A Weekend in the Country (of Austria)

    As you may recall, my last post was written (or published, rather) upon the eve of my departure for a weekend visiting my dear friend and fellow Californian Andrea, a Fulbrighter in Vienna, for Easter, to be followed by a day hopping around Salzburg with fellow Californian and Münchner Leigh. Okay, so I've been back for nearly a week, but hey, it's taken nearly that long to recover from such a fun weekend! I'll stop enticing you with hints about how fun it was and just get straight to the stories.

     Let's back up eight days. Dark and early last Friday morning (5:10 AM, to be precise), I awoke to the cheery sounds of dear Eric Clapton singing Wonderful Tonight (my phone has a limited amount of very random music from its previous owner), crawled out of bed and into the shower, and 50 minutes later was whisked away on the bus to meet my ride at a distant U-Bahn station, heavy backpack in tow. Just to be entirely accurate in setting the scene, it was pouring rain. Meeting my ride (a pleasant Slovakian man in his late-20s) went smoothly, and we set off, along with two fellow riders, to Vienna. Four hours (and several naps) later, we were deposited at the southernmost U-Bahn station on the Vienna public transport system, and an hour-long U-Bahn and Straßenbahn adventure later, I arrived at Andrea's beautiful apartment in the heart of the second district of Vienna.

    Let me tell you, as fun as traveling and seeing new places is, one of the best parts of traveling is when you can go to a place entirely new and be welcomed by a wonderful friend! It makes it seem so much more homey than wandering dismally around a strange city with a backpack and guidebook in tow.  Andrea's apartment is GORGEOUS, and I was welcomed with snacks and drinks and my own key for my stay.

    My decision to visit on Easter weekend meant that of course Andrea had a plethora of church choir rehearsals and services to attend, so before her first obligation we headed out for a short sightseeing tour, beginning with lunch at a super cute, friendly, and delicious cafe near Karlsplatz.

Beautiful friend!

The friendly waitress who took this insisted on clearing the table first so the picture would look nicer without our dishes on it. She was super cool.

     After a delicious lunch of salmon and potatoes (in Austrian dialect, literally earth-apples), we headed out to see the city (whilst walking conveniently in the direction of Andrea's church, which, you know, just happens to be the largest and famous-est cathedral in the whole city...NBD). Sadly the weather was less than ideal (read: cold and far wetter than is ordinarily enjoyable), but we pushed bravely onwards and wended our way through Karlsplatz, past the opera, and down Kärtnerstraße to Stephansplatz and the beautiful Stephansdom.

Stephansdom

Stephansdom reflection in the glass windows of shop-across-the-street-whose-name-I-cannot-recall

Blurry interior of the cathedral

    I accompanied Andrea to her choir rehearsal and stayed to watch for twenty minutes or so, then headed out to see some of the city on my own. Armed with an eleven-year-old guidebook pilfered from the bookshelf in my room, I set off to see what I could, doing my best to follow a suggested walk around the inner city and planning to head over to walk along the Donau (Danube) for a bit before heading back to Andrea's apartment to sort out a (so I thought) small problem preventing me from withdrawing any money.

Pestsäule (plague pillar) built by Emperor Leopold I when the plague struck in city in 1679 

View of the City Hall across the park

Yes, at concerts in Vienna there are flying ballerinas (note upper right corner)

Oh hey there, Maria Theresa

Austrian parliament

I love you Munich, but Vienna's Rathaus may sort of have the edge on yours

Martenitsi! Friendly piece of Bulgaria in Vienna

Votivkirche, built in celebration of a failed assassination attempt

Oops

Monument to honorable German soldiers

Hey there Danube!

Pretty blue and beautiful

coughTOURISTcough

When I walked down an island path only to find this at the dead end...I wasn't brave enough to jump across

Gorgeous church that came out of nowhere upon crossing the river (mainly because I was heading west when I'd thought I was heading east...)

