Two Thanksgivings=Lots of Fun

Sorry the photos are a little random. A pic of our first Thanksgiving feast and the actual car Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in.

The end is near. Only three days until my mom gets here! I'm really excited. I've had so much fun this semester!

Our real American Thanksgiving dinner was wonderful. The students, teachers, and our host families were all invited. The atmosphere was jovial and heartwarming. Everyone was smiling, talking, and laughing. Melinda and I sat at a table with Frau Creneville, Cara, and her host, Frau Schauer. It was interesting to see other host families that my friends had lived with. Frau Creneville, Frau Schauer, and Tante Hanna (Julia’s host, who is a duchess) were all good friends and talked a lot about us to each other throughout the dinner.
Dinner itself was delicious and as close to a real Thanksgiving dinner as I could have asked for. We had the works—turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes (which all the host families were pleasantly surprised. Frau Schauer had never had them before), peas, mashed potatoes, and stuffing (which was more like knödel than stuffing). But the crowning dish was the pumpkin pie. I’m not sure if I’ve ever tasted any pumpkin pie so delicious (excepting my mom’s pie, of course). It was great. I couldn’t resist having a second slice.
So, yes, I had a good Thanksgiving. The company I kept on Thursday and Friday was the closest to family I could’ve asked for.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you all had a great day full of great food. My Thanksgiving was a little unconventional, but so good. We had German class in the morning and then had a tour at the Military Museum. While the tour was really long, I enjoyed the end of the tour, where we were shown the car that Franz-Ferdinand was assassinated in and the uniform he died in. His assassination prompted the beginning of World War 1. We also saw Captain Von Trapp’s navy uniform.
After the tour, I headed over to the Holmes’ apartment to help with our Thanksgiving lunch. We had pumpkin chocolate chunk cookies, semmel sandwiches, and delicious lemon-ice fruit salad. Making it was definitely half the fun. We are all in there—me, Kelly, Cara, Melissa, Melinda, Carolyn, Rebecca, and Margie— listening to music, laughing and joking, and making a few messes. I was mixing the cookie dough, Kelly cutting the vegatables, Carolyn chopping up some massive chocolate bars and every now and then slipping Kelly and me a chunk of chocolate. I loved helping in the kitchen. I’m so excited to have a kitchen to use when I get home.
After lunch we hung out at the Holmes’ for most of the afternoon. It was so happy. I love being together with our group. But we all had to leave to get ready for our last opera together, Verdi’s Masked Ball.
The opera was wonderful. I didn’t see any of it because my seat was terrible, but I enjoyed simply listening to the music. I am a Verdi fan. I sat by a very nice lady visiting from Steiermark. We conversed in German a little. I was very proud of myself.
Afterwards, I headed to Café Merkur, our group’s favorite café, with Cara, Melissa, and Melinda. I had a bowl of yummy bowl of pumpkin soup. We had a blast. I’m really sad that I won’t see them everyday next semester or have all my classes with them.

Uwe Kroger!

I saw Uwe Kroger in the flesh!! On Wednesday I went to Rudolf: Mayerling Affair with my friend Kelly. And he was there!! And he was amazing!

Its weird walking down the streets of Vienna and reflecting on how differently I felt three months ago when I walked through the streets for the first time. Everything is so different.

Today in church we had our primary program. It rocked my socks off! It was so adorable. And I understood just about everything. The kids were really cute. Some highlights were:

The bishop's son gave an improv presentation. His story basically went--So, I came back from school one day and--this microphone is really loud--it's too loud! (and then he plugged his ears and kept speaking) And I waited on the side of the street but no one was there. So I prayed and then waited and waited and waited. No one came. So I prayed again. And waited and waited and waited. And then I decided to cross the street and prayed. And then I waited and waited--and then everything worked out.

The primary was singing about Jesus' baptism and two boys in the front had two pictures on sticks of Jesus and John the Baptist and they showed Jesus being baptized by John--and then headbutted by John. And then one of the primary leaders took the pictures away.

At the end of singing 'The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock,' the entire primary threw sponges into the audience. It was totally unexpected, but so great.

There is an American family in the ward with two little boys. The kids don't really speak German very well. The youngest got up to the stand with his mom and older brother and was trying to introduce his dad. He said "Mine Fader is . . . heiss . . . Matthew." It was really cute.

On Saturday, we went to the Marionette Theater at Schonbrunn to see the kids version of Zauberflote with our german professor, Frau Weissgerber. The audience consisted of 5-10 yr olds with their parents and 15 college students. The play was fun and the german was easy to understand. It was fun to hear the kids participate. It was amazing how much some of them knew about opera. A little kid behind me was humming along the whole time. Whenever Papageno or Papagena came on stage, some kid would yell, "Papageno!" or "sie is da!" (she's there!).

Our host, Frau Crenneville, was sick last week with the flu. So here's the card that I made for her.

Last friday I went to the Albertina with Jesse and Melissa. Passing through the gift shop, we saw fake tattoos of Toulouse Loutrec's artwork. We decided to try our luck to get some extra credit from Professor Kroll by buying the tattoos and wearing them to class on Monday.

While we didn't get any extra credit, the face on Professor Kroll's was woth the 60 cents I payed.

Hello Old Friend

Yesterday I saw my old friend the sun for about eight hours. It was wonderful. I hadn't seen the sun for nearly two weeks. Here are some pictures from yesterday:

The highlights from last week include:

Swan Lake at the Staatsoper. The performance was amazing and absolutely beautiful. I was so happy simply to be at the performance of an actual professional ballet company, rather than watching one on PBS, that I was teary eyed through the first few dance numbers. The dancer who played the prince was excellent and expressed all of his emotions through beautiful pantomime. My favorite moment of his was at the end of his first encounter with Odette. Odette dances off the stage and his hand follows her path as she transforms into a swan (off stage, of course) and soars into the sky (over the audience). You see nothing be the prince during this small part, but the way he acted it out made it absolutely magical. Another highlight was the Prince’s death. Different versions of the ballet have different endings. In this version, only the Prince dies, which I think is rather pathetic.

