So Much

We have moved to Graz, Austria, just a couple hours' south of Vienna by train. Hubby spent 2 years here, and it's such a nice city to visit. Our hotel is a little farther out than we thought, so we get our exercise by walking up to the grocery store daily for our lunch and then catching the bus because the tram tracks are being repaired. The bus ride takes about 15 minutes to get to the middle of town, and from there, we can take trams all over the rest of the city.

Our last day of Vienna, though, saw us going to Schoenbrunn Palace. Here are a few quick pics of the outside. I couldn't take any inside.

Schoenbrunn was supposed to be 3 times as large as this but the money ran out

Close-up

The gardens at Schoenbrunn

An unusual urn

 Closer to the fountain

Fiaker in front of fountain

Us in front of the fountain

Back of Schoenbrunn from gardens

After Schoenbrunn we went to the Hundertwasser Haus:

This designer didn't believe in straight walls, so he designed this and many other things that people either love or hate. The residents of this house are allowed to paint all of the outside that they can reach from their apartments.

These are random pictures as we were on the tram around Vienna:

This store says "40 Years To Go"

Darling little store sign that had lots of cat trinkets

And of course, for those of you wondering what lunch and dinner that night looked like, I shan't dissapoint:

Kaesekrainer, which is sausage with cheese. They drill a single hole in the bun. Fabulous.

Goulash with a knoedel, which is a bread dumpling

Chicken schnitzel with rice - very tasty rice, actually

So, we moved onto Graz.

A view from my seat on the train

And then once we arrived in Graz, we got ourselves to the hotel and then went back into the city to show the kids around. These pictures were taken on top of Schlossberg, which was a fortress.

This is the clock tower. The hour hand is bigger than the minute hand because at the time it was more important to see the hour hand far away.

These are the foothills of the Alps

The black thing in the middle of the pic is the art museum

Little gecko on top of Schlossberg

Walking down the street

Look at the detail of this building

So that was our first day in Graz. No food pictures of my wonderful doener kebap because I ate it too quickly.

The best laid plans...I should be asleep but I was able to upload and edit a few photos, so here you get a quickie of what I see through my lens:

Taken at 7:30 this morning, this is where we ate tonight

Random street on the way to the train station

Train station entrance. Notice the yellow M logo by the tree.

Nearly empty train station this morning

Sometimes you gotta toot your own horn

View in one direction at Stephansplatz

 Blutgasse Strasse, which is a street on the way to see history of Mozart

Artistic shot

The apartment where Mozart argued with Saliere

Vienna's a bike-friendly city

Outside the Jesuit church

Inside the Jesuit church

These next few will all be inside the church

Side of pew

The organ was playing while we were in the church

This church has a lot of marble columns

Part of the ceiling

There are many of these holes in the ceiling with more painting 

See? Right between more marble columns.

Sun in the church

This is what the art museum did to these guys

One of the pictures I viewed 

Another pic, this one by Broegl (not sure of spelling just yet)

Another one by that B artist

This picture I'm kinda excited to tell you about because I actually remember what it's about. If you look closely, you'll notice that that gold ball on the step is actually a skull. This is St. Rosaria, the saint who protected against the Plague. Mary is holding Baby Jesus, who is handing her a crown of roses, which alludes us to the fact that it's St. Rosaria. The flowers on top of the skull represent virginity, and the skull itself represents the plague. On the left of Mary is Peter and on the right is Paul, and Paul has the keys to heaven, which if you look up, you see a little cherub. Now, I don't know who painted it, but I got the rest of the story straight. And it's even not nearly as blurry as all the other shots I took in the gallery.

Art, art, art

I took this picture because it reminded me of my grandfather, who liked sailboats. And this was the picture where I realized these were people's paintings. They didn't take a photo - they sketched, then they painted, with oil on canvas, these incredible pictures. 

K, now I'm officially going to bed.

Some of you may be wondering what our room looks like. We decided to stay in Vienna in a hostel called Hostel Ruthensteiner, which is a very cool place. The rooms are well-kept, showers are hot and food is good. But, well, our room is a bit small:

We have 3 beds in our room

As you can see, there's no bathroom in our room. Our toilet is right next to our room and the shower is a few steps further than that. Believe it or not, it's really not been a problem to share a toilet and bathroom with others on the floor. I think near us there are 2 toilets and 2 showers. Last night, my shower was not hot. Tonight, it was. The room took me a little bit to get used to. I mean, my past gig paid for me to stay in high-end Marriotts and Ritz-Carltons. But this place is charming, and I expect we will stay here every year.

