Why I like being here so dang much ...

Being back in the US, I had to face, for the first time, questions after I expressed my overall joy of being here in Austria and how hard it was to come back to the US for a visit.  Folks wondered why I liked living in a small apartment?  And why I didn't mind walking a lot and not having the convenience of a car?

That got me to thinking ... those questions seem familiar for some reason.  Then it hit me ... they sound just like the questions I get every year from some quarters when I go on and on about my latest backpacking trip!  So, I wondered, do I like living here for the same reasons I like backpacking?  What do I love about backpacking, anyway?

I like having a small amount of stuff, and knowing where it is.  I like spending my day exercising.  I like being outside.  I like being new places.  I like having little chores that are part of my everyday schedule.  I like having interesting conversations that you just don't have in your everyday life.  I like having roles within a team and working together.

Yep, same reasons! :-)

Russ

Trip back to the US

As many of you know, I recently went back to the US for work.  It was an 8-day trip and I really hated to be away from our new home!  Sue and the kids seemingly did really well without me (and luckily no one, especially Sue, was sick while I was away), but I know I was missed and that 6a CST (1p CET) Skype sessions only go so far in keeping in touch.

So, what do I want to say in terms of a reflection on the trip?  Well, mostly that I really didn't want to go.  I mean, I knew that I'd see some friends and have some good times along with the work (and did), but I just feel really into the swing of things here and especially on the language front, just wanted to stay.  I'm cherishing the time here and this opportunity, and any break in my experience just brings to the forefront that this is a temporary state of bliss!

But, given that I was going (I kept telling Grace that, "I have no choice, I have to go!"), it was time to make a shopping list.  And this may be as good a post as any to comment on what we can't buy here and why I had a shopping list ... anyway, here was my list ...
 - Dried cherries (for Russ, he's addicted!)

 - Brown sugar (for baking ... the sugar here is just not the same ... it's "real" and not "sticky")

 - Ranch dressing (for Henry, he's addicted!)

 - Mac-n-cheese (for Grace, a treat!)

 - Almond butter (for Russ)

 - Spices (cumin, chicken seasoning, cilantro, etc.)

 - Sour patch kids (a treat for Russ and the kids)

 - PB (for Henry and Grace, they don't like the PB we can get here)

 - Shout stick (practical reasons)

 - Wimpy Kid Diary 5 (for Grace)

 - Matchbook car book or Mighty Machines (for Henry)

 - Jo Nesbo book (for Sue)

We could survive without all of these, but it is fun to get some treats from back home.  

I remember that when my friend, Yossi, would come back to the US from Israel he'd have a list, but it was always for "big things that cost less" in the US.  But maybe he was just doing some grocery shopping too?  Anyway, it surprises me all the time that there are many things that we can't get here that we are used to (besides the above, black beans, fresh cilantro, yogurt that Henry likes, chocolate chips, baking soda, two of my secret ingredients for cookies!).  And then I remember that there are different tastes here and the US *is* the largest consumer market in the world (even if Fayetteville isn't).

And yes, there are some neat foods that we will miss once we have left ... that can be covered on a (much) later post :-)

So, I'm back and we all had the day off today for Austrian's National Day (reunification ... when the Allied Forces left Austria for good in 1955, 10 years after the end of WWII, can you imagine?).  We were going to go hiking (that's a traditional thing to do, so say the locals), but that kind of fell through due to weather and needing a car, and instead enjoyed a day of going to a great park, carving Jack-o-Lanterns, and visiting a couple of local sites (the double stairs and the Glockenspiel).  This weekend has a Halloween party and a 4-day trip to Salzburg on the agenda.  And tonight I made our plane reservations for Paris in November.  I'm back to being a European :-)

Russ

Like Angels Singing

The soloists are listed: Soprano, Alto, two Tenors, and then the Bass.