     At around 8 PM, tired and starving (the banking hiccup sent me about my day with a whopping 50 cents in my pocket), I walked back to Andrea's apartment and sat down to call the bank and sort out the issue, which I assumed was a standard I-hadn't-used-my-debit-card-in-four-months-and-they'd-forgotten-I-was-in-Europe problem, generally easy enough to sort out.

     However, ten minutes with a bank representative later, I realized the problem was more complex than I'd thought. It appears there had been a security issue with somewhere I'd used my card and the bank had, ever so helpfully, shut down the card altogether. "Don't worry," said the helpful bank representative, "a new card should be arriving at your residence sometime soon." This very helpful and reassuring to someone currently about 6000 miles away from her "residence."  I tried further to extract a PIN number so I could use my credit card (most places don't accept credit cards in Europe, and if they do, they generally require a PIN number), and was told, also helpfully, that it was a security issue to give out numbers over the phone so they would mail said PIN number to my residence. It was about then I realized I was effectively without ANY money in a foreign city. I panicked for a couple hours until Andrea came home and kindly made me some delicious (American!) macaroni and cheese, then we called my parents, who kindly and almost immediately deposited money in Andrea's bank account for her to withdraw for me. So thankfully, all's well that ends well. If it had come down to it, at least I had purchased my train ticket to Salzburg online and in advance, so I could have at least gotten home, but it would have been a rough three days without ANY food. I'm just so thankful it happened staying with a friend, not alone somewhere! 

    Problem solved, we went to sleep. The next day dawned again rather disagreeably, weather-wise, and after promising to meet Andrea at the end of her rehearsal (oh the joys a musician experiences during Easter weekend!), I set off to experience the joys of the Naschmarkt, Vienna's huge open-air market, spanning almost a kilometer-long stretch down the center of one of the busiest streets. The sheer amount of people in a famous European city on a holiday weekend made it more of a slog than anything, but I got to see all the cool food and goods for sale, and even picked up a 5 euro "cashmere" (yeah right) scarf for my pains.  Afterwards I meandered back down to meet Andrea, stopping to see the opera house on the way. We headed out for nourishment at the same cafe as the day before, this time drinking the most amazing chai latte I have ever had in my entire life x 23498274583. Like, seriously. If you are planning on visiting Vienna, please call me or Andrea so we can tell you how to find this latte. 

Viennese opera!

Terrifying look on my face due to trying to center that. Taken outside of the apartment where Mozart wrote Figaro, by the way, but wasn't much to look at.

   After a flurry of rain forced us back to Andrea's for a lazy afternoon of haircuts, pasta, and Modern Family, Andrea headed out for her evening rehearsal and service, and I lazed around for awhile, then headed out to watch the Easter Vigil service Andrea was singing in at the cathedral. To keep that explanation brief, I do not think there is ever an excuse for a three-hour service, but it was pretty nice regardless. And I got holy water thrown at me by a cardinal, so I feel like it was a win. The first portion of the service was all conducted by candlelight (a cathedral full of several thousand people all with candles is a fairly impressive sight, even if that coupled with occasionally scary organ music and huge chandeliers does feel slightly like something out of a horror movie), and at the end when the cardinal gave the various versions of "Christ is risen" in several different languages, I was just about the only person to give the English answer, but I did it! We headed home sleepily in the wee hours of Easter morning.

    Much too early the next morning alarms went off, and we headed off in our respective directions: Andrea to more church and I to the train station to catch my train to Salzburg to meet Leigh.  After a hurried U-Bahn ride I arrived at the main train station far too early (the way I like it; I treat train travel like plane flights, time-wise) and settled into my cozy seat with my chocolate croissant, hoping to manage to nap the 2 hours and 45 minutes to Salzburg. But alas, 'twas not to be. Though I had intentionally chosen a seat in a "quiet" compartment, a tourist family from Italy? Greece? Spain? chose to ignore the fairly-easy-to-understand icon all over the compartment of a finger on lips (is that fairly universal or is it just me?) and let their four-year-old child talk at the tops of its lungs, scream, cry, howl, and run maniacally up and down the aisles. THE ENTIRE TRIP. I was less than pleased. But regardless, I arrived promptly at 11 in the train station in Salzburg, amid flurries of snow that had been slowly coating the ground throughout the train ride.

