trace evidence

As I want to be able to get up early enough to see the sunrise on the Matterhorn later in my travels, and as Darrin & his mom go to bed at the ungodly hour of 10:00 (who does that?! the day is still young!) I´ve decided to get up at 5 every morning. Seems to be working.

This site only allows a certain percentage of space for pictures, and the first ones I took were huge, so was taking up about 11% of my allotment for August each picture. I finally remembered the website for resizing pictures, so now I can post way more!

Here are some examples:

1. The parliament buildings just before sunset two days ago

2. Bratislava - the castle is in the background, and a very old stone double staircase (you can just see the two walls of the staircase) is in the front - I looked at the staircase and recognized it from an old dream (freaky, huh?) The staircase is right by St. Martin´s church that I talked about last blog.

3. Neudorf sign - you might not be able to read it, but it´s on the arrow pointing to the left

Last night´s dinner was fun. I´m sure no locals go there; it´s just too "Austrian" and too filled with tourists! It was in an old winery house dating from the 1500s (1527, if I remember correctly) - I think the house itself was a bit younger, but the wine cellar that we toured in the basement was pretty darn old! We sat cafeteria style with the "lady of the house" directing us each where to sit..."Nein, nein, seet HEERE."...we ended up with Jerre from Oklahoma and Frank from Australia (Frank is currently doing a world tour). We had an appetizer of cold cuts and bread (Darrin got my ham; I got his cheese), then a meal of sauerkraut (I tried a spoonful - it was very good and very different from sauerkraut at home; less salty...but it was still sauerkraut!), potatoes, something that resembled stuffing but had egg noodles in it, and a variety of meats - chicken wiener schnitzel, sausages, roasted pork, and cooked ham. I haven´t seen beef on any menu! Dessert was apple streudel (the best I´ve ever had - mostly apples and cinnamon and other spices, and very little pastry). Oh, and they kept putting full pitchers of their own wine (both red & white) and beer on the table, so you could have as much as you liked. We were pretty modest, but some tables were quite liberal with their intake of wine (not from our tour, but the other one!) There were two musicians, a violinist and an accordion player, playing polka music and drinking songs all evening (everything from Eidelweiss through Einz Zvei, Zufa (sp?), through The Saints Go Marching In), and many people - most of the drunk ones - sang along badly.

The storm, by the way, lasted an hour, and it was so hot that the rain dried within a half hour after that. Now it´s sunny again!

Oh, and a quiz: The first person to answer the following question in a comment will win a fabulous Austrian prize, specially bought just for you:

What does "wirt" mean in English? (I learned from Eric, our tour guide, when I asked him after seeing the word on a sign near our restaurant!)

(I´m sure you don´t need a hint, but if you do, go to the following link (click on the burgundy words below!), click on the little white box and type wirt into the box, then click on the word "search.")

Later,
Tracy

Wow, Mom - the computer skills are improving! Pretty soon your entries are going to be longer than mine!! Here´s the church I should have downloaded earlier.

It´s only 4:00 here, but I´m taking a break before we go off into the countryside to a restaurant that includes "Austrian merrymaking."

A little more about Vienna. There are very few cars, considering the size of the city. The transit system was extremely well thought out, and most people take transit. They have "city bikes" (not that I´ve used them) around like shopping carts...you put in your coin and ride away on the bike. Lots of younger people use them.

This morning we went off to Bratislava, which was verz (this "z" where the "y" should be is verz annozing! Now I know how Bill felt when I switched his M and N keys!) interesting. They are much more impoverished, but the architecture is still superb. There are dilapidated buildings, interspersed amongst the buildings in the old city; they are homes that, after the war, no one has reclaimed. They are still waiting a certain amount of time before the state declares them theirs. St. Martin´s church and the city´s castle are picturesque. I tried out my Slovak on the lady that we had to pay to use the "water closet" - dyun-kyu-yen - and she looked at me with a puzzled look. I repeated it, and she finallz understood and corrected my pronunciation... dyun-KU-yen.