I had the distinct pleasure of attending a concert the other night (we have to find a babysitter that we can use!). Our friend, David, who sings in the Graz Opera, was performing as part of an ensemble. Of course we were proud that he was the lead Bass and was part of two solos.

The ensemble was performing one of the Schubert "masses" (number 6), and fittingly, it was performed in Herz-Jesu-Kirche (Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus), the largest of Graz's many beautiful churches (circa, late 1800's).  Schubert, I've since learned, was one of the most prolific composers even though he died at age 31.  He was from Vienna and his earlier works were "Mozart-esque."

Like many of my pics, you can find better ones online!

When you click on the link below to hear a 15-second snipet, imagine you are an old church, in an old European city and in the main hall that is at least 10 stories tall (the whole church is almost 30 stories tall!).  I've named this audio clip, like angels singing, for a reason!

Sounds like angels singing ...

Russ

Sue's Parents Visit

Liz and Jerry with the Inner Stadt behind them.

How lucky I feel to have my parents visit for 2 whole weeks!  We found a hotel for them across the street from the kids' schools -- their room overlooked the playground which both schools use.  They could peak out and see Grace and Henry playing at recess.  And this was very handy for me picking up the kids -- they never get out at the same time so we could hang out at Wiz and Bumpa's place while waiting for the other kid to finish.

I wish we could have done more sight-seeing together but there always seemed like something needed to be done for the kids or school or Henry's birthday so they ended up doing lots of shopping with us. How fun to have them here for Henry's Birthday!  And they did get stuck (?) babysitting a couple of times, too.

In addition to visiting Slovenia, we did the Schlossberg mountain, clocktower and fairy tale train. By the second week here they were comfortable enough with the tram system to go off on their own including a visit to the Eggenberg castle, the old city, and lunch at the Sacher Hotel.

At a local park.

Mostly, I just enjoyed their easy company.  I haven't met many people here yet and have felt lonely at times.  It was so nice to feel in the midst of family even if it was for a short time.

Sue

Business Trip to Brussels

Earlier this week I traveled to Brussels (Belgium) on a business trip (a meeting for a big European Commission research proposal; I'm collaborating with them for a similar US proposal).  As I've never been to Brussels before (except for an airline connection), I went up a little early so that I could have a quick visit.

Grand'Place (Brussels)

The most striking feature of Brussels has to be its central square (The Grand'Place).  We walked into the square on our way to dinner and I was just blown away with the magnificence of the buildings.  This picture is of City Hall.  We had dinner at a traditional Belgium restaurant after visiting a traditional Belgium pub (Belgian beer being the first of three significant culinary contributions hit upon in this blog post).

My host told me an interesting story about the square that I thought I'd relate ... the buildings around the square were built in the 11 century.  But in the 17th century the French bombed the square, almost completely destroying its buildings.  The Belgians decided to rebuild them, and this is the first one that they completed.  As you can probably tell, this 17th-century architectural style is very different than the above 11th-century style.  The citizens also thought inferior.  So, the rest of the buildings around the square were reconstructed in the 11th-century style.

17th-Century Style (much more "flat")

Ok, so, I mentioned three significant culinary contributions above ... Belgian beer was the first, but what else?  Well, Belgian waffles, of course!  Here is my breakfast!

Sue first thought this was my dessert, not breakfast!

And then the third?  My favorite of the three ... Belgian chocolate!  Here is a picture of the very nice shop where I made my purchases.  I was really looking for "bulk chocolate" to take home to friends, but there were only these artisan shops.  Oh well, the sampler box of dark chocolate I took home was a big hit :-)

I discovered when I got home that the clerk gave me more than she should have for the price I paid :-)

There are better picture of this online!

And I'll close with this picture of the Atomium.  This is Brussel's engineering feat that was highlighted during the 1958 World's Fair (just like the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1889).  (Side note:  I always thought the St. Louis Arch was constructed for a World's Fair (it sure fits the model), but it was constructed well after the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.)  You can ride an elevator to the top of the highest "molecule" and their are escalators that connect some of the others.
So, that was my half day or site-seeing in Brussels!

