Day 28 : People Who Live in Glass Houses…

Corinne:

So Rick Steves didn’t have a section on Berlin (which is understandable since he was only about Eastern Europe). And even if he did, he is currently cheating on me with Maria. Which leaves me without an all-in-one reference source. Which can be slightly traumatic for me.

This morning started with me and some other girl in the nearly full 32-bed room coughing a call and repeat. (I’ve been sick but thankfully nearly recovered.) It took longer than normal to get up and out, and I’m not quite sure why. Trying to be quiet? Anyway, we had planned to meet for a tips-based bike tour at 11, but got on the first U at 10:50. My plan for the day was to go on the tour, then circle back afterward to any sites we wanted to re-see or go into. So I was stranded, and Sarah and Rosie could probably tell by the desperate way I was pleading with one of the 4 tourist maps I picked up to offer answers.

We went back to the hostel so Rosie could get proper footwear on for the bike tour (that also took place at 3, so all was not lost). But now the problem was what to do for 4 hours. We took the U-bahn into the city center and wandered toward the DDR museum (sadly not what you think) but ended up leaving because it didn’t look attractive. We ended up in the Lustgarten outside the Berliner Dom and ate our lunch. (And watched little children play with balloons and accuse each other while playing Red Light Green Light.) We had nothing left to do but walk toward the place where the bike tours met.

We got to the corner an hour before it was supposed to start, and began a long, slow wander through the neighborhood. We got to a large building, and on the side was a face with a quote: “How long is now?” It looked to me like a squatter’s place, with graffiti all over this half bombed out building. When Rosie and Sarah wandered in, I was forced to follow. And we found the coolest little urban art gallery with metal scupltures and fish tanks and textile art… That is when the day started looking up.

We circled the block and got back to the tour just before the sprinkles started. But everyone on the tour was ok with getting wet, so the 3 of us and 10 others got our bikes and set off to see the list of typical sites in downtown Berlin. We each had a brush with death, as Sarah decided not to stop for an ambulance and was in a fender bender, and I couldn’t make it up a curb and nearly slid off and got left behind at a stoplight. And Rosie…survived as well.

Among the things we saw were (giant list that I am really only listing so I can look back on it later) Museum Island and the Berliner Dom; Pariser Platz by the Tiergarten, the Reichstag, and the Brandenburger Gate; Bebelplatz with the Book Burning Memorial, the State Opera and Humbolt University; the Holocaust Memorial and Hitler’s final bunkers; and a lot of angry drivers. Our tour guide was very animated (and from Maine, so ani-Maine-ted, har har) and had some very enlightening tidbits. Such as the fact that Hilter was addicted to cocaine (but we already knew that from “High Hilter” on the History channel). While we were at the Memorial, Rosie, Sarah, and I got a crepe (“banana pancake”, Frank) with banana and Nutella, a slushie, and a “zucker and zimt” crepe respectively. And, despite the fact that Sarah warned her, Rosie still got Nutella on herself. (“That is a bad idea. I think it started when you didn’t take the fork.”)

All in all a good orientation (probably would have been better if I was paying attention to where the sites actually were). And the rain practically stopped after 5 minutes (and did stop after 30).

In the middle of the tour, we were attempting to bike through the Tiergarten but were stopped by the large barricades surrounding the giant screen and the already hundreds of fans jockeying for a spot for the Germany-Turkey quarterfinals tonight. So after the tour, when the three of us went up in the Riechstag, we tried to see the huge crowd, but the trees were blocking it. But what we could hear were the chants.

While we were up in the Reichstag, Sarah needed to go to the bathroom. We were too busy relaxing on this giant, stopper-shaped bench in the middle of the round, glass dome, so we kept delaying the inevitable. Eventually, it reached a peak, and this conversation resulted:

Sarah: “I would go in a corner, but this thing is round and made of glass.”

Rosie: “Well, you know what they say about people who live in glass houses.”

Sarah: “They shouldn’t take off their pants?”

I”m so glad we’ve matured so much on this trip.

When we left the Reichstag at about 8:30, they were turning people away from the FanZone. We tried counting abandoned liquor bottles, but were soon overwhelmed. There was a very smart lady with a cart full of them to turn in for money.

We check a couple U-bahn stations before we found one that was open, then made our way back to the hostel. (We just forgot to pay attention for part and had to take it a stop backward.) Maybe our lack of attention was due to the fact that I was convinced that Rosie’s tap “flap” was toe-heel-toe instead of toe-toe. We took a video of it and slo-moed it to check. I was wrong, but I kept hearing three hits! And then the rest: Dinner of salad and chicken. Watching the end of the game. Now just prepping for tomorrow. Cross your fingers that there might be a plan and it will work.

Day 27 : Where is Sarah?

