Vienna

So, it's about time that I posted about Vienna....seeing that I visited there in May and all. Haha. Okay, so I went to Vienna for a see-as-much-as-possible-in-three-days trip and it was amazing. I had a two week vacation in the end of May and beginning of June and my plans fell thru for the first half. I thought about it, looked at the money that I had saved from my English teaching project at the school here, and decided to go somewhere. I wasn't sure where I could get and how much I could see for 200 Euros, but I was sure going to find out! I made a list of places that I hadn't been and wanted to go to still, then looked for airline tickets, viola!, Vienna it is!

I left on a monday evening, and after 4 hours of delays, it only took an hour to fly there. Isn't ironic how sometimes the delays can be longer than the flights? Anyway, I ended up getting to my hostel late and went almost straight to bed to get up and go-go-go! I spent the first day walking around and getting acclimated to the city. I walked from my hostel, down into the museum quarter, further into the "downtown" area to the most famous Vienna church; Stephans Dom, watched a famous clock, Anchor Clock, do it's noon parade, and then decided it was much too hot to keep walking and spent the remainder of the afternoon in the art history museum. Then it was on to the famous market place (which wasn't really all that exciting, honestly), to see an original Otto Wagner art nouveau building (now that WAS exciting!) and back to the hostel for dinner.

The second day, I walked the opposite direction of downtown until I found one of the palaces, Schönbrunn Palace. What's really exciting is that they have a combo ticket called the "Sisi Ticket" which tours most of the things that had to do with Empress Sisi's life. That means that I got to tour every part of Schönbrunn palace that's open to the public, the main palace or Hofburg in the museum quarter, the royal silver collection (which includes gold, silver, ceramic, porcelain, glass, etc. settings from the royal family of Vienna as well as gifts from other countries and empires.), and the royal furniture museum (drool!) for one price! Also, being that I'm tiny and cute (que to rolls eye), I got the kid price. Hooray!! (Which, as I will tell you later, was a very good thing...) I loved every part of that day and I saw so many beautiful and wonderful things that I could hardly keep track of it all. The sad part was, you're not allowed to take photos inside most of those places because flash can damage the fine interior materials. I understand and I'm glad they're preserving it for future generations, but I'm still a little sad that I have no photos to share all the amazing things I saw.

Okay, now I have to tell you a little, funny furniture museum story. Any of you who truly know me, know that I have a slight obsession with chairs. (Especially my daddy, who probably wouldn't call it a "slight" obsession and I think will kill me if I bring another car load of chairs home any time soon. Haha.) The furniture museum was basically a storage house for the furniure used in the royal palaces over the 600 years of their reign. Seeing that each empress redecorated to suit her taste, and probably again several times to suit the style of the times, that's quite a bit of furniture. In one very long aisle of the museum, they have little showrooms set up on one side that show how a whole interior would have looked in the appropriate time period and on the other side, they have a long line of chairs just sitting out for people to touch. Then, I saw a sign that I will never forget....it said that we could TRY the chairs. Not just SEE them, but TRY them! So there I was, standing with my jaw dropped open, looking at all these beautiful old chairs, and deciding if it was really right to add wear to them. Well, duh, of course I tried them! I switched my backpack to my front and, one-by-one, sat in every chair in the entire row. (I wish I had a video of me doing that because I'm sure I looked completely ridiculous! I mean, can you imagine? Stand up, move over one, sit. Repeat about 50 times. Hahaha.)

Day three was another day filled with churches, art, palaces, and TONS of beautiful architecture. I started the day at Karlskirche which, I must say, is a quite amazing church. Architecture wise, it's almost more like a temple, honestly. And, if you know about my curse, of course, it was under rennovation. (If you don't yet know, it's time you do. I have a curse. Everywhere I travel, eveything is under construction. Castles, museums, famous architecture, you name it. If I'm going to see it, it's being rennovated.) Now, I could tell you a list of all the things that were being rennovated in Vienna while I was there, but it would actually be shorter to tell you the things that WEREN'T. So anyway, this time, for the first time ever, the rennovation actually did something for me! Not only were they rennovating and fixing the outside of the building, but they were also repairing the frescos painting on the inside of the dome and I got the chance to climb the scaffolding and be within inches of amazing 1700's frescos! Now, I will say that climbing on scaffolding, in the middle of a church, very high above marble floors is not exactly the most comfortable, but it was also totally worth it. There was an elevator to the first section of flooring and then there was an opportunity to climb into the very top part of the dome. I did so. The teenage boys who were on a school trip to visit the church, cared little for the art that was around them, and who were dropping coins from the top of the scaffolding and jumping up and down did nothing to ease my nerves at the top, but it was quite a view. (I can assure you, had they been English-speaking students, they would have gotten a tongue-lashing from me! But sadly, although I have learned quite a bit of German, I'm not good at angry emotions and scolding like that... yet.)