Russ

Henry's Home Birthday

For Henry's 6th birthday he decided he just wanted a family birthday because, "I don't have any friends here." Poor kid doesn't understand much of what's said at his German-speaking school, but they've recently gotten out some trucks and construction toys with which Henry has discovered the universal language of play.  So we are hopeful things will turn around for him!

He really wanted to just open presents but we decided we needed an activity for the day also.  (Parents are no fun.)  We suggested a train ride thru the caves in town or the children's museum.  First it was the museum, but the day before his birthday he said he wanted to do that another day (because REALLY, all he wanted to do was open presents).  Grace convinced him to try the train because it would be cold in there and they could try out their new winter jackets!  The picture is from the week before, when we discovered the train under the Schlossberg mountain.  The train travels through one of the many tunnels under the Schlossberg.  The tunnels were used for air raid shelters during World War II.  This train is a fairy tale train and takes you past little fairy tale scenes like Rapunzel.

Henry's birthday went about like this: open some presents, play with them, go to Grandma and Grandpa's hotel, open some presents, play with them, train ride, lunch, open some presents, play with them, eat cake, play. play, play.

Sue

Henry's Birthday at School

At Henry's school, parents take turns bringing snack.  When we first got the school booklet last year, we looked at the end of the book and saw several recipes listed.  We could choose among these to bring for  snack.  For your child's birthday, you bring the Geburtstag snack.  So we were happy to have our oven fixed just in time to make his snack.  We excitedly pulled out the booklet, anxious to try out baking in Austria -- only to discover the "recipes" in the back were actually lists of things (homemade, preferred) to bring.  Ha!  Our ability to decipher German has improved immensely!  We were to bring a Sacher torte, kuchen, 2 kilos of fruit and 1 liter of juice.  After much debate, inspection of ingredients available (sugars have a different consistency here -- more on baking later!), and given the time we had, we decided to buy the Sacher torte and make coffee cake for the kuchen.  We were disappointed that the leftover food was put away when we picked up Henry.  We all wanted to taste that Sacher torte and see how the coffee cake turned out!

See the litte picture of Henry on a stick?

Each month at the school, they have a Gerburtstag celebration for all the kids celebrating birthdays that month.  Henry was the only October birthday so the celebration was held Friday, the day before his birthday.  (It was also the first celebration of the schoolyear.)  You can see the set up in the picture.  The blanket is divided into 4 colors: red for autumn ("herbst"), blue for winter, green for spring and yellow for summer.  On top of the blanket is a circular puzzle with each puzzle piece being a month of the year.  The months were laid over the blanket corresponding to the seasons (September 21 was on the border of the yellow and red).  The puzzle had small holes on it corresponding to the days of the month.  A small picture of Henry mounted on a stick is placed in the hole for October 8.  Henry placed the small Fall objects on the red part of the blanket:  pumkins, scarecrow, red leaves, etc.  The little girl in the picture is placing numbers on each of the months (1 for January thru 12 for December).  Another girl placed all the pictures around the circle, 2 for each month, of activities that happen in that month.

In front of Henry they put a lit candle in a ceramic holder, and a train with each car holding an unlit candle.  The kids and teachers all sat around the circle and the teacher started a song about the first year of life.  At this time, Henry picked up the lit candle and walked carefully around the circle and sat down again.  When the verse was finished, a child lit one candle on the train.  This was repeated 5 more times - once for each year of life.  After this, they sang a birthday song in German and Happy Birthday in English and German.  Then they put a picture of Venus on the blanket and played some Venus music and invited the kids to dance.  I felt very lucky to have been included in this little ceremony, and I look forward to visiting again when it's another child's birthday!