Rosie:

This morning started out with a big surprise. Maria had arranged it so that one of her friends from Klagenfurt would give us a ride to the airport. Her friend had changed the time that we were supposed to meet outside three or four different times, but the final time that we were told was 9:15. After running out of the dorm at about 9:17, we waited…and waited…and waited. Some amount of time after 9:30 we decided that if we were going to use public transportation to get to the airport, we should probably leave. The bus came about five minutes after we got to the bus stop and two transfers later we were at the airport with time to spare. Apparently nobody in Klagenfurt gets to the airport early because it was almost completely empty. On the plus side, no lines. The airport had this smart setup though where you had to walk through their store in order to get to the gates.

The airplane was nice enough; it was our first since the flight from London to Warsaw. They gave out free magazines as people boarded, but we later realized that there was no free water. The three of us basically passed out for the entire flight though so I don’t know how much the entertainment or the water mattered. Even though we clearly did not find the flight very exciting, there were a group of girls onboard who must have been flying for the first time and definitely disagreed. As soon as the plane started to move on the runway they let out a series of streaks which reoccurred at a few points during the flight.

After we got off of the plane, we had to get on a bus and then a subway to our hostel. There were a ton of different machines by the buses that were selling tickets and we knew that we were supposed to get a 2 euro ticket from somewhere. We settled on a nearby machine that was selling some sort of ticket. After we bought them, we started walking to the bus, but on the way we noticed bright yellow machines that said “public transportation” on them. We were pretty much positive (Corinne especially) that we had bought the wrong kind of ticket. After having a minor freak-out we went and asked the bus driver and he just waved us onto the bus. If there was a problem, it didn’t matter. When we got to the subway station the sign said that another was not supposed to come for three more minutes. We all pulled out our sandwiches and began to eat because we were starving (it was already past 3:00). Just after I had taken the first bite of it, the subway came…figures. Luckily there were a ton of seats, so eating wasn’t really a problem.

The hostel was right across the street from the subway station after we got off. There were two guys right behind us with big backpacks and they walked across the street, through the arch, and up the two flights of stairs to the front desk. They were lucky, they were staying in the main part of the hostel. We, on the other hand, had to walk back down the stairs, outside, past a few doors, into a really sketchy door, and then down into the basement to get to our room. I guess it makes sense that the cheap 32 person room would be in a basement though.

We basically spent no time in our room and went straight to the grocery store. We decided that tonight we were going to have burgers for dinner but they had multiple types of ground meat, and we didn’t know what meant beef. After staring at the meat for a while, we decided that one of the words definitely meant ground. It took a couple more minutes to see that one of the packages had the word for ground plus something like ‘schwine’ which we assumed was pork, like swine. Just to be sure, we ended up going to the counter and asking for ground beef. It seemed like a better idea even though it might have been slightly more expensive. We didn’t really have enough bag space to fit everything that we had bought, so Sarah “Commandeered” a cardboard tray for the meat.

When we got back and put everything away, we started looking in books and brochures for something to do both this afternoon and in the upcoming days. We settled on a free bike tour for tomorrow and a nice English man recommended the Jewish museum for today. When we got into the museum, we could almost immediately see why he had recommended it. Architecturally, the building was one of the coolest that I have ever seen. They way that everything was set up was so interesting. I can’t really explain it, but to give an example, the architect built this garden outside filled with an 8 by 5 (approximately) grid of large, standing, cement, rectangles. They were all slanted as were the ground and the walls. It was supposed to make you feel kind of dizzy and overwhelmed like the Jews felt when they were uprooted from their homes. It was pretty cool. Everything else was similar. It was set up in a cool way, but with a specific purpose.

When we got back to the hostel, we made our burgers a broccoli, which were pretty good. Corinne then proceeded to clean the entire kitchen, including the big mess that the rude people before us had left. We decided to hang out in the main part of the building instead of the sketchy part. And that is where we are now.

Day 26 : The Shortest Post of This Blog

…with the exception of the first one…

Beach day! Finally.

Before the beach we rode the bus illegally into the city for a little to buy stuff and climb another church tower.

Then we ate and left for the beach. The weather was great. We worked on getting rid of our terrible tan lines and swam in the lake. Over all it was really relaxing and awesome.

At 6:30pm Maria showed up and we rented a paddle boat. That’s when it got exciting.

So paddle boats are a four person water vessel powered by two people which means that Rosie and I chilled in the back while Corinne and Maria paddled us around the lake. After a while we realized that their view was better than ours so they turned the boat around and went backwards for a while.

[the following events may have been dramatized]

All of a sudden, the sky became cloudy and a big flash of lighting struck the mountain in front of us. Rosie and I alerted Corinne and Maria and then turned around the bring us back to the dock. In an instant, it

started to pour and the waves grew to 3 times their original height. Rosie and I took cover under our towels and the rain beat down on us. Water flooded our boat and almost capsized it.

Then we all fell out of the paddle boat and had to swim 3 miles to the dock.