Next it was on to the last palace in Vienna, Beveldere Palace, which houses two art museums; one in the Upper Belvedere and one in the lower. I went thru the upper belvedere and saw "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt (one of my favorites and one of my reasons for going to Vienna!) and many other paintings that I have studied in the past. I always love seeing paintings in person that I have discussed and studied in art classes. It makes it so much more special when I can really see the things that teachers were talking about on a big scale instead of on a computer screen or in a book. Anyway, then I found out, much to my suprise, they were having a special showing of one of my favorite artists! Wow, cool, eh? Mucha, an amazing art nouveau, mostly graphic artist, was the special in the lower Belvedere. You've all seen his work, whether you know the name or not, you've seen it. Needless to say, I upgraded my ticket right away and went down there! Lucky me! I thought I was going to have to go to Prague to see his work! (Well, I probably still will someday. There is a stained glass window he designed there afterall!)

Anyway, I could probably drone on about Vienna for a very long time, seeing that it's one of my favorite cities that I have visited so far, but I won't go on. If you want to hear more Vienna stories, you can always ask me. Oh right, I said I would explain the ticket thing from earlier. Okay, well. I had planned my money out really well for this trip because I knew that I didn't have much to spare, but I still ended up going to more art museums and such that I had originally known about in the planning and I literally came back to Stuttgart with about 1 Euro in small change in my pocket. That was it. I spent everything spare a handful of pennies. Haha, oh well. It's just money. It was worth it and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Theresa and My World-Wind Tour: Visiting Vincent, Munich, and Salzburg!

After Paris, we headed back to Stuttgart for the night to wash clothes and get ready for out adventure the next day to safer, more familar (for me) territory; Vincent's house! For those of you who don't know, Vincent and I are an item now and this was the first best friend approval meeting. Haha. This was also my opportunity to show Theresa Munich and, my favorite so far, Salzburg, Austria. The first day we were in Prien was time for Theresa to see Prien am Chiemsee and get to know Vincent. We went out to a traditional German restaurant for dinner with Vincent's dad, Marcel, and the whole day was quite lovely.

Day two, we toured Munich. Well, I should say tha we tried to tour Munich. We had a long list of things to show Theresa and things that I hadn't seen either, but most of them were outside activities and the weather had a completely different idea in mind. It rained, hailed, and stormed while we were there. Although we saw the city center, the market place, and got a little shopping in, we ended up going back to Prien early because the weather was just too terrible to see the gardens and fantastic things we had planned. Oh well, another time! But! We had Weißwurst (white sausage), pretzels, and beer for dinner...so the day wasn't a total waste! Haha.

The next day was also awful weather which was really sad because we were planning on going to Herrenchiemsee; the island with a castle on it in the middle of Chiemsee (the lake) that Prien is on. That was sad because that was our only chance to show Theresa Herrenchiemsee. Oh well, she'll just have to come visit again! :P But we spent the day doing things just hanging around together like shopping and cooking....and we even talked Vincent into doing a peeling mask with us! Hahaha.

The next and last day, on the other hand, was totally beautiful! Hooray! We spent the last day touring Salzburg, Austria which is one of my favorite cities that I have ever visited; possibly ever my VERY favorite. Anyway, we did the usual tour that I do when I go there. First, you go thru the beautiful tree park right off the main street from the main train station and into the flower garden with old statues (my personal favorite place in the world). By the way, part of my favorite flower garden was one the the places they filmed Sound of Music. You know, the part where they ran around the fountain singing "Do Re Mi"? Well, being the musical geeks that we are....we did just that! We couldn't help ourselves!

Then on to the old street and house where Mozart was born, the markets, and then the collection of HUGE, lovely churches at the end. Here is Theresa in front of Mozart's house (the yellow one).

Since I have done all those things several times, we also planned something that I had never done before. We visited the castle on the top of the cliff: Hohensalzburg Fortress.

It's a very impressive castle that was started in 1077 and sits atop the cliff overlooking Salzburg. It's rather amazing ot think about all the things that happened there in the close to 1000 years that it's stood it's regal ground. Apparently it's one of the very largest medieval castles in Europe and we toured the whole thing....or at least what you're allowed to go in. There is a cable car that goes straight up the cliff to the castle, but we decided to hike it. (We also made notes-to-selves later to take the cable car next time! Haha. Hey, it's a VERY steep cliff!) Anyway, it was just gorgeous with snow still on the ground and the warm shining all day. The view from the castle of the Alps and over the city was so incredible. Afterwards, we ate Weiner Schnitzel for dinner at a cafe right down the hill from the castle and Theresa got to drink her first Radler (half beer, half lemonade). It was closing time in the cafe and they were so nice to give us all a little dessert for free before we left. Anyway, it was a great visit overall and Theresa gave her best friend approval to Vincent. (Well, that's an easy one...but Vincent still needs the brother approval in July. Good luck Vincent!) Anyway, now I'll hush-up and just show you pictures like you're all dying to see. Haha.