     Leigh and I met up without a hitch and walked into the city to catch a late Easter mass at the Salzburg Cathedral, randomly hearing a guest high school choir from Pennsylvania sing for the service. (Bogoroditsye Devo for communion on Easter? Is that really a good choice?) I'm getting pretty good at faking my way through a German Catholic church service. We ventured out into the snow for a while, walking through a beautiful snowy little graveyard and visiting a couple churches, and then the cold got the better of us and we headed into a little Indian/Austrian/Italian restaurant (the same Andrea and I visited in November, as a matter of fact), and holed up there for the next three hours or so.

Altar at the Salzburger Dom

Snowy fortress

Süß little snow graveyard

Pretty little city

    We met up with an old friend of Leigh's at the restaurant and spent the rest of the day together, doing what true Europeans do when the weather's bad. Stay inside and drink cappuccinos. After a brief excursion up a hill to see the city from above, we headed into a comfy little cafe for cappuccinos and Kaiserschmarrn (delicious Bavarian funnel cake-like concoction with raisins, nuts, applesauce, powdered sugar, und so weiter). From there we ventured briefly into the nearby gardens of Schloss Mirabell, famous for being where the Do-Re-Mi scene of Sound of Music was filmed! 

Do mi mi, mi so so, re fa fa, la ti ti! 

    After that we headed to a incredibly smokey but small and friendly Belgian bar to meet another of Leigh's friends, and we stayed and socialized for an hour and a half or so before Leigh and I headed back through the cold to the train station to catch the last train back to Munich that night. 

    And there you have my adventurous Austrian weekend! Though I'll be the first to admit my views of cheap plane travel in Europe were completely false, I'm slowly learning there are ways to get around it. Total transportation costs to and from Vienna and Salzburg: 49 Euros. Win! 

    And now here I am back in Munich, enjoying a full week behind me of rain (and a full week ahead as well). Oh spring, where have you gone? Nothing much new to report except to look forward to a weekend retreat with my choir in the Black Forest, coming up in a couple more weekends. In the meantime, a happy easter to you all!   

The Traveler Returns

     So I was excited about being up to three blogs in only eleven days of the month...but then, you know, you blink, and there are three days left in November and you haven't posted a blog. And by you, I most definitely mean me. Maybe I'll crank another one out by Wednesday just to prove a point. But then again, maybe not.

      But before you condemn me too harshly, I have excuses! Oh, do I have excuses!

      Started off with a weekend in Salzburg with this lovely lady.

      Followed by a whirlwind ten-day trip in the great beyond to play maid of honor for this awesome wedding,

The happy couple: David and Katie Runkel

visit some family,

and help this guy celebrate his birthday. 

     And as of yesterday evening, I am back in the Fatherland.

     As always returning from any sort of home-related activity, it's a flurry of mixed feelings coming back to Munich. I know I'm incredibly fortunate to be living here in Germany, but it's always with sadness that I say goodbye to family and Nate and always sets me into a day or two of self-pity. That combined with the last remnants of the nasty cold/ear infection I developed on my flight OVER to the states a week and a half ago has given me a couple quiet evenings in before I resume normal activity, accompanied by some chocolate and giving me the chance to update you lovely people on my life. The sad, sad state of my bank account also is encouraging me to stay in perhaps a little more, or at least find fewer money-spending outlets of fun; let's just say I haven't been paid in about two months and my bank account is...well, let's just say I could barely afford the train ticket home from the airport. Fingers crossed that 1 December is good to me.  And I will say that coming back to my house, my room, my clothes, and my kids(!) was really nice.