Luckily, we are okay.

[replace the italicized words with these for the real story: regular sized flash, rain, rained, got on, did not almost, got back to the dock, 0 miles]

In other new, we made dinner tonight and Rosie found a mysterious bump on her leg. We could be wrong, but we think it’s gangrene.

Also, our access to internet for the next few days is kind of unknown right now…

Day 25: The Hills Are Alive

Corinne:
While Rosie was writing the blog entry and talking to Frank last night, Sarah and I went down to join the party in the basement of Maria’s dorm. I think I was expecting a little more light; the room was a dim lounge with a bar and a microphone that was providing endless amusement for the tipsy. We mingled by sitting on the couch for a bit, and left to webcam with the parents. The first time we were all in the “same room” in a while, as Mom put it.
We had decided on taking a daytrip to Salzburg today; a train left at 9:30 and 11:30. We got to the bus stop minutes before the weekday bus was supposed to arrive, then realized too late that it was Sunday. Which meant it would take multiple buses to get to the main station in Klagenfurt. The train we wanted also didn’t stop at the smaller, closer station. All this added up to being a little less than two hours early for the 11:30 train.
But it did give us time to ponder: how many dots and dashes does the Morse code alphabet have? We kept thinking 3 per character, but clearly (combinatorially) that is wrong.
We’ve also learned and used a new phrase direct from German: blackride. Defined as not buying a ticket on public transportation. As in, “we always blackride in Klagenfurt.”
After getting on the train minutes before it left despite the large amount of buffer time, we got into Salzburg after chugging through the valleys that reminded us of “Heidi” and “Sound of Music.” Which is appropriate as Maria Von Trapp’s story took place in Salzburg. (More later.)
It was oppressively hot when we got off the train at three, which created a eastward-favoring walk to stay in the shade. We passed through a couple parks, but had no energy to do more than walk through after climbing a sideways tree at the first.
The heat followed us to Mozart’s house, across the Mozart bridge, and to Mozart’s birthplace. We did find sanctuary in the city church, which had enough stone to keep it cool. It is possible we were more apathetic than normal, because no one wanted to commit to a plan for the day. Instead, Sarah and Rosie found these little packets for EuroCup that included Schmink-something-or-other…facepaint!
You know us. We wanted to get to the highest point in the city, and we didn’t want to pay the ten euro for the funicular. So it was finally decision time. Stay out of the heat, was the consensus, which put us back at Mozart’s house, listening to an audioguide of his life. Some of the highlights were when Mozart sent a letter to his sister, mentioning that his missed his landlady and “I constantly see her before me in her beguiling negligée.” He was probably being ironic, given he was 19 and his landlady was in her 60s. I also liked the poem that he wrote for his sister on her wedding day, to tell her husband: “Sir, thy will be done by day/But mine be done by night!”
It was finally cool enough to enjoy the sights up and down the pedestrian walk. On our first go-round, a church caught my eye down the road the other way. When we arrived there, I figured it was closed since it was after 6 at this point. But when a couple people opened the doors and went in, we followed and found ourselves at an evening music service. “Kyrie Eleison” was ringing through out St. Blasius, and I was reminded the reason for all these churches. Not erected to be tourist sites, they were built and often still are used for their holy purpose. I felt really blessed.
We found dinner at a funky little “take-away” shop that had sushi and curry and ramen, then tromped over to the Fan Zone to see a little George Harrison tribute.
The last thing on our list was to climb the dreaded hill.
Halfway up, Maria led us to the nunnery where Maria Von Trapp had been from 13 until about 19, when she became the nanny for the Von Trapps. Beyond the hill lay the Alps in snowed-tipped, breath-taking glory. We tried to identify the gate the children were at when they asked for Maria in the movie (since it was filmed around here), but didn’t get the chance to watch “Sound of Music” so guessed pretty much every single one.
The final uphill lead us through the first defense gate and to another fairly vertical path with a stone wall on the side. And Rosie made her decision of the day when she climbed atop it and everyone else followed. Salzburg looked even cuter and quainter from up there, and as the music of the George Harrison tribute drifted up to us, we sang along to “Free Falling” (correct, Tom Petty, not George, but details.)
Rosie and I managed to amuse ourselves climbing the breaks in the wall and skinning our knees until it was time to head back to the train station.
The entire day we had been plagued with visions of chocolate on every corner. Since Mozart spent his early life in this town (and never really wanted to come back, but they won’t admit it), he has a chocolate delight named after him called Mozartkugeln, translated as Mozart balls. Which Rosie finds funny. We tried one yesterday, so felt no need to get more. And Sarah had decided to “be good” today and not buy sweets. But I feel that in a region of the world where your hands have to be busy with either a cigarette or an ice cream cone, I would gladly choose the lesser of the two evils. Yum.
Also, apparently it comes across in these entries that we are eating a very sparse diet and has been brought to our attention by multiple parents. We eat out enough to experience the culture and local dishes, and pack enough food that we can eat where and when we want. Sounds like a perfect balance of necessity and pure delcious. Fears alieved?
Now, for the problem of sleeping…

Day 24 : We’re in Europe!