Theresa and me hiking up to the castle. (See? I wasn't kidding! It's steep!):

Vincent and me at the front of the castle, overlooking Salzburg:

Theresa and My World-Wind Tour: Paris!

So, when I decided that I was going to be an au pair back in June/July, one of my best friends, Theresa, decided that she couldn't live without me for a whole year and that she would just have to come visit! As soon as I got here and had my info about vacation times, she bought a ticket to come at right about the six month mark in February. From there, we planned a trip packing in quite a bit into the little time we had. Our first big thing to do was Paris. If you've never been to Europe before, as Theresa had not, what is always on the list? Obviously Paris! So we did just that.

We stayed in the same hostel that I stayed in and had liked so much in August 2007. Well, this time it left a little more to be desired than last time. Let's just say that it wasn't probably the cleanest place you've ever seen, we were a bit scared to use, well, everything in the kitchen, and there was NO hot water to be had. Yeah. That pretty much sums that up! Haha. Oh, and, being February, it was cold as all get out when we were there....but hey, we got to see Paris together! After three days of walking around by foot for 9 hours a day in the freezing cold and no showers, I'll admit, we were pretty happy to be heading on to our next adventure! Although, when we were there, we saw all the things that I saw last time and even squeeze in some things that I didn't have time for last time. So that was really neat. Some new things for me were Sacré-Cœur Basilica, the Opera house, Moulin Rouge and Montmarte district, and eating at a real French café! Oh, and I got to see some things in the Louvre that I had missed last time too!


The most outrageous thing was the French café...let's just say, we lived through it, but I'm not exactly sure how. Haha. Here's the story: We had decided that we would save money by cooking and eating things like pasta in the hostel for every meal....except one. For one meal, we were going to really splurge and eat at a REAL French café! We had heard that a good part of town for "going out" was the Latin district across the river from Notre Dam. We walked around this very cool area for a while and looked at the different cafés; each of which had a different theme, all of which had exactly the same menu...only at different prices. I guess we should have turned back then, but alas, we didn't. We took a while deciding where to eat until we saw one with Escargot on the menu. That was the deciding factor. We were in Paris, we had to try Escargot right? So we went inside. We ordered one meal selection from the 15€ menu to get the Escargot as appetizer and one from the 10€ menu to save a bit of money. As usual, we were going to share everything. On the 15€ menu there was a choice of something that we had never heard of before and we decided, what the heck, let's go for it. We asked the waiter what it was and he just pointed at a picture of it that was indeed to small to actually see, but we went for it anyway. On the other menu we ordered something safe like steak and fries.

After we ordered, I asked where the bathroom was and follwed the directions down this little staircase. I then passed an open room stacked with chairs, crates, and a very strange assortment of other things, turned the corner and passed what look like part of a kitchen, and got to the bathroom that had a table in the hallway where an apple torte was sitting. When I was leaving the bathroom, which had no toilet seat, our first waiter came out at the same time, zipping up his fly and started talking to me. Creepy. Anyway, I went back upstairs as quickly as possible and said to Theresa: "When we get to choosing the desserts, whatever you do, do NOT choose the apple torte!" Haha. Then we had Escargot! It was actually good. Floating in their shells with melted butter and herbs, they tasted much like seafood. A little chewy, but rather yummy! Once again, we should have stopped there. Then the main course was delivered. Theresa was lucky and had a steak sitting in front of her, I on the other hand, at this point said, "Dear Lord Theresa, dinner is staring at me!" Yes, yes it truly was. Whole shrimp including eyeballs and tiny little feet were laying atop a very interesting rice mixture with, literally, hunks of octopus and God only knows what else. But, being the good sport I am, I started eating it anyway. Shrimp and all! Everything was quite...umm....icky honestly, but what really topped the cake was when I ate what I think might have been a fried rubber band. Luckily enough, there were more of them so I forced Theresa to eat one too! Such a good friend I am! Hahaha. Even the steak and wine were icky! Really sad. Anyway, that was our "night out" and we learned a very important lesson: When in Paris, either eat someplace famous and expensive or eat at McDonalds.

Both of us trying Escargo for the very first bite!:

So here goes....a NEW BLOG!!!

