The sign outside said Happy Hour but the drinks cost the same as always and the waiters were delightfully cranky. I sat across from Anne, feeling suave as my penultimate cigarette dangled from my lip and I felt my pockets looking for my lighter.
Anne made the international gesture for “turn your cigarette around, you’re trying to light the filter”.
She had come all the way from Brno to watch me smoke my final pack of cigarettes as we wandered around Vienna.

We did the standard Mig tour of Vienna. Luckily Anne likes to wander around aimlessly, or at least she’s not a complainer. We walked through Stephansplatz station and I pointed out the restroom where the guys hang out and the Virgil Chapel.
We went and had coffee at the Hawelka coffeehouse. Mr. Hawelka was there, directing visitors to tables, as he has for the past 100 years. Then we went to the coffeehouse restroom, separately, and then we wandered over to this nice courtyard I always try to show visitors, only it is always locked. “It’s nice inside, I said.” We pressed our faces up to the windows in the doors.
My wife called and told me to get her some skin cream for Nikolo, which is today, 6 December. It was really noisy when she called and all I understood was blah blah skin cream blah vanilla blah blah.
So I started wandering towards Body Shop and then she called back and said don’t buy anything after all because she bought herself something I should buy myself something instead. So we wandered in the opposite direction and got sushi for lunch. Anne paid.
Then we were going to wander back for a book for me but my wife called and said get a shepherd for our nativity scene. How big I said. She said she was on her way home to measure Joseph and she’d let me know. So we went to the advent market at the palace, Sch