off and running

I'm so sorry I've not been updating you more consistently this month; things have been moving so quickly (particularly during the past week and a half) that I've not had much time to sit down and process everything.

I am leaving in twenty minutes for a weekend youth retreat, so before I forget everything, here's what's been going on for me...

• I guess I am now a personal chef, technically speaking. A friend connected me with Jane and Bill, an American couple who live in a really fun part of town. Their lives are quite busy right now, which leaves little time for food shopping and cooking, so I've started making dinner for them twice a week. I've done three meals for them so far. I really like Jane and it's been fun to come up with menus and try out some new things (the two soups I made came out really well...when I get back from the weekend I'll post the recipes for you). I definitely underestimated the convoluted grocery shopping process in Vienna (grocery stores are often out of pretty basic items...and there's that pesky little everything's-in-German issue), particuarly when one is shopping for a specific recipe instead of just buying what looks good (as I usually do). But what a blessing it is to get to know Jane, try out new recipes on someone else's dime, and have some extra money to buy wedding gifts!
• GUESTS! Houston (a Vanderbilt friend), his sister Jane (who goes to Vandy but is studying in Florence this semester), and their friends John and Sydney came to town this week! I was able to have them at the Flow House this week from Monday until an hour ago, and we had a great time running around Vienna and just being being here at home as well. It is just so good to see old friends, as cliche as that sounds. I learned a bit about hosting people here in Vienna (it's a little different when it's not actually your house and not actually your country...), so I'll be a pro by the time you get here. The highlight of our week was driving up to the Vienna woods to hike around vineyards and little communities on hills from which one can see all of Vienna. There may have been some Julie Andrews-esque spinning involved.
  
• Definitely a few rough spots during the last ten or so days. I lost my set of keys (mailbox, gate, and front door), which isn't exactly the most responsible thing ever. Luckily, they're not labeled in any way (so, as Dr. Rupp said, unless someone saw me drop them in the street and followed me home, there's no way it's a security problem). This little fiasco, along with a few others of a similar trivial-but-it-all-adds-up nature, added up last weekend and I found myself frazzled and frustrated. It's gotten a lot better since then, and since Terry is now here to pick me up for the retreat so I'll just leave it at that.
  

where can i get some good kurbis around here?

Hi there. I've got a lot of pictures and stories for you, and plan to do some writing tomorrow and Friday. For now, you can see photographs from last week's travels here. It's been great to be back in Vienna, and I have fun some new activities to keep me busy these days.

What I'm most concerned about right now, however, is finding this:

If you've lived with, lived near, or just known me during the last four years, you'll understand immediately why I'm upset right now. Austria has a TON of pumpkin seeds and pumpkin oil (it's very dark and is considered to be a delicacy) in its stores, but the people here don't seem to think it's a good idea to do anything with the rest of the pumpkin. My two favorite things to bake, pumpkin cookies and pumpkin chocolate chip bread, require the canned goodness pictured above...and it is nowhere to be found. I've checked Julius Meinl. I've checked the Spar, the Gourmet Spar, and even InterSpar, the mother of all Spar grocery stores. I've also asked ladies at church. They sigh, shake their heads, and tell me that they understand. They try to bring as many cans of pumpkin in their suitcases as possible. I am not making this stuff up.

There's a long-shot chance with a British store named Bobby's, apparently. I've been told they have it on occasion at around 6 euro per can.

I can handle the fact that brown sugar here doesn't really taste like what I'm used to, and that the equivalent of vanilla extract is just some packets of Splenda-esqe powder. But the idea that I will have to buy actual pumpkins, scoop out and strain the innards, and try to mash the pulp into something like Libby's 100% pure pumpkin just may be one of my biggest tests of character yet in this town.

I'll let you know how it works out.

fall break

I am sitting in Dublin with a cup of tea, wondering if this will be the last Fall Break I'll see for a while. College, grad school, and this job have provided so much vacation time that I'm afraid I will feel entitled to this flexible lifestyle next year. I guess I could find another job with a Fall Break, right?

Dublin, Ireland has been fantastic. The city is easily navigable and without pretense. People are friendly and the food has been surprisingly really good. I have been so fortunate to be able to stay with friends of a friend's friend (literally) this weekend, who graciously showed me around the city, cooked for me, took me to church with them, and introduced me to other friends. Dana and Matt, my hosts, are from the states and are living in Ireland for a while to work and travel. I really enjoyed getting to know them and am hopeful that they can come stay with me in Vienna.