Rosie:

This morning we woke up a little later than usual because our only plans for the day were to go though the city in Klagenfurt. I might have been a little hyper from oversleeping, and it suddenly hit me again that we are in Europe, so I decided to announce it. It only took like three and a half weeks for it to finally sink in.

We finished breakfast at almost twelve o’clock, so we decided that we were going to skip lunch and get kebabs for dinner later. We were going to get ice cream at Maria’s favorite ice cream place and pack bananas to tide us over until then.

The walk to the city was beautiful. The entire thing is along a canal and bikers ride all along the street next to it. It was the perfect picturesque summer day. We saw a few of the sites of the city, but the tower that we were going to climb up closed at 12:00 on Saturdays so we missed it. Oh well. Apparently stores in Klagenfurt aren’t very reliably open on Saturday as a few other places were also closed. We ended up spending most of our time in the mall (a true European experience). Corinne replaced the sunglasses that she broke, and I replaced the flip-flops that got worn through. During the flip-flop hunt we went into the sports store and definitely discovered the next big trend: slack-lining. The box said that it was “for anyone who enjoys balancing on a rope no more than 50cm off of the ground.” Since they were clearly trying to market to such a broad category of people, how could it not catch on?
The mall also sold miniature Sudoku books which are pretty sweet. We got pretty hungry in the middle of the mall so Corinne and I both pulled out the bananas that we had packed for the day. When I got mine out of my bag I realized why most people don’t carry bananas around for two days. It was like solid brown, mushy, and uneatable. Corinne got hers out and offered to share it with me. She started to whip it open by holding the stem and the entire strip of banana peel came off so the banana just fell on the ground. It was so sad. We both decided that the five second rule applied and decided to eat it anyway though.

The ice cream place that Maria recommended definitely lived up to the praise that she gave it. For an extra ten cents, you can get a mixed scoop with half of one flavor and half of another. If I open an ice cream store I am definitely going to do that. It is perfect for those of us who are not great at making decisions. The one problem was that the system was a little weird and I tried to be bold and order first and failed. On the plus side, the ice cream was delicious. It was actually gelato. Delicious.

We sat at the ice cream table for a long time and talked. We were trying to kill time until kebabs. As pretty and charming as the city of Klagenfurt is, there is not a whole lot to do, especially on Saturdays. We went back to the mall for a little while until Maria’s friend was ready to meet us at the restaurant. We got there, and successfully ordered everything until Sarah’s turn came. Such a trouble maker. Maria tried to explain, in German, that Sarah could not have any dairy products on hers, but the guy who worked there did not understand the word for milk. Finally he went through every sauce, said what it was, and asked if she wanted it. We discovered that she only could not have one of the sauces. It was yoghurt, we probably could have figured it out. Either way, the kebabs, or gyros, or whatever you want to call them were amazing. Almost as good as the real Turkish ones.

On the way back from dinner we stopped at a really cool booth thing that was made of foam board. People had written a ton of things on the walls (whether that’s what it was meant for or not) so we decided to write some things too. Sarah also taught Corinne and I Spanish. Well, Corinne and I blurted out every Spanish phrase that we had learned over the course of our lives, and Sarah laughed and corrected our bad grammar. At this point learning German would probably be more helpful, but Spanish was good too. We read, internet-ed, and Sudoku-ed for a while. There was a huge birthday party going on downstairs for one of Maria’s friends. Being the regular party animals that we are, we acted accordingly.

Day 23 : Corn Pizza and Pistachio Ice Cream

Sarah:

Today we went to Ljubljana (Loo – blee – ana) in Slovenia for a day trip. Guess what? Ljubljana is totally adorable and awesome. We started the day off with an illegal bus ride to the train station, followed by a train ride (go figure). I just have to say that I totally love Austria. Besides being gorgeous, all the train stations we have been to have had escalators to every platform or any time there are stairs. It could be my escalator powers kicking in, or maybe the Austrians just know how to do things.

Ed. Note: To see Maria’s version of the events, go here: http://maria.thefortytwo.net/?p=61.

Anyway, we got off the train in Slovenia and walked across the city to go to the university that Pamela, Maria’s roommate, goes to since she is an exchange student this year. From the one bathroom we went to in Slovenia, I’ve come the the conclusion that their toilet paper is pink. After we left the university, Pamela showed us a library, some statues, a monument that was like an obelisk without the little pyramidal part on top, and some other sights. When we arrived back at the city center everyone except Rosie got ice cream. It was totally delicious. We wandered around the main square and walked up and down the little river a few times. Ideas to see a castle at the top of a hill kept flying around. Corinne said, “I’m fine taking the funicular.” I said, “I’m not fine not taking the funicular.” Guess what? We did not take the funicular. We walked up the hill. I should be used to it by now I guess. The walk wasn’t bad at all, but I was totally pissed. Rosie offered me her banana as a consolation (and then offered it up 5 more times before the end of the day).