One interesting note...we passed through a little town called Neudorf on the way to the Slovak republic. I tried to take a picture of the town´s name on the way back, but I only got the top part of the sign. I did get a little arrow sign in the previous town, though, pointing the way to Neudorf. I think that Neudorf Saskatchewan is bigger than this Neudorf in Austria. I believe there is another Neudorf closer to Salzburg, though.

Anyway, I should be going. Speaking of Salzburg, that´s where we head tomorrow. I don´t know if I´m going to have as frequent access as here to the internet, so I don´t know when I´m going to update this next.

Have fun, everyone! Miss you! (Oh...I think now it´s thundering!)

Trace

Hello, all!

Yes, I´m getting your messages - all four of them! Congrats on winning at Bingo and good fortuitousness, Bingo Lady, for tomorrow. Or maybe it was today. Also, to read your messages, you have to click on the box and pretend you´re going to leave a comment, and be logged on.

We went on a city tour today, and saw everything there is to know about Vienna. I took so many photos that I have to recharge my battery already! Haven´t used up the data card, though.

We walked around after our tour and got lost...we ended up by the Danube when we thought we were farther south on the map. It was easy to find our way back, though. After a nap, we went and visited the parliament buildings and then went to dinner.

Tomorrow our optional excursion will take us to Bratislava (in Slovak) - luckily I took the dictionary that includes a section on Slovak with me! We have the afternoon free, then we go into the countryside for a dinner with our tour.

Tomorrow it´s supposed to rain off and on but it should be OK...we had hot weather today. The only thing that went wrong today was Darrin flicked chocolate sauce at his mom after dinner when he tried to shake a fly away.

Here´s a picture - it was supposed to be of a church but I downloaded the wrong one, so it´s one of a little staircase near our hotel that I took using my mini tripod, while Darrin stood there waiting "patiently"...not!

Bye for now!

Trace

Hello, all!

I will be able to update each day here (as long as I remember that the "z" key is switched with the "y" key, and the punctuation is all in unexpected spots!) as the internet connection is free. It even has a USB port, so later this evening I´ll post some pictures.

As it turns out, we probably would have made the plane from Heathrow to Vienna, as our flight was late in leaving by almost 2 hours. The flights were fine...the second one flew low enough to see the countryside unobscured bz clouds for the entire journey. We flew over the English Channel, Belgium, and Germany. There are a lot more forests once you hit Germany! We could see the alps off in the distance once we hit Austria. By far, though, Vancouver Airport is tops when it comes to organization; both Heathrow and Vienna have an "every man for himself" policy when it comes to lines and instructions (lines? what for?). Everyone speaks English here, even the taxi drivers.

Nevertheless, we arrived at our hotel just shy of 8:00, and took a quick walk around the immediate vicinity. Vienna is a lot more built up than I thought; there are a lot of industrial areas out by the airport, and outside the "traditional" city, you see lots of graffiti. How is it that everywhere you go, graffiti artists have seemed to have gone to the same art school?! In any case, the city is extremelz clean.

We haven´t met our tour guide yet as we arrived late, but his name is Eric, and our itinerary has been posted in the hotel lobby. We met one woman from the tour already, Jerre from Oklahoma, who told us that our tour has 19 people, five of which are Canadian and the rest American. She filled us in on the scoop for the day. There is an optional excursion that leaves at 7:30, but we´ve opted out, as we thought we´d like a more relaxed start to the day. As it turns out, I was awake at 4:30 and up at 5 because of the time switch. (Imagine that, huh?!) I may has well try to stick to this schedule as it will give me time to blog, before the others wake up.

The posting times will be wrong: it´s almost 6:00 right now. I´m going to sit in the lobby and read up on some of what Wien has to offer.

How´s it going with the computer, Mom? Say hi to the bird for me! Say hi to dad, too!

Later,

Trace

We're now waiting for our flight to Vienna. If we would have stayed on our other flight, we wouldn't have made it as that flight was delayed! Got to go...time's running out on this computer.

Trace