Two more students arrived last night, and since John got them from the airport, we all went to dinner. This was his meal:

The platter took up half the table

Ribs, potatoes and some sauces. I had mashed potatoes and apple strudel with whipped cream. Yes, that was my meal - enough mashed potatoes for everyone at the table (I ate half) and a nice-sized serving of apple strudel that could've used ice cream instead of whipped cream (I didn't share). 

Today's lunch:

Crepes with fruit inside

We walked around today in the rain, so our plans to eat at the Naschmarkt were put on hold until tomorrow. Instead, we found a place that served a lot of different crepes - savory and sweet. Sweet won out, of course.

And for dinner, we went to a little Turkish restaurant near our hostel, and I had the chicken schnitzel with fries. Very tasty. But I needed something more, and I found it:

Heaven does come in the form of chocolate

This little gem here is called a kugel, which means ball in German. But this is no ordinary ball. It is basically a cream puff with chocolate mousse and chocolate sauce on the outside of it. We leave Monday. They're open tomorrow. I'm going back one more time to get one of these in white chocolate.

Now that I've sated the foodies who read this blog, I can continue. We went on a walking tour of Vienna today, where John showed us the Jesuit church, the oldest restaurant in Vienna, where Mozart and Saliere had their big argument, and the main downtown area of Vienna. He also got the kids on the metro and didn't lose a single one. This is no small feat when you have 11 people, especially when two went running this morning and the second one that finished running thought the first one arrived before her but didn't, so we were all thrown into a small panic, only to realize she'd gotten slightly lost but figured it out. Phew. In the afternoon, we went to the art museum and stared at pictures created by Broegel (sp), Rubens and Rembrandt. I gotta say, I don't much care for Rembrandt.

More pictures of the church and maybe the art museum if they turned out tomorrow! Right now this chickie's got to get to bed.

We're here!

Getting to Vienna was rather unextraordinary. We left Luca to waves and our tears in the van and arrived at Dulles a little after 1:30 for a 5:35 pm flight. Our driver was a little early and traffic was pretty light, so note for next year, go ahead and leave around 1:30. The weather had been pretty rainy the past few days, but there was sun on our way up. That all changed around 4:30, about 20 minutes before we were supposed to start boarding, when a huge crash of thunder sounded and seconds later, a torrent of rain was unleashed from the sky. The airport actually closed for about 30 - 45 minutes. We stayed glued to the screen that said, "VIE: 5:35: ON TIME", willing it to not blink "CANCELED", as this was the only flight to Vienna. We ended up boarding about 30 minutes after we were supposed to and then sat for another 30 minutes for our turn to take to the skies. And just like that, we were in the air.

There were no less than 7 toddlers on the flight, ranging from newly-walking to about 3 or 4. There were a couple of screams but all in all, it was not disastrous like I'd half-expected. I think these parents were prepared!

While I tried to sleep on the plane, it wasn't very successful, so I settled into watching movies. I tried to watch Gangster Squad, but the first 10 minutes were too violent for me, and while I like to look at Ryan Gosling, I hated his voice in this movie, and I hope he doesn't normally sound so nasally, or anything I've ever said about liking him I take back. So I switched it to Parental Guilt, starring Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand. Cute. I've turned into one of those people. Heh. Ask hubby and he'll tell you I've always been on of those people - the kind who like B movies and only B movies. But after having a kid, I think so many things are violent. He was watching Django Unchained, and forgive the misspelling if it is, but holy cow. I know it's a Tarantino film, but the body count was staggering. Then he started watching Les Mis, and even that I found disturbing. So for awhile, I just sat and stared at my screen, tried to sleep, listened to a little music, turned around and around in my seat, and about an hour away from the end of the flight, got a little sleep.

Second note to self: NEVER travel on an airplane without Aleve. EVER. I think that's one reason I couldn't sleep.

Despite leaving about an hour after we were supposed to, we arrived in pretty good time, got through customs and out to our bus with relative ease. The hostel is just about a 7 minute walk from the busstop, so hubby is there now on his way to get the first round of students arriving this morning. Our room was ready for us, so we opened the door and were greeted by three beds - two bunk and one near the window in a space that's tall but not very wide - I'm going out on a limb here to say about 7 feet wide. We decided on the cheaper option of just beds and no bathroom in our room, so the room is quite a bit smaller. But now that I'm used to it, it's ok. It's nice and clean and the hostel is very well-run. The doors are a little thin, so I will be getting the kids ear plugs today at the local CVS-type store called dm, as they really helped me last night.