The castle was pretty. We paid 2 Euros to get in and climbed some really cool stairs to get to the top of the tower. There weren’t as many steps to the top of this tower as the others and the best part was that once we made it to the top we were actually outside! It was pretty windy so Rosie had to hold her skirt down. We took tons of pictures and sat up there for a while until one of the people who worked there told us we had to leave since it wasn’t safe anymore. I don’t know about you, but a giant flag pole on the top of the highest point in the city in a storm sounds okay to me.

Once we got to the bottom of the tower, we waited for a few minutes for a 3D movie about Ljubljana to start. We got cool 3D glasses and personal audio things to translate the movie for us. Towards the end, the movie started showing present day pictures of the city and we all felt pretty cool since we had seen most of the sights they showed just walking around.

Since the picture thing is acting up, here’s a slideshow

After the castle we went to a pizza place that Rick Steves recommended. Apparently all the Slovenian restaurants are touristy and over priced, but the pizza place is a local favorite. The menu had classic pizzas with mushrooms or tomatoes, but it also had a bunch of other more interesting pizzas. We figured we’d probably never have pizza like this again so we decided to be adventurous. Rosie got a salad with a bunch of different vegetables on it. Corinne and Maria split two pizzas with some sort of meat on them. I’m not sure exactly what was on theirs, but I don know that one had meat, an egg, and tatar sauce on it. My pizza had tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, artichokes, corn, and sour cream on it (in addition to the sauce and cheese). I expected it to be all mixed up on the pizza, but each topping had its own section while the sour cream was in the middle. Based on the tuna sandwich we bought in Poland on day 2 and my pizza tonight, I’ve come to the conclusion that corn belongs in and on more things. Who knew corn on pizza was good? I think they’re on to something over here. So after finishing our pizzas, we got a desert pizza with whipped cream and bananas and nuts and ice cream on it. Needless to say, it was delicious.

We walked back to the main square. I forgot to mention that Maria had control of Rick for today, so when we arrived back at the square for the 3rd time that day, we did something we hadn’t done yet: we learned about all the stuff there. I think the most interesting thing was the statue of a Slovenian poet with his muse above him. Apparently, the fact that she was naked wasn’t met with great enthusiasm when the statue first went up and it had to be covered up every night with a tarp to prevent vandalism. What I found the most interesting (and disturbing) was the fact that he met his muse when he was in his thirties and she was four. Not surprisingly, his love for her in later years was unrequited.

After the sightseeing, we caught a train back to Klagenfurt. We actually had to take two trains and had a period of about one hour between them. During this time, Corinne and I rode the escalators multiple times, we had a brief discussion about legumes (how peanuts are actually legumes, what make a legume a legume, etc), and Rosie discovered that her book was actually three-in-one. We also discovered some cool stuff about train stations in Austria. For instance, the escalators have sensors by them, so if no one is riding them they slow down and eventually stop until someone shows up. We also found some really cool vending machines which made me want sour candy. Unfortunately, the machine only took 50 cent coins which none of us had. This started a scavenger hunt for change. We found a photo booth that also printed business cards which we almost purchased so we could put the blog website on them and hand them to people when they asked us how Europe was. Then we saw slot machines and I was tempted to gamble away 50 cents from a 1 Euro coin. Then we rode an escalator. Then we found a normal vending machine and I bought some candy and finally got a 50 cent coin. Then we went back to the original vending machine and I got sour candy. It was all very satisfying and time killing. Afterwards, we rode the escalator again, this time to our platform. To pass the time we played a game involving snapping in order which turned out to be far more amusing than I ever could have guessed. Finally our train came and we folded all the seats flat to make a giant bed in our compartment. It was basically the best compartment ever. Also, on the first train I was way confused about the seat order, and I still don’t understand it. This is how the seats are ordered:

36 34 | aisle | 38 32
35 37 | aisle | 33 31

If anyone can figure this out/ come up with a half way decent reason for the order, I will be super impressed. The farthest I got was that one row is evens and one is odds. Also, the two rows behind us were numbered exactly the same, only all the threes were twos.

I’m not really sure how to finish this one off, so I’ll just let you know that I’m a slacker and pictures will go up tomorrow.