While the weather today is typical (gray/cold/rainy/windy) for Dublin, the last three days have been so gorgeous and even warm that everyone kept remarking how lucky I was to be here this weekend. I'll look forward to sharing pictures with you when I return to Vienna this Sunday. For now, a few highlights:

• On Saturday, I joined Matt, Dana, and another American couple from the States for a drive down toward the Wicklow Mountains. I had been hoping to see the classic Irish landscape (green grass, white sheep), and got to see it at its best that day. We stopped in a few towns (Enniskerry was my favorite), had a great meal together, and talked a lot about living abroad and other sorts of things.
• Sunday--Matt and Dana took me to church with them, where I heard a great service and met Catrin, who is Welsh and my age and works for the international branch of InterVarsity. Catrin invited me to go on a hike that afternoon, which allowed me to get to know her (she's great) and see a few miles of the coastline surrounding Dublin on one side (we hiked from Bray to Greystones, should you feel like googling that, and on the way back passed the town where Bono lives).
• Sunday night, Dana made burritos for dinner and we watched NFL on CBS coverage on an actual TV (any college football I've watched with the students is through ESPN 360 on a computer). I have missed Mexican food and football very much...what a perfect Sunday night.
• Katie Tison is engaged!!!
• Yesterday was my big Dublin touristy day--I walked around Trinity College, O'Connell Street (where much of the famous Easter Rising stuff went down), Temple Bar, Dublin Castle, St. Patrick's Cathedral, and Christ Church Cathedral. Hopefully I'll write some more about these places when I have more time. All of it was lovely.
• Last night, I got to catch up with my dear friend Emily on the phone. Talking to Em is always a blessing and an encouragement...definitely a highlight of the weekend.

This afternoon, I'm headed to Madrid for an evening and a morning in the city, then will hop on a bus to Salamanca to see my sweet friend Susan and a family I got to know this summer when they visited Winston-Salem. Susan and I will travel to Valencia this weekend, and I'll be back in my bed in Vienna by midnight on Saturday (hopefully).

prague

If you'd like, you can have a look at some of my pictures from last weekend's trip to Prague, CZ:

http://bethstravelpictures.shutterfly.com/


I would like to have another go at this city. I never stepped inside a museum or an art gallery, and did not get to explore the Lesser Town area very much. One of our students was ill almost the whole weekend, so I spent a fair amount of energy leaving the group to check in with her or take her to lunch.

Still, the more I explored, the more I liked Prague. It is much less refined than stately Vienna, but has a quirky sort of charm (I'm thinking of the Astronomical Clock and Kafka Museum) that drew me in after a day or so. Lucky, I will get another go at the city...I'll return for a weekend with the Spring semester students in March or so.

The St. Vitus Cathedral may be my favorite of Europe so far (or second to St. Chapelle in Paris)--I took several pictures of its windows. It's located in the Prague Castle, which is really a sort of city on a hill that's been around since the 9th century.

it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

I enjoyed a run/walk/window shop this afternoon. The weather has been beautiful this week, so I thought I'd take a few pictures around my neighborhood for you.

Here's what my street looks like right now:



At Turkenshanz Park--a big green space with running trails, a few ponds, playgrounds, and a good restaurant. The park is less than two blocks from our house:



Lots of rich colors around...



This is Sievering, one of my favorite neighborhoods. In the distance are some vineyards and the Vienna Woods.



I spent a little time in a large cemetary, located near Sievering (a ten minute walk from home). This site was particularly striking, but all the sites were unique and strangely beautiful. I decided not to take other pictures after this one--particularly because there were a few people in other parts of the cemetary, I didn't want to appear disrespectful. I wondered if it was disrespectful to photograph gravesites as art even if no one sees me doing it.



These hydrangeas, which belong to a home down the street from me, are starting to dry up.



German engineering at its finest, and a distant uncle of my dear Jetta. (I don't miss driving nearly as much as I thought I would.)



A home down the street:

This evening, I went to a clothing swap with a bunch of female teachers from the Vienna Christian School (everyone brings clothes that don't work for them anymore, and you can pick out new things from among the piles). I met three girls my age (FINALLY!!) and really enjoyed talking with them. One of them, who hosted the party, lives only 4 U-bahn (metro) stops away from the one closest to me!

What a blessing it was to meet these girls. I wish I had another week before Fall Break (I leave for Dublin on Friday) to plan a coffee date or two, but trust that they'll still be around and willing to hang out with me when I get back. I have been lucky to meet a lot of older women with families who are interested in me and eager to get to know me well, but I really would love to have some girlfriends at some point. Patience, right?

nothing like a room full of 3rd graders

What a fun surprise it was a few hours ago to see that I had just missed a Skype call from Mrs. Johnson's third grade class from Summit School! (I interned at Summit last year while working on my masters, and worked there after graduation and throughout the summer).

