -- it's like old people driving drunk, and the pedestrians are no fucking better! -- and in other part because it's a stuffy small city with all the drawbacks conceivable. It's like if the Landtmann cafe in Vienna made its own town up North.

What is a Postlingberg Schlobl, you ask ? Why, this thing next to the Postlingbergbahn Station :

We had the Schlosslmenu, with fish and venison respectively and... oh look, we actually picked the bimbo up, too! The restaurant is just as fine as I remember it from twenty years ago.

This is the balcony of our place in Linz. It actually includes live beehives, yep, I kid you not at all.

Above : Fichte was, as you remember, a famous philosopher, who once said that aus so krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden.

Or possibly it was someone else that was the philosopher, and Ficthe was just a tree.

Or there's other possibilities -- because of the crooked timber of possibility no straight answer was ever possible.

Below, the venison in question.

Above, the seven sorrows of the virgin Mary. No, seriously.

Above, the shapely daughter of the very dedicated owner of the Taj Mahal (all halal) Indian restaurant in Salzburg, serving us all the kinds of lamb they have.

Below, the remnants. Yum.

A schmuck, 'nuff said.

Whatever might be said of Linz, it goes about triple and a half for Salzburg. It's just as ineptly inconvenient, overtight and unappealing, altogether not worth the hassle. So we pressed on, to Munich!

Where we didn't stay, because... you'd better be seated for this, everything was full.

No fucking kidding, in the whole town, everything (with the exception of "conference" circuit shitholes a la Leonardo etc, which were not full, but were trying to charge 300 euros / room / night instead of their usual and much more properly adequate ninety-something, because everyone worth three hundred being actually booked, it must mean it's now's their turn to score!!!), literally everything.

So we didn't stay in Munich ; though the fake nipple clamps are pretty hot.

This'd be the Schlob in Spessart, which is a very beautiful corner of Hesse forest.

And on to breakfast (udon soup, salmon in spicy, good stuff) in... where could we be ?!

Yes, that's right, Hauptbahnhof! Schlob Hauptbahnhof.

This is my view, an exercise in macarale, rid in soare, argintii. I don't so much mind, my earliest memories of Frankfurt in the 90s contain the same "holy shit, what's with all the cranes", this place was fulla cranes for as long as I can remember, they're a permanent part of the skyline here.

I have quite the baggage train ; and I can't be bothered to do my own shoes. That'd be it, for now.

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1. Used to be that I did these by my own hand, which meant articles got maybe one or two illustrations, but mostly not. Then I coerced slave labour into processing, and it took about two to three slavegirl-hours per hundred -- but whatever, no skin off my back, which led to an uptick in upload volume a while back that you've probably noticed. But once the machines took over... well, it's simply deluvional, I guess Ima have to keep an eye on whether ease drives down quality such that we're better off without. What do you think, are we ? [↩]