Saturday at David's in the "Country"

Had a pleasant surprise at 10a this morning ... our friend David (we'll get to who he is in a second), invited us over to his place in the "country" for a "grill" this afternoon.  I'm putting "country" in quotes because he lives just a little bit outside of Graz (in Reinischkogel), but it really is rural (we could hear, what, goats, in the distance?) and a farmer next door was harvesting corn.  Anyway, it took maybe 15 minutes to get there and he was nice enough to drive us both ways (the highlight for Henry and maybe others was looking at the display in his Prius to see when we were using the engine vs. the battery, vs. charging the battery).

The "grill" turned out to be his mother's scalloped potatoes, a bean salad, a tomato and feta salad, corn on the cob, and two kinds of sausages (Wursts).  Everything but the wursts were either grown in his garden or picked up at the farmer's market.  And I had to say, the bean salad was the best I've ever had in my life and we decided that the scalloped potatoes were "for your health" food (that is, your body needs really yummy cheesy things sometimes :-)  Grace really liked one of the Wursts, but objected to the bacon they were wrapped in (I ate the bacon ... the things one has to do as a parent!).

As you can see, we played badminton (Federball, or "feather ball"), ate, were treated to a concert by Grace and Henry with original compositions for the piano, and played some more badminton.  It was just lovely.  As David was driving us back, we invited him up to share in a treat (Magnum ice cream bars -- the best!).

Oh, and how do we know David?  Well, back in May when we announced at church that we were going to be in Graz, Austria for a year, a couple we knew came up and said, "Graz? ... that's where my brother David sings in the Graz Opera."  That's right, we know about 100 people in the church and one of them has a brother that sings in the opera in the town in Graz (half-way across the world, where they sing in a language other than English).  Small world, huh?  Anyway, we had our friends and David over for dinner over the summer when he was visiting and he has adopted us ever since.  We hope that we can come up with some way to thank him for his generosity some day. We've really enjoyed getting to know him and -- this will be a first time ever saying this -- can't wait to go to the opera!

Russ