Look! Another picture! It only took 10 minutes to upload! This is kinda a still of the video I posted - postcard perfect, yes? Doesn't this make you want to come here? Today it is rainy, so I've spent the morning in the hotel not doing a whole heck of a lot. I created a spreadsheet so I could categorize my spending, and I'm just about on target for food spending, which makes me happy. Unfortunately, I forgot how expensive it can be to do museum tours, etc., and then there's paying for John's beer that he drinks, so I'm in the hole in that regard.

And can I say, coconut gelato is the smoothest gelato I've ever tasted. I'd take a picture, but I inhale it so fast that it's gone before I can even think of getting the camera out. Near our hotel, we've found a gelateria, or gelato cafeteria, and I am so in love with the coconut gelato. I'd never had it before, but I had a bite of John's and ever since, I've gotten a scoop to pair with my raspberry gelato, or my chocolate chip gelato....it is glorious.

The hotel we're at is so loud at night. The sweet time of sleeping is between 5 and 6 am when the bar underneath our window closes and the lushes go home before the street sweepers come by. I swear they were beying at the moon two nights ago, so when the rain set in last night, I was happy. Closing the windows and putting in new ear plugs helped a bit, but for some reason, the hotel room gets hot quickly if the windows are closed. It's funny that the rooms are all so different - one student says her hotel bed is more comfortable here than at the last one, and her bathroom is nothing like ours. We have a stand-in shower. She has a tub with no shower curtain. She has a full-length mirror and a flat-screen TV in her room; I have a 4 inch mirror on the wall and a 10 inch old TV mounted to a corner in the wall.

Yesterday's excursions took us to the Gibs Language School, where our friend is a teacher, and the students got to attend a few classes and talk to the students in English. This school is awesome. The kids know 5 languages by the time they graduate high school. Classes are taught in English or French, and they're usually done around 2 pm. There's a 20 minute break between classes, and the kids can run around the school, be loud inside or out, and get food from the cafeteria and then take it into class to eat if the teacher allows it. They can sit on their desks if they're more comfortable. It is refreshing to see that there are schools out there that are not teaching to the test. Would anyone else like to move with me?

After that, we went to Schloss Eggenberg, which in the past was one of my favorite places to visit, but yesterday's visit wasn't that great. I was not impressed with our tour guide. She went through things very quickly and was dry, and she didn't mention why the doors were different colors until I asked, and this year, she gave a completely different response than last year's tour guide, which now makes me believe they're all full of it. This year, I don't even remember her preposterous response. Last year's was much more interesting - there are doors painted white and blue, and I think last year's tour guide told us that the ones painted blue were only used at night, and the ones where the doors were painted white were the rooms used during the day. The peacocks this year also disappointed, not showing us their giant tails. They walked around, or laid in the grass, and sometimes they...what, honk?...cry?...they called out and scared one of the students, but maybe because there were no females close by, the males didn't feel an urgency to look beautiful. The eisschokolade, though, did manage to hit the spot, and several students also tried them and liked them. Win!

The weather was great until today and may also hinder our plans to climb up to Goesting tomorrow. We have just a few days left until we head to Split, which I am looking forward to. Not so much the bus ride, but the waves of the sea. It's been a good time in Graz (except the damn hotel). I know my way around the city, and I will miss the gelato, oh, the gelato....but it will be good to see the Adriatic and poke around the city for a bit before going to Sarajevo.

And speaking of Sarajevo, the city is not flooded, but around it, it is. Our contacts say that there is massive damage from the flooding, and lots and lots of cows and pigs were killed. Clean up is slow. While land mines have likely moved, we are not going to any place where our safety is an issue.