Sunny day in Vienna today, but there were icicles hanging from an old fountain we walked past on our way from the underground parking garage to the place where our oldest daughter was scheduled for a day-long intelligence test as part of her application to a gifted school here.

The directions there were a little vague. We found the street entrance, but it led to a large courtyard with about a dozen doors, which could, if one were running late and suffering from self-image problems and persecution anxieties, have been a real kafkaesque situation. Happily, we were all in good moods, my wife, my daughter and I.

“I bet this is part of the test,” I said.

“They’re already testing us.” I went over and asked some guys working on underground wiring if they had any idea. Might as well display social intelligence, curiosity and willingness to cooperate just in case anyone was watching, I figured. They looked up from the enormous cable they were tinkering with and thought the place I wanted was down the street. I thanked them politely and wandered off. It was not down the street, dude.

Bumped into more parents and gifted-looking kids wandering around in circles with sheets of paper in their hands.

My wife found the place first, point for us. She quickly summoned our daughter over to her and went inside, ignoring me completely. Minus point for her.

I went inside too, and told another mother about it, point for me.

A psychologist explained everything to us: “the test takes until the afternoon, with couple breaks for food etc. Fill out this form. Thanks.” Don’t you love coming up with a psychological evaluation of your child spontaneously like that? This is probably also part of the test, I whispered to my wife. Minus point for me for being so paranoid, if the tester heard me. I did suggest that she tape a note to the outside door so people could find it, but she smilingly ignored me, reinforcing my belief that it actually was part of the test.

The psychologist was in her late 20’s/early 30’s and had sort of this fluffy, moussey ’80’s new wave hair do, only the hair tinting was far more high-tech than 20 years ago. Progress rocks.

My wife and I wished our daughter luck and left.

“That was probably all part of the test,” my wife said.

“Don’t be paranoid,” I said.

We hadn’t been in Vienna, hanging out, for quite a while. We wanted to go to a ritzy old classic Viennese coffee house for a cup but the first one we went to had been gutted and converted into a Pizza Hut. The logo on the sign [see here] might be meant to resemble an open box of pizza, but to me it looks like a hat, which is doubly unfortunate because Hut means “hat” in German. And it even gets the German “hoot” pronunciation here; they don’t seem to have tried to give it the English “hut” pronunciation. So Austrians now go to pizza hat for lunch. With salad bar.

We ended up going to the Cafe Central down the street a bit. It’s a more famous classic Viennese coffee house. Wonderful, wonderful interior, very classy, great service. Only the new upholstery on the chairs and benches bothered me. I prefer the red or green velvet you often see, but they had replaced that with this awful rust with gold pattern that was reminiscent of the corporate logo patterns you often see on airport lounge furniture.