      All that aside, and before jumping into the daunting task of two and a half week's worth of updating, let me just say that it was so, so (so, so, so, so, so, so, so, etc.) nice to see everyone I saw when home last week! If you weren't among those people, please don't take it personally: it wasn't really a social trip but really just for the purpose of Katie's wedding. Even my parents were only included so I had a bed to sleep in. (Okay, just kidding on that one.) But really, so nice to those I got to see! And a huge congratulations to Katie and David on their marriage! So happy for you guys!
   
      So now let's jump back about 16 days to the day following my last blog, when I hopped on a train at Munich's Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and headed to Salzburg. It's about a two-hour train ride from here, for the welcome price of 21 euro, so I bought a toffee nut latte and a brownie at the train station Starbucks and enjoyed my train ride thoroughly, even getting all of my homework done en route. (And disclaimer: I don't go to Starbucks regularly. I, in fact, make it a rule only to get it in large transportation hubs that lack any cultural identity. Those being airports and train stations. So shh.)

      I debarked (is that a word?) from the train in Salzburg, and I can tell you, the grass literally gets greener when you cross into Austria. Don't ask me why. Planning to meet my fellow Salzburg explorer, Andrea (a good friend of Nate's from college and therefore, a friend of mine!), at our hostel after her train got in, so, having a couple hours to kill, decided to find the hostel and then maybe head into town a little. Silly Laura. Construction on one of the bridges closest to the train station added like 45 minutes to my walk to the hostel (I can read a map and follow directions, but when you're lacking one and the other is no longer valid, well, it can happen to anyone, right?), and when my walk back trying to find a shorter way was nearly as long, I decided to just wait for her there. Fortunately we rendezvoused quite easily (helps that there's only one lobby outside the train tracks), and headed to our hostel, finding it much more easily this time as I had considerately eliminated all the ways not to take. Upon finding our room (pleasantly clean and large and homey, and as this was my first hostel stay, will probably ruin all others for me in the future) and stowing our backpacks, we headed out into the chilly night air to find sustenance.

  Salzburg is beautiful. The walk down to the center of town and across the Salzach river is a gorgeous one, filled with cute little shops, lights, restaurants.

 
     We ended up settling down for some Indian food, beer, and chatting (not as good as my favorite Munich restaurant Sangeet...or Manas (<3) in LA for that matter, but definitely hit the spot) at a cute little restaurant called Zum Mohren just up the street from Mozart's birth house. After another stop at Zum Eulenspiegel for a glass of wine, we headed back to our hostel at around midnight, assuming that for hostel-stayers we were grandmothers, time-wise. But to our surprise, our room was filled with four very-fast-asleep-sleepers, so we as quietly as possible changed and got into bed. (Note: said sleepers were not nearly so considerate when they arose the next morning at like 7 AM...loudly.)

      The next morning we paid our 3 euro or so to get in on the breakfast provided by the hostel: typical German/Austrian fare of rolls, cheese, cold cuts, yogurt, muesli, and juice. Thus fortified, we headed out into the foggy morning (almost freezing to death--we'd been at breakfast in our shirt sleeves since the heat was turned up so high, but outside it was a mere 33 degrees or so.)

      The rest of the day (and by day I mean sunlight hours. Definitely an important distinction, temperature-wise) was taken up by some good old-fashioned sightseeing, from the river to Mozartplatz to the Festung Hohensalzburg (Salzburg Fortress--no better way to get Ein feste burg stuck in your head for a whole day then literally seeing one) and a trek along the whole Mönchsberg hill in a quest to find the University of Redlands house (ordered street numbers aren't as much of an established concept in Austria as in Germany, evidently). Very tired of walking, we collapsed into the Augustiner Bräustübl at around 3 and wined and dined (beer'd and...something'd?).