After freshening up, hubby needed to get a few housekeeping things done, so out on the town we went. First order of business: lunch.

This is chicken schnitzel with fries and a tiny bit of salad you can see in the back. This will be my standard meal here. And I love it. This lovely little restaurant, Levante, is actually a Turkish restaurant. John had mussaka, which is something we tried to make in Bosnia and failed spectacularly. It is typically a potato layed dish with cheese and sometimes meat. I'm not sure what all his contained. Since failing to make it properly, I've been happy to let others make it for him. While we were there, there was a couple with a 2 year-oldish little boy, and it was hysterical to see that they were having the same experiences with their child that we have with ours - they took turns eating so he could run around and up and down the stairs, he didn't really want to sit and eat unless it was dessert, and he even had a little temper tantrum when his dad tried to hold his hand. So we're not so different after all. 

After that, we got on the subway to the Westbahnhof, which is another metro stop, then hopped another line to buy tickets for the castle Schonbrunn. When we arrived, we were told we had to come back on the day we wanted to tour to get the group tickets. So then we went back and started our tour of Vienna so John was prepared for Saturday's walking around in the rain. 

And while we're on the subject of rain, it would seem that Vienna is about the same as Virginia - it will be 75 and sunny today, and tomorrow and Sunday will be rainy with a high of around 62. Nice, Vienna, nice. 

Random street we were walking down

I believe John said this was the oldest church in Vienna

Look at this art! On a building!

On our walking tour 

Back to the tour, we wound this way and that, not really getting lost but not finding what John wanted, and then he figured it all out. We also found gelato, so I was happy. Chocolate and raspberry mixed together created wonderful memories of Sheridan's, a custard restaurant in Kansas City that I adored. When I mentioned this to John, he said, "I'll take that as a compliment," because really, gelato is so much better than what we have in the States. While eating our gelato, we walked around some more, and then I finally said I was ready to head back to the hostel. We went back but then decided it was too early to just sit because once we did that, we'd fall asleep, so we asked the people at the front desk where there was some good Italian, and 15 minutes later, we found it. I Terrino is a little place off the beaten path that serves huge portions of food and also doesn't take credit cards. I had gnocchi, and I could have eaten the whole plate because it was so tasty, but we're talking around 40 or so pieces of gnocchi, which is not what my hips needed, regardless of how many miles we walked yesterday! But I was literally falling asleep at the table. I could not keep my eyes open. By this time it was 5:30 or 6 and we decided to call it a day. We went back to the hostel and showered and I fell into a blissful sleep for about 3 hours until people from outside woke me up. We slept with the windows open and the courtyard is directly beneath us. Not such a big deal - I did have my earplugs and had gone about 27 hours without sleeping, so it was pretty easy to fall back asleep again. I was awakened a couple more times by people in the hallway just getting in and by someone trying to figure out their door. Unlock, lock. Unlock, lock. Unlock, lock. I was seconds away from sticking my head out the door to ask if they needed help figuring it out when they apparently did and stopped clicking their lock. 

So far, besides the earplugs, the best travel tool I brought was my eye mask, which I actually call my eye patch because it makes John laugh. The window was blazing around 5:30 this morning with tons of sunlight, but since I had my eyepatch on, I was ready to go back to sleep. At 6 am, I noticed John was awake (did I mention these beds are twin so we are not sleeping near each other?), so I got up. Since our window is open, we got to hear an owl hoot repeatedly, and currently there is a plane overhead and a nice little chilly breeze. Ahhhhh.

Heading Overseas Again!

In less than two weeks, I will go abroad with my hubby to Austria, Croatia and Bosnia, and this time, we are not alone. We are taking 11 college students with us! I thought about starting a brand-new blog for these adventures, but I just don't want to do it. I've got a few blogs already; adding another one will be more confusing. So for now, check back here when you want pictures and updates on life in Europe. We leave May 8, arrive in Vienna on the 9th and stay there the weekend. Then we head to Graz, Austria, for a couple of weeks, and then we are on the bus/train/whathaveyou to get to Zagreb and Split in Croatia and then Sarajevo in Bosnia. I'm so grateful I get to travel. Lots of people have made it possible, including the husband, the mother-in-law, and the boss.