I called her back immediately. The next thing I knew, rows of children were yelling "HI MS. MARTIN!!!!!" at the top of their lungs, waving ecstatically, and making weird faces at me. So I sat in the living room, smiling and waving at my sweet second graders who are now third graders, and telling them that I have already had dinner (even though they've just had lunch), that no, it's not raining over here right now, and no, there are no kangaroos in Austria.

It feels good to be missed.

Mrs. Johnson gave me contact information for a friend of hers who is living in Vienna (as the children proceeded to jump up and down, give her bunny ears, and make more faces at me), so I'll look forward to following up on that soon. We also made tentative plans for me to have another Skype date with the class to talk more about life in Austria.

what happened between paris and prague?

I think of this little website a few times a day and say to myself, "Beth, you really should write some stuff down." The longer I go without updating, the bigger the task seems...until I remember that you don't really care. You'd just like to see some nice pictures and hear a story or two so that you can have a break from your job or whatever it is you have going on.

Paris was two weekends ago, and Prague (with the students and professors) was this past weekend. Here are my favorite things that happened in between, in Vienna:

I met my first celebrity, for one. I imagined I might stumble across someone with a recognizable name while in Europe. Our encounter was brief but genuine, and it inspired me to write to my jazz band teacher in high school (I sang) and my History of Jazz professor in college to thank them both for introducing me to Herbie Hancock so that I could introduce myself to him on Wednesday afternoon.

Herbie Hancock has been well-known in the world of music since the 60s, when he began playing piano for Miles Davis and writing innovative standards such as "Watermelon Man." Remarkably, he has continued to reinvent jazz music ever since--Wikipedia says that he's contributed to the genres of jazz fusion, jazz-funk, modal jazz, hard bop, post-bop, electro, and pop rock. He even a 2007 Grammy for Album of the Year! TIME Magazine had him in their list of 100 Most Influential People of 2008.

My friend Ryan (really Allison and Brad's friend, but when you're in Austria anyone is a friend), a Wake Forest student here this Fall through a different study abroad program, asked me if I wanted to try to get tickets to Herbie Hancock's show in Vienna last Wednesday. Of course I said yes because 1) I love jazz music and 2) Ryan is such a crazy kid that I knew somehow it would be an adventure.

We agreed to meet at 5pm, 2 1/2 hours before the show, to see if we could manage some student rush tickets (Wake gave me an international student ID card, and it's come in handy several times). While I stood outside the KonzertHaus waiting, I saw a few tall men walk in with hanging bags. I wondered if they were in the band, and whether I would know Mr. Hancock if I saw him. Then, I did. I recognized his purple glasses and started smiling like a goon. We had an awkward but very warm encounter: he shook my hand and I told him I'd look forward to seeing his show that evening.

Story's not over, though. You can skip down to pictures if you want, but I've got to tell you about the ridiculousness that followed.

Ryan arrived shortly after Herbie did. We checked into tickets, and learned that the show was sold out but we could check back at 6:30 to see if any tickets had been cancelled. Well, that doesn't stop Ryan Crimmins. First, he suggested walking around to try to get in the auditorium. This was 2.5 hours before the show started, mind you. Somehow, we actually made it past the ushers and ended up sitting in a box right above the stage just as the band members began to walk onstage to rehearse. We discussed our options at this point in whispers (hide in bathrooms until show starts?) and decided to just sit there quietly and see what happened. The men were talking and laughing, and Herbie was just great. They played a few seconds of songs, but mostly checked their sound.

Just as they were getting settled into their places on stage, Ryan decided to do something that was not in the plan.

"Hey, where are y'all headed after Vienna?" The words he yelled down to these men hung in the air, and within about three seconds I did three things:

• kicked him
  
• closed my eyes
• sunk down in my chair.

One of them nonchalantly answered that they were going to Germany, and the rehearsal resumed. I proceeded to tell Ryan (I whispered because we really were that close to the musicians) that there's a line with these kinds of things and I like to not get near that line. His line of thinking, according to him, was that we could make friends with them and they'd give us tickets. Oh, to be male and 19.

Shortly after that, we were kicked out.

Luckily, after a quick dinner--with more discussion about the balance between having adventures and having tact--we somehow navigated the sketchy last-minute ticket system and scored two great seats (albeit just behind the sound board) for the show. What a fantastic concert!! All of the musicians were incredible, and they played a variety of songs together or in smaller groups. Several times throughout the performances, I just kept thinking about how lucky I am to be hearing and seeing original art here in Europe--not just a poster of Monet's water lillies, not just a jazz CD, but the real thing in a genuine context. I don't know. It's just really great.

The video below is from the band's encore performance. Herbie was at the piano for the majority of the concert, and even played a solo piece that bordered on a classical sound (he was trained as a classical pianist when he was young). He busted out a keytar for the encore and walked around to trade eights with most of his band members. So much fun.