      I will also say that any such walking excursion as ours is greatly aided by the purchase and consumption of some glühwein. Preferably as early as possible. Fortunately we were aware of such a concept.

Hope this isn't like Starbucks where they put your name on the cup...

Mozart was not that hot.

Washing out my beer mug! I don't know why. Tradition.

Fortress! 

City from above

      Upon leaving the beer hall, we planned on visiting a few other things (by visiting I mean walking past), but as soon as the chill wind ripped through the coats we wore, we hightailed it to the nearest cafe for a cappuccino to recover. Plan B swiftly became heading back to the hostel as quickly as possible to avoid hypothermia, and there await further developments and my 21:15 train. Making it back without further mishap, we enjoyed the warmth and wifi of the hostel until it was time for me to head back to the train station. Ride home was uneventful with the somewhat annoying exception of a fellow caught with a ticket under someone else's name...a non-German speaker, he basically preached to the compartment for literally an hour about how it wasn't his fault. So obnoxious. For once not an American though. For once.

    Remainder of the week was fairly uneventful. Choir rehearsal, trip to the movies, out to breakfast. Wednesday I accompanied Cliona to a birthday party of one of her little friends, and stayed the whole two hours chatting with the German mummies. A little nervewracking but actually quite fun (helped by the pastries, cappuccinos, and champagne. Umm, did my parents get to drink alcohol while I played at playdates? Has this been going on all along?) It was very interesting to be in a home other than mine (and this one technically an entirely German home) and talk to German people! Still one of the hardest things to do; it just isn't that often I find myself in a situation to sit down and chat with Germans. The champagne helped.

      The next morning I awoke dark and early to take off for the airport and my 7 AM flight to Los Angeles (via London). A shout-out to my awesome friend Matt who picked me up at 4:30 AM--I wouldn't do that for someone I'd only known a month!

     Since this is an au pair blog and not a life blog, I'll avoid exhaustive detail about my trip other than to say that the wedding was truly a wonderful event, despite the rain and cold, and it was so worth the time/money/effort/etc. to be there for it.

Happy couple at the reception! (That's me on the right.)

       And believe it or not, that's pretty much it. I'll tell you that having made three overseas flights in the last three months, avoid any American airlines and stick with European. American Airlines makes you pay for booze. Umm, what? And British Airlines has impressively good food. Ruminate on that. 

     And though Thanksgiving's over, since I wasn't cool enough to post ON Thanksgiving ('cause I was celebrating, obviously), here:

Things to be thankful for this year:
1. As always, that I'm warm, well-fed, and healthy
2. My loving family back in the states, and getting to see them last week
3. My friends throughout the world!
4. Getting to spend Thanksgiving with Nate and his friends in a country I never even imagined I'd visit
5. Having the chance to spend a year living in a country I've always dreamed of living in
6. My cool new leg warmers and Russian spy gloves
7. That it's only three weeks till Nate comes to visit for Christmas and New Year's
8. That I get Christmas in GERMANY
9. For Katie and David, their beautiful wedding, and the life they're starting together
10. For you, the awesome people who read my blog!

And an excerpt from one of my favorite poems, since I feel it's apt for this time of year and Katie's wedding:

"...let us rejoice not because our friendship has flooded us and nourished us
river lands whose abundance is food for all desire...
nor because we have so much height many confuse our eyes with stars
nor because the flags flap in the windows of citizens who have been happy for a hundred years, to have life and little things to defend
nor because rooted in poetry we have the rights to the words words that form and deform the universe
nor because we weep without ridicule and know how to laugh
nor because we smoke and drink as always
let us rejoice because the director of fire and poets
love that floods us as light floods all solid space between the stars and planets
love commands today that my friend will marry."
--from Poème lu au mariage d'André Salmon, by Guillaume Apollinaire


     Post will come later in the week. It's now officially Christmas market season in Munich, so if you're lucky I'll visit one soon and give you the scoop.

     Happy Thanksgiving, all!