Day 22: The Great Book Exchange

Corinne:
I’m going to start with the opera last night. Rosie spent a well-deserved evening in while Sarah and I went to try for the 4th time to buy opera tickets and see the show. The first two times were the day before yesterday, when we saw the line and baled (1) then went to the theater after the opera already started and got the news that they were sold out (2). Then yesterday we went and had just our shorts and tennis shoes on and were told we needed pants or skirts (3). So we hurried back to the hostel for dinner, changed, and speed-walked (sped-walk?) back to the opera house, getting there five minutes after the performance started, but finally got our tickets (4). It was literally standing room, and we couldn’t see much of the show or any of the translating screens for the first two acts. So we enjoyed the singing and passed notes on ideas about what was going on. After the intermission, we got spots on the railing to see the translations and more fully understand “Don Carlos.” But it was blazing hot, and some one else had already fainted, so with about ten minutes to go we popped outside, then saw the finale and left for the hostel. Where I ate two pieces of toast with Nutella and peanuts. Best midnight snack ever.
I was fully surprised when this morning went off without a hitch. Yesterday, I had also received an e-mail from Maria asking when we were going to get in and giving us two late train times. Since our hostel wanted us out by 10 and we wanted to get on the 11 to Klagenfurt, I e-mailed her back to try to meet us for the earlier one. She got the message and so we were on track to get to the 11. We were ready by 10 (for the first and only morning of the three in the hostel), took an easy bus with our pre-purchased tickets, didn’t need reservations for the train, got a compartment to ourselves, and weren’t bothered for the rest of the ride.
I believe you have heard about our book “woes.” Rosie has Dune, and I traded “Sammy’s Hill” in for “The Broker” when we arrived at Vienna, then traded that for some Nora Roberts romance. However, then Rosie and I traded so now she is reading the romance and I began “Dune” while Sarah read it while I was fully preoccupied with the scenery on the train.
About the scenery: I was a chapter in when I looked up and couldn’t look away. The hills were verdent and dramatic, with little village pocketed throughout. That was the end of “Dune” for me. It was also the end of any idea I had of sleeping (after staying up to finish my other book last night. Yes, my life is slightly ruled by literature.) We all agreed that this is the best trainride we’ve taken yet. It is also the last with our large bags, as it is just day trips and airplanes from here on out (minus the Chunnel).
Anyway, gorgeous, with a castle.
And then we arrived. I was a little preoccupied with making sure the train didn’t leave with Sarah on it because she had forgotten her sweater in our compartment. So I was waving at the conductor, and then looked over to see Maria!
Haven’t seen her in months. Hair was longer, but that’s about it. Still my sister. And I was already excited even before she navigated everywhere with her full proficiency in German.
We went on a “shopping spree” to get all of our groceries for the next couple days, then came back and decided on a walk before dinner (after eating some poppyseed-filled croissants called mohnkipferl).
We went to and from the lake, passing a cornfield, the university, and a bunny. At the lake, we decided that Austria is currently our favorite country.
That didn’t stop us from having stirfry for dinner.

Day 21 : Conceited Cartoon Characters

Rosie:

This morning for the first time we had eggs instead of cereal. They were delicious. Sarah and Corinne made theirs in a frying pan with no handle, and I made scrambled eggs in the bottom of a pot. Maybe it was the lack of cereal this morning, but on our way over to the first thing we had planned for today, we had an intense conversation about cereal cartoon characters. We might have neglected a cereal, but I am pretty sure that Captain Crunch is the only cereal that is actually named after the character. Sarah decided that he must be really conceited. I mean, Tony the Tiger has Frosted Flakes, Fred and Barney have Fruity Pebbles, Snap Crackle and Pop have Rice Krispies etc.

Our first stop today was the Haus Der Musik (or something like that). It was a really cool museum. One of the coolest that we have seen so far. The beginning was a look at sound through science. The opening display was supposed to be similar to being a a womb. I know that sounds really weird, but they actually know what sounds you hear there, and I think that it pretty cool. We all got in the fetal position and lay on the floor for a while. It was strangely soothing and I think Sarah almost fell asleep. Thank God nobody walked in. I can only imagine what people were thinking if they were watching us on camera, but they probably get that all the time? Maybe? Okay, well there is a chance. The rest of the science rooms were about dissecting sounds, and learning how they worked through interactive displays.

The second part of the museum was about the million famous composers from Austria. Bascially every composer ever was actually Austian, who knew? Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and the list continues…a lot. The rest of the museum was also cool, but I liked those two parts the best. In the middle of the section about the composers there were footprints on the ground that were doing the waltz so we took turns dancing around. Once again, I hope there were no video cameras. I know we all seem like really coordinated people…but shockingly we are not.

Next we went to the Belvedere palace. We decided to skip the art exhibit inside because we were a bit museum-ed out. The gardens were really pretty though. In the first half, they were mowing the grass and stuff, but the second half was beautiful. We decided to take a group picture in front of the palace, but Corinneś camera was dead, so Sarah went to set hers up. While she was fidgeting with it to try and get it at the right angle, a nice man with an intense camera offered to take it for us. As we were getting the camera back from him and walking away, an Asian man asked the same guy to take a picture of him. We did not really think anything of it, but as we kept walking, the Asian dude beckoned for us to come join him in the picture. We laughed, but reluctantly agreed. What was the worst that could happen?

