Kellys Blog

In case you can't get enough of Vienna stories, this http://kellyhacker.blogspot.com/ is Kelly's (my roommate) blog url, she's got some cool stuff on there too :)

Prague

This is the opera house that Don Giovanni was performed in for the first time, it was written for Prague. And where the opera scenes for Amadeus were shot. And to your right a beautiful church on the old town square where the bodily remains of a Danish astronomer who died when his bladder burst at dinner because he didn't want to stand before the emperor lie. It is so beautiful at night (though I thought our tour guide was trying to kill us :). And then beautiful views of the River :) Die Moldau.

This is our amazing tour guide showing us scrafito, that is the Italian word that our word grafiti comes from. Its beautiful. She lived under communism for the first decade or so of her life, isn't that intense? You paint brown plater or something and then a thin layer of white plaster and scratch the white plaster to make cool patterns.

And then me in front of St. Vitas church. It is gothic like St. Stephens, but our church is prettier :).


St. Vitas has my favorite stained glass ever, and it was such a beautiful day with the sun shining everywhere. And then me with Prague behind me, sehr sehr lovely :D.

And then me in St. Wenceles square, its like a kilometer long. And its the king from like the Christmas carol :) I didn't spend much time there, but it was a nice square and it led me to one of my favorite dinners.

Travel Week part 2

So birds live way up on this glacier. And I guess they’re very used to people because of all of the tourists and skiers so they’ll eat right out of your hands. So I decided o feed the peanuts. At first I was a little concerned, because they have pointy looking fingers and beaks. So at first I tried to feed them like Belle does in Beauty and the Beast, but they had a hard time not scratching me that way. So Megan suggested that I should try to hold them  in my fingers and it worked and all of the birds came to me. It was like I was Franz Joseph holding audience with them, so much fun. One of the highlights for me.

The light wasn’t done quite right for the full affect, but I am on a glass window on the top of the mountain, 2700 meters about sea level. It was a little scary to be able to look down and see it, but also was SO COOL.

 This is a picture I took on our bus ride down the mountain, such a beautiful area :)

The next morning I lounged around our adorable hotel. And took some pictures of the view, can you believe that was our view?

 Also, I've made it to Prague and I'll let you know all about it soon!

Schladming part 1

Hello hello, I have finally arrived back in civilization! And internet, and warm food and trains that come every 5 minutes. We are, clearly, thrilled. Though, Schladming and the surrounding areas were absolutely gorgeous. This is me, and some of the little town in the Steiermark (Styria) I may be spelling these things wrong, but anyway, that we stayed.  Actually we planned to stay in Schladming but our hotel, bed and breakfast thing ended up being in or much closer to Haus. Not sure how that happened, but it was a great little place, just a little more of a commute than we planned. Thanks to our Vortiles cards (which cost exactly 19 euro, no idea why) it was less than a dollar to get from city to city. And they cut our train tickets for the big trips about  in half, so if you can get them I really suggest it.

 

We decided it would be fun to go see the glacier, because glaciers are cool and I’d never seen one. We took a bus up the mountain a very long way. Kelly and Megan were thrilled. I wanted to stop and sit by the stream. This entire lack of water is very unsettling. And then we got to the top of that, and took a gondola up the rest of the mountain to the glacier. And it was so high and so scary but also, really awesome.

 

We decided it would be fun to go see the glacier, because glaciers are cool and I’d never seen one. We took a bus up the mountain a very long way. Kelly and Megan were thrilled. I wanted to stop and sit by the stream. This entire lack of water is very unsettling. And then we got to the top of that, and took a gondola up the rest of the mountain to the glacier. And it was so high and so scary but also, really awesome.  

We decided that we’d go and see the Ice palace, sorry, no skating. But, even though it wasn’t as impressive as we thought it would be, it was still pretty fun. This is me and Scrat, they had all the ice age characters, but even though it was really cold in there some of them were having a hard time staying together.

 And then a picture of me and Diego, he's my favorite.   

Budapest

The synagague, in neo moorish style, the arcitecture here is very fun :) And then me in front of the st. stephens of budapest, very pretty, but not as impressive as ours :D and then me with random arrow man, and me on pretty tree by pretty castles. and me petting a horse at heros square which chronicles Hungarian history :)

And then me as Buddha, in front of the Buda castle, and the city, behind me, and the city at night from our bus, very pretty :D

Bratislava

My pictures are uninterested in being in order, sorry :) So there are some funny statues in Bratislava, and as far as we know they're just there for fun. So, we took lots of picuttres with them. These is the dancing statue man. And also me under a sign with my name on it, Kristian, intense huh, spelled right and everything :).  And that partk is called Au park :) that trees behind river picture of park :)

Then we have me with the man at work man. 

He's sitting in a man hole and 'working' very hard. Thats the joke :) and then we have the view of Bratislava from the palace place. Very beautiful. and then me, poseing for the paprazi statue. Followed by my in front of the danube in Bratislava and me in the boat on the way to bratislava :) Its a very me filled day :)

Hello hello....