The evil sorcerer arrives at the scene and suddenly the stage is billowing with turquoise waves (a large blue sheet was stretched over the entire stage in the blink of an eye) and the prince struggles to stay afloat in the raging water. He drowned very gracefully—with all the grace of a ballet dancer. He would reach upwards, in vain. He reached up, gasping for air, again, and again, and again, until finally I couldn’t help but crack a smile thinking, “well, he’s not dead yet.”

The last highlight of the ballet were to two small kids sitting in front of me in the box. They were either Russian, Czech, or Hungarian. The older of the two boys became very involved in the story. At the end, after the prince died, when the Prince and Odette came onto the stage to take their bows, the boy jumped up, threw his fist into the air, and cheered, “Yeah! Yeah!”. It was adorable.

Also last week we toured my favorite building in Vienna, the Rathaus. It was my favorite before the tour. And now I love it even more. It is simply one of the most beautiful and magical buildings in Vienna. And they have the coolest, step-in-step-out elevator ever! I rode it multiple times after the tour and felt like I had been transported into a Harry Potter musical.

On Saturday, Kristian and Kelly invited everyone to come to their apartment for a games and chocolate dipping party. It was a blast. I’d only been to one other person’s apartment from our group. Their little apartment was really adorable. It reminded me of a fairytale cottage. The whole house has really low ceilings. Both Kelly and Kristian are pretty short and didn’t realize how low the ceilings were until Daniel, one of the boys from our group, stepped into the room and looked like a giant. We played a lot of games and laughed for hours. It was a great evening.

Pictures of Prague

More Pictures: More of Schlading

Because Schladming was my favorite :)

Bam!

Well everyone, I have a lot to catch up on. These two weeks have been action-packed. I'll start with the oldest news:

Our Free Travel Weekend.


For my travelweekend, I went with Kristian and Kelly to Bratislava, capitol of Slovakia, Budapest, capitol of Hungary, and Schladming, a random mountain resort town.

Bratislava:

What I found most interesting about B. was the difference between that city and any other I have ever visited in Europe. I could definitely see the effects of communism and Soviet rule. The standard of living was lower. Most parts of the city were rather rundown. The inner city felt more like a ghost town than a bustling capitol city. It was very quiet.

Budapest:

I could also feel a difference in Budpest. Hungary was also under communist rule until 1989. We visited the House of Terror, a museum about the Nazi and Soviet occupation of Hungary. Some of the stories were truly terrifying. I can't imagine living through two such merciless and cruel regimes. Our stay overlapped with the Hungarian national holiday celebrating the 1956 Revolution. On October 23, 1956, Hungarians broke away from communist rule for 12 days in an attempt to establish a freer country. At the end of the 12 days, Soviet military came into Hungary and crushed the rebellion.

Budapest was an interesting and beautiful city. Its history is very closely intertwined with Austria's, so I was familiar with many historical figures common to both histories.

Schladming:

We chose to go here simply to grasp a different perspective of Austria--one that was outside of the large cities. Schladming is located in Steiermark, a southern province of Austria. It is a skiing town. When our hostess (we stayed at a really cheap, but really nice, bed and breakfast) met us at the train station, one of the first things she asked was if we had come for the skiing. I think my heart broke at that moment. Skiing? In October?! I was really sad that the only full day we were there was Sunday.

On Sunday, we took a bus up the mountain side to the base of Dachstein. That ride was the most pictureseque of my life. Large thick patches of forest lay on the mountainside. Seperating the forest was large bright green fields. Dairy cows, sheep (with lambs!), and sturdy horses grazed peacefully on the thick carpet of grass. Across the hills you could see large Hofs or Gasthause.

At the end of the bus line we took a gondola up to the peak of Dachstein to see the Dachtein glacier. The view was gorgeous. And there was a mini ski resort on the glacier. I just about died inside.

I'm a Doctor, not a Salt Miner . . .

On our way to Salzburg this weekend we stopped at the small mountain town of Hallstadt to tour the oldest salt mine in the world that is still in operation. The tour was one of my favorites thus far this semester. We walked through a mining tunnel deep into the mountain. The tunnel gradually became smaller and smaller and progressively darker. And then all of the sudden I heard the voice of a woman creepily whisper

Stein . . . stein . . . stein and Salz . . .salz . . . salz

right into my ear. I nearly jumped. There were speakers hooked up to the sides of the walls and were continually playing this creepy woman's voice. And it was very scary.



We stopped at the top of the first slide--yes, we got to slide down two slides in the mine. I already felt like I was in a cheesy Star Trek episode in a cooked up set. I almost expected to turn around and find Spock and McCoy on my left and right.
"This salt mine contains one million, three hundred twenty-three thousand four hundred and forty four point one two seven four nine . . ."
"I'm a doctor not a salt miner."

So, anyway, we were all a little apprehensive about the slide. One girl mentioned how she would probably scream. Then our tour guide turned to us and said, very calmly and pleasantly, "You can scream down here and no one will hear you." Creepy! ;) The slide and the mega-slide were a lot of fun. I even bought a hokey photo of myself going down the slide.

Hallstadt was a beautiful mountain town nestled between to foot of a mountain and the shores of a large alpine lake. And it snowed the entire time we were there. I loved every single minute of it.