Later we went to this giant cemetery where all of the composers that we had learned about are buried. There was a map at the entrance, but it did not have any of the graves listed. We decided to wander around and try to find them, keep in mind the cemetery has over 2.5 million graves. We decided to follow this family that looked like tourists, but somehow we lost them. We kept walking and like five minutes later, we miraculously ended up where we wanted to be. It was amazing. The graves were all really intense and shiny.

Rick Steves put a cool self-guided trolly tour in his book. Basically you take a trolly, and read everything that he has to say about the buildings you were passing. It was amazing, like a scavenger hunt and a tour in one for the low price of a trolly ride. It was pretty sweet.

We walked from the end of our trolly ride back to the opera house to try and buy tickets for the second time, but were bounced out. I never knew that you could not wear shorts to buy tickets. We were planning on changing before actually going to the show, but I guess that just was not good enough. We ran back to get dinner so that we could eat and still get to the show early enough to have dinner. I decided, not to go, but Sarah and Corinne are still away, so I am assuming that they finally got to go to the opera. It only took about three tries.

Day 20 : Fine China, Some Cake, and a lot of Stairs

Sarah:
Today started off bright and early since we had to buy food at the grocery store and be back before 10am. I have a great lunch today because instead of my usual cheese and bread sandwich I had a cheese, bread, and tomato sandwich. Who knew a little tomato could make so much difference?

After we left the hostel we wanted to take the tram around the city center and get off at the places Rick Steves said were worth seeing. Unfortunately, the tram we wanted to take wasn’t running since its path went right through the FanZone for the EuroCup. Corinne’s hopes and dreams for the day fading quickly. In a striking turn of events, Rosie and I made the decisions and led the way for the day. I confiscated Rick and we formed a new plan (based off of Corinne’s original plan).

The sights we saw today include:

• The Parliament
  • After starting to walk around the fan zone, a sign on the fence caught Corinne’s eye. We learned that Parliament offers free tours every hour at the bottom of the hour in English. Sadly we had just missed it, so we decided to wander around and come back for the next tour. This was a good idea, except we arrived back at the fence at exactly 11:30am at which point the tour had already started. We went to the visitors’ center and watched a video about Austria’s history. It was pretty cool since to make the video start you had to turn a big steering wheel to the year you wanted and press the start button. After we finished watching the video we went on the computers where we did a quiz that they only had in German (Corinne actually got ranked though) and Rosie and I played a matching game together. We have terrible memories and the game shut off before we could finish. Afterwards, we went on the tour. We saw a bunch of rooms including one that I’m pretty sure was made entirely out of marble. At the end of each of the little informative speeches, the tour guide attempted to tie the lesson back into soccer since clearly the only reason people would be visiting Vienna was for the EuroCup. On the whole, these were either far stretches or too obvious to be really interesting. For instance, did you know that there are rules for playing soccer AND rules for the way you are supposed to do things in Parliament? Crazy stuff.

• The Royal Apartments
  • After the Parlaiment tour, we headed over to the Royal Apartments. It was pretty cool since for this museum children are age 6 – 18 and admission for children costs half as much as students. Corinne paid for student admission. Then Rosie attempted to get a child’s ticket by claiming that she was 18. Unfortunately, she joined the 19 year old’s club a couple of days before we left so when the woman asked for a form of identification proving her age, she had to pretend she didn’t have one. So while Rosie’s attempt was not successful, mine was since I actually am 18.
  • Before the actaul apartments, there are multiple rooms full of fancy plates, silverware, centerpieces, glasses, and other serving dishes. All of this was very fancy. There were solid silver plates and oranately painted plates and bowls. We also had a nice audio guide to accomapny the whole tour so we learned a few things like the fact that services used to be made out of silver, but later china became the more popular choice. We also learned (about 8 times to Rosie’s frustration) that all the silver was melted down during the Napoleonic Wars to make coins.
  • The apartments themselves were very fancy as well and the best part was that we didn’t have to read because we had the little audio guides.

• St. Stephen’s Cathedral
  • Yet another Cathedral…Europe seems to be full of them. It wasn’t the nicest we’ve seen, but it had some weird white triangles set up inside and we couldn’t quite figure out why. It also had a tower attached so we paid more money to climb stairs and I of course almost died again. I didn’t feel so bad about it though since the people behind me we going at about the same pace. We spent a few minutes at the top and I sat down for most of it since I was convinced that my legs were going to give out. The trip down the stairs seemed never ending and for a long time all you could see both above and below were stairs. Those spiral staircases are killer.

• The Opera House
  • Today I learned that standing room tickets actually mean that you are standing during the show. I did not learn this from experience. We arrived 10 minutes late and couldn’t get in.