So, I biked 21 miles, isn't that amazing? so amazing and it was SO COOL, and epic and I was barely even sore. So now I'm totally stoked to bike from Vienna to Prague next trip. We biked along the Donau (Danube, same river, two names) from Melk to Krems, and it took us 4 hours, which the bus driver said was unnecessarily long, but we took lots of food and rest and sight seeing breaks, and tried to stop to let everybody catch up quite a few times. But it was so beautiful, and the surrounding pictures are from that trip. I stole them from Kelly, because my battery was acting up (I think it doesn't like the cold). We were really dreading it (Kelly and I) because the weather was supposed to be rainy and cold, but it was actually great, still cool, but not bad and So much fun.Come to think of it I may have covered this last time, but it was so cool, it can be covered twice.

Last weekend we drove down to Saltzburg. On the way we stopped at Mauthause, a concentration camp which was realy intense and horrific. It was my first one and pretty much awful, but still a really good experience. I didn't take any pictures, because it didn't seem to fit the situation to treat it like a tourist attraction you know? Then we saw another church, I took some pictures, but neglected to load them in this batch it looks like, but other than the ceiling that looked higher than it was and the turk in the fresco who continually pointed his shoulder at you (like those tapestries we saw in Rome Mom, remember?) and the library which I think most people wouldn't feel as I do about, it was anothe rone of the millions of churches. Oh, also Bruckner was buried there. So, if anybody cares about that nerdy stuff...like I do, let me know.

Then we drove down to Hallstat, which is a beautiful little alpine town, and the drive was beautiful too. So that's what all these pictures are.

It snowed, can you believe? Like 3 inches of snow. But we were in the Alps and it was so pretty. Thats me on our *gasp!* balcony, where we also had a spectacular snow fight with our neighbors, I have a video too.




So we spent the next night there and then the next morning went up to the Hallstatt salt mine. Sister Holmes has adopted us all, she's so sweet. So waited outside the bus in the snow while we brought our stuff out. It is 7000 years old, the oldest operating salt mine in the world and that was so much fun. They had a really cool tour set up in there. We hiked up the mountain in the snow, which was cold and slippery but so worth it, cause I was totally on an Alp :). And especially with the new snow it was really beautiful. And they had an underground lake (like in Hannibal, remember Mom?) and giant slides, they were so much fun. And we all wore really funny matching sliding outfits on this tour :). And we got to ride a train out of the cave. So the first one is me on the walk up, then Andres and either Daniel or Trent, its hard to tell with just hands, in our very stylish cave sliding outfits, then Sister Holmes as mentioned earlier, and then the view from the Gondola we took up the mountain. Awesome :)

Ok, somebody show Morgan. This is the statue and do re mi steps from the sound of music :). And then the house where Mozart was born, isn't that amazing? And the view of Saltzburg from the fortress, which was also pretty cool, beautiful view. And then me in my new 3 euro hat, cause it was absolutely frigid there, like it? And the font? where Mozart and the guy who wrote silent night were both baptized. cool huh? I liked Saltzburg, nice and small, but, also very very cold, so its nice to be back in Vienna :)

I have keys!

Hello hello all, I have all of my keys, after a very stressful couple hours of attempted installation :) And I know, I've been a very bad blogger, so I am now back to do penance.

Since we last talked I've done some really really cool stuff. We spent SO MANY HOURS going through the imperial apartments of the Hoffburg. You think it'd be nice to have a big house, until you try to look for your shoes in it. So we look at their dishes collection which was prwas cooletty nice. They had some cool stuff, did you know they had special chamber pots for women? And they had special sets of plates made for different things, like hunting lodges and boats. Some of them (my favorites) had a different picture on each one. My favorite was the Greek Myth set, of course. Then we went through the Sisi Museum, which was cool. She was the wife of Franz Joseph, very important Emperor. And she's kind of a cult thing now: beautiful, head strong, sensational, kinda weird. If I can't find a sound of music thing, Morgan may end up with something from her, they are very similar (She had ankle length hair too). It was here in the Sisi museum that we lost poor Kelly, she was stuck between two tour groups. But, she pushed through and met us on our way to the treasury. We were all way too tired to do much there, and we have free passes to go whenever we want, so we'll head back later, but there was a giant aquamarine that I took a picture of :).

And then I went to the naschmarkt, which is like the swap meet, but better. And there I got a junky jacket for 3 euro, and some old German books (including robin hood), it was pretty awesome. It's a really cool really cheap flea market, and they have librettos and books and figurines and baskets and food and everything! And i even haggled, so proud.

Professor Korll took us to Stephansdom again, so Kelly and I decided to stay and take our pictures and such, its so beautiful. The first one is a chandelier and the organ, we're going to go to mass there soon, so I'll let you know how that goes. And then the outside is amazing, it was the tallest structure in Europe when it was built. And its built int eh Gothic style so it is supposed to look weightless and it totally does, the pictures don't do it justice. 

And then we have this tree whose name i don't remember, it is very small and shrively. But when blacksmiths would leave Vienna to go and try to get jobs elsewhere, they would pound a nail into it (filled with nails this tree is) for good luck. And thats Stephansdom in the reflection.

Well, theres a bunch of other thigns, but if i try to load more pictures blogger will get mad and I shall have a hard time moving them around, also it is twelve thirty and I am very tired.  Guten Nacht!