I have a lot to fill you guys all in on, so well let's start out by talking about my job here. Being an au pair hasn't been everything I thought it would be. I mean, I shouldn't complain because I get to live in Germany and learn German.....which was one of the main point I guess, but I don't have enough money to travel very much. I'm not complaining really, I'm just saying that mostly I've felt stuck here because I'm so close to all these cool things and I just don't have enough for a train ticket to see them! It's just a little frusterating! Anyway, the kids have gotten much closer to me since the vacation in February. I didn't see them for about 10 days while I was travelling with one of my best friends, Theresa, and they were skiing in the Austrian Alps.. When I got back, I was sincerely suprised and shocked when they ran to the door and fought over who got to hug me first. I was like "Who are these kids and what did they do with the what I left here?" Ever since then, the kids have been overall good and, I can't believe I'm going to say this, actually kind of cute sometimes! So I guess that's been better. But still, saving away and planning very carefully for all the things I want to do while I'm here.

I save almost half of my pocket money every month to put toward my big trips and I'll tell you that is NOT easy! I worked at one of the local schools in Plieningen for a few weeks in November and then a couple weeks again in March as a native English speaker helper. I helped the older students prepare for their final English exams by doing dialogs, correcting their English speeches, and just talking to them in English in general. Many of them are much better than they give themselves credit for and I actually had a lot of fun doing it. And I earned a little extra money that is helping me pay for my REALLY BIG trip this August. (More info on that in just a little bit...I promise!) It seems like I don't blog for a really long time and then suddenly I get this craving to share everything and I spend a whole day posting many blogs...and that's just what I intend to do today!

Almost a Week

I have been in Germany almost a week, but both Lena and I agree, it feels like I have been here forever! It's nice here. I'm getting to the point that I feel comfortable walking away from Lena in a store. We can look at different things and areas without making me sooo nervous. I'm still a little nervous. I can't understand all what people say. I can understand body language and hand gestures....that's good! But like today, I was in a shop by myself and I went to the dressing room to try on clothing. No big deal, I just grabbed one when I women got done right? Well, I happened to grab the one that also contained the door to the store's backroom and it also happened to be the time that the saleswomen needed to get in there. She started talking to me soooo fast, there was no way for me to grasp all the words. I just don't have enough German vocab to have complete conservations....I mean, I've only had one quarter at college so far! But I am starting to not be so nervous to try. I can say "Ich spreche Englisch." and such, no problem. So I get by okay....sometimes.

Luckily enough the lady was very nice and made enough gestures that I knew to move out of her way. Hooray for coming from a family that talks completely with their hands! I truly mean it! I said a whole German sentence yesterday to Lena and she was so proud. She actually replied in German and then stopped, apologized, and spoke in English. She said that it sounded so correct, she forgot to reply in English anyway! Just a proud moment....made me smile.

So, yesterday. Yesterday we went to Munich for the day for shopping. When we left the train we happened across a natural store and finally got some aloe vera gel for my sunburn. (It finally is feeling a little better today! Yay Aloe Vera!) Then we proceeded on our way to my first trip on the German subway system. The student summer holiday train pass, that we convinced Die Bahn to let me purchase even as an American, works on the main subway system in Munich, as well as all the trains in Bavaria. (What a fantastic buy that was!!) We went shopping all day! Almost too much shopping for me even. (Can you imagine?!) Anyway, I got to see the huge Gothic style building in the center of town that holds the largest Glokenspiel in the world. Unfortunately, the tower containing it is under renovation to make repairs and such so I didn't get to see the actual Glokenspiel yet. In a couple weeks, maybe. From there we wandered to the old open-air market. It was really nice. I got to purchase some hand made items there at the market and had lunch at the Original Beer Garden in the very center. I also bought my first dirndl.......to wear to the upcoming festivals. It's black with roses on it. Very simple, but quite lovely. As we did our last shopping and headed to the main station in Munich a storm came our way fast. It poured! It was almost hysterical, Lena and me, runninng to the station in the huge rain drops of a thunder storm. Quite refreshing actually! I liked it. We were in the very center of the storm.....I couldn't even count the seconds between the lightening and the thunder! The day kinda ended there and we relaxed...

Today.....today was fun and kinda quiet. We kinda got up and ready slowly, while I wrote a bunch of post cards. Eventually we headed for Rosenheim, Germany. It's a town a little bigger than Prien, but no where near as big as Munich. They are having their season sales there that Lena's mother Tina told us about. (She lives there.) So we headed over and got a few things. I actually found clothing that worked for me and wasn't toooo expensive (like everything else is here...). I got a kind of dress that is really popular here right now. Now I'm hip in European terms...well, maybe. (; It was a nice day out and her grandma made Apfelstreudel for us while we were out. My first, real, German-made streudel.

Tomorrow is going to be a spontaneous day. We don't have much planned except for maybe finishing my post cards and if the weather is nice, I might talk her into a trip to the castle on the island. Who knows what we'll do! Thanks to all you who have been reading my little blog here. I'm so very glad that I get to share this whole experience with my friends and family back home.

Liebe,
Cori