Dream of conflicts before and after workplace party, told at the Dreaming ... Dreams exhibition at Schallaburg Castle and Museum, near Vienna, 2nd November 2025

It is winter and I am in a castle, possibly in the ballroom. There is a Christmas party going on and my boss is giving a speech. He says something that's really offensive and rude, it is disrespectful to the group. It's sort of attacking one person, but is actually attacking the whole group. So everybody decides to leave. However, I want to say to the boss that I feel sorry about a colleague who has had to leave the company during the year. I am the last to walk out and so have the opportunity to say this to the boss. But, instead of saying it, I just say "Merry Christmas”, as the boss looks so sad because people are walking out. As we leave, I see there's a perfect dinner there, like in a restaurant, and so we do stay, with four of us at a table, and about forty people there in all. I am then worried because  I may have to pay for the dinner, but then I realise it is the others who have to pay, each about 30 euros, and I don't have to pay because I said, “Merry Christmas”. Everyone is then eating. Afterwards I go with my boyfriend out of the castle. There is a sunrise and it is also spring. We go to our car, which is a mixture of a two-door and a four-door car, each of which in waking life I have owned. My boyfriend drives the car but somehow at the same time we are trying to find it. We are discussing where the car is parked, but this is awkward because there's also another person in the car and she's not happy because my boyfriend and I are arguing. She asks if she should get out of the car because of this but I say, no, as I decide it should be me who leaves. I tell my boyfriend that I'll find another way home. He drives off and I become annoyed because I had assumed he would drive around and come back to pick me up. I then see two cats, one climbs onto my shoulder and one is on the ground. I phone my boyfriend to tell him about the cats. 

The dream was told as part of a Dream Salon on the last day of the Schallaburg Castle and Museum exhibition Träume ... Träumen / Dreaming ... Dreams. For more on the exhibition see the post on our art-related posts page. 

Julia chose pages so that the left one had one long paragraph, for painting the dinner scene, and the right-hand page had four paragraphs, for painting the subsequent events.
In reference to the boss's offensive speech, there are the following words discovered during the painting process on the lower left-hand page:
a bomb
as 
​a speech
the outrage
that immediately
detonation

and on the top right-hand page:
the speaker had finished
The other speakers   
he supposed
a specially successful speech.