Plan B did not exist so we wandered around the pedestrian streets where all the shops had already closed. Then we decided to find a place to watch the EuroCup and had dessert at a small café and watched the game, during which time it started to rain. It didn’t stop so we ended up walking back to our hostel in the rain, where we stayed for the rest of the night.

Another thing we did today was eat at Demel, where they have delicious cakes.

Also, for dinner we had salad with chicken. Rosie and I are pretty proud of ourselves since we actually cooked raw chicken and made it edible and stuff. That is basically my biggest cooking accomplishment for the trip, and that is saying something considering how challenging cheese sandwiches and cereal are.

That’s about it. Also, Corinne’s USB drive is broken so no pictures until we get wireless internet.

Day 19 : Happy Birthday, Eva!

Corinne:

Today dawned sunny through our skylight, which was good since I forgot to set an alarm yesterday. After a wakeup song of Hannah Montana, I left to “cash out” at the “szupermarket” down the street while the other two finished getting ready. My 280 forint (about $2.60) got me yogurt, some little packs of Nutella, and some Kinder chocolate. The best part was when I got back, Rosie was ready for breakfast with our bag of milk.
So yesterday there was a slightly heated conversation within five minutes of the other two waking up that discussed whether or not we had enough milk for our cereal. From this conversation we determined that a) there would have been enough milk had Sarah and I not had cereal for a mid-afternoon snack the day before, b) we had to go to the store before noon when it closed, and c) all conversations that happen within five minutes of wakeup have an edge to them that isn’t so pleasant.
Anyway, the only milk (“tej”) left was either the boiled kind that didn’t have to be refridgerated or the bag. Which we didn’t end up using yesterday. But today, our cornflakes and coco krispies were accompanied with bagged milk.
We also made our sandwiches with cheese that hadn’t been refridgerated. Living on the edge. But Sarah assures me that food poisoning only takes three hours. It’s been more and we are still alive, so no problem.
Our attempted train schedule was hectic, as given to us by the internet. It involved four trains and three connections of less than twenty minutes. We managed to make the first two, getting us to Celldomolk before the train ran 25 minutes late. If you can’t do math, I’ll help.
We missed our train.
Not a problem. Our train pass allowes us unlimited travel in one day, so we just hopped on another train headed in the right direction (actually, to the same city). However, it took the woman in the ticket window 5 minutes to flip through her train schedule book. Rosie wondered why she didn’t just use the computer. Pretty sure that station was as low tech as they come.
On all our trains, we just sat and rattled along. Rosie has almost finished Dune, and Sarah and I are salivating over it, since that is the only reading material we have. I did pick up a book in Prague. And finished it in Prague.
Yesterday, while we were freezing, we solved some Sudoku that I have along. Today on the train, there were multiple times we were sitting in silence counting to 9 in our heads. CMU all the way.
(And, Dad, your trick with the dots to represent the numbers has been duly passed on.)
So we got to Vienna, a little later than the original plan, but a little earlier than our second thanks to a train going to the other Vienna train station.
From there, it was a clean, sleek train station navigation to an ATM. Then to the buses. Where we realized with didn’t know how they worked. We found machines that dispensed tickets. While we were standing there confused, a worker approached us, giving us a map and pointing us to the right ticket. Thank goodness for EuroCup.
We walked on to the bus as it pulled up, but then were chased off. The bus we were trying to board was out of service. The bus we did take was ridiculously crowded with a group of pre-teens and some woman who was trying to converse with Rosie in German.
Our hostel is a cute, meticulate apartment with about 10 beds totally, but there are other people. (What, actually sharing a room with other people? We haven’t done that since night 3.) And they seem to all be American. Save the German guy who had Rosie paint his head.
We got to the hostel, Rosie got sucked into the internet, and Sarah got antsy. We were given a map to the nearest grocery store. Sarah was holding the map. A minute later, when we ask where the store is, she finally looks at it, and points the direction we came. Two minutes later, when we ask where the store it, she looks at it, turns it 180 degrees, points back the way we came again, and forces it on Rosie.
So after walking back and forth passed the same cafe three times, we get to the store for tomorrow, and got something to eat at a sidewalk restaurant. Wienerschniztel and “gostz” (?), which was hash browns, pork bits, and an egg. During dinner, which crowds of red and white bedazzled fans walking by, we decide to go to the fan zone (we were going to dress up before realizing we didn’t have the right colors for either team). It was a crowd of people, with a couple big screens and not enough standing room. And that was about it. But people were hanging off everything, from the statue, to the trees, to the roofs of a bank of ATMs. After five minutes of wandering (and nearly getting run over by a tram), we gave up and watched it in the hostel. With a couple other Americans guys. We aren’t as invested as the crazy people passing us on the street hooting and hollering. We were warned that sleep tonight might be interesting. We’ll see how the game ends.