Sue

Trip to Slovenia

Quick, without going to Google Maps or Google Earth, tell me where Slovenia is?  I know I couldn't have answered that question before we started planning our sabbatical in Austria.  But I now know where it is and how beautiful a country it is (at least the small part that we saw).  And like usual, I don't have pictures to do the country justice, so for this post, I'll intersperse some photos off the web with one of mine.

Last Saturday dawned like pretty much every day since we've arrived ... beautiful, sunny day with comfortable temperatures.  I picked up the rental car and collected Sue, the kids, and Sue's parents and we headed west and then south to Slovenia, a country the size of Massachusetts with a population of 2 million, that used to be one of the Yugoslavia republics.  Sue read some reports that Slovenia fared much better in gaining their independence than its sister republics (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.) because it always maintained its own culture (even though it was ethnically diverse), identity, etc.  The civil war for independence was like 5 days.

The mountains of Southern Austria and Northern Slovenia.

Anyway, our reason for visiting was not cultural.  It was to see part of the Julian Alps (names after Julias Cesar).  As you can see, they are quite beautiful.  But with only a day to visit and the need for some kid-friendly activities, we followed a travel author's advice, and headed to the town of Bled, near the mountains and the Austrian border (Google Maps said it would be a 2-hour drive, but it was more like 2.5 hours and much of it was over very windy roads on the way there -- more on that later!).

Lake Bled, Slovenia

The main attraction of Bled is its lake.  Or, more exactly, the island in the middle of the lake where there is an old church (dating back to the 1400's if you can believe that).  So, we arrived, ate a great lunch (by the way, Slovenia is part of the Eurozone so no need to bring the passports (but we still did) or change money) and found someone to take us across the lake to the church.  You'll see there is an old castle up on the hill overlooking the lake (directly behind the island in this picture).  (We didn't make it up there.)  After arriving to the island, Henry and I made it to the top of the island and Henry took his turn ringing the church bell before and we looped the island on a 5-minute hike.

You probably can't tell from the photos, but they use these really long oars and lean into it to propel you across the lake in boats that are closer to gondolas than any boat I've seen.

After returning, we had ice cream to reward ourselves for our accomplishment and re-joined Sue and Grace.

What's that?  Sue and Grace didn't go? Well, no. Remember those windy roads that I mentioned?  Poor Grace suffers, as I do, from car sickness.  And those windy mountain roads were too much for her (thankfully, I was driving and that keeps car sickness at bay for me).  So, getting in a boat really didn't seem like a good idea.  The good news is that on the way home our GPS routed us a different way and this route took us straight through the mountains ... literally, via an 8-km tunnel!  If you drive in Austria (the tunnel was right on the border) or Switzerland you will definitely say to yourself once or twice ..., "boy, they really love tunnels here!"  And I've established a tradition (in the US) that we hold our breath during a tunnel ... needless to say, that tradition is put on hold in Austria!

We are sure to return to Slovenia.  They have a national park that supposedly rivals the national parks of the western US.  And Slovenia has a thriving economy, great roads, and an interesting history.  With direct train service from Graz to their capital, I think our return will be soon!

Russ

Austrian Social Insurance

Well, we knew it would happen eventually, someone would have the need medical attention.  Over a period of a couple of days, Grace's right eye went from irritated and red to very puffy (almost to the point of being swollen shut).

The night before we attended Parent's night and anticipated needing a doctor.  So, we asked for a recommendation on a doctor.  The problem was that the doctor's office was closed.  So, we headed off to the urgent care clinic at the hospital.  Luckily, it wasn't an emergency, because it took a little searching to find the right place!

They took Grace's "e-card," which is her social insurance card (health care plus other services, courtesy of the Austrian government due to my appointment at TUG).  But the clerk was really skeptical (you could almost see the thoughts in a balloon over her head, "how does this non-German-speaking family have social insurance ... they're foreigners!").  Anyway, after a very short wait, we went in to see the Dr.   The Dr. spoke English very well and the visit went fine.

As far as we can tell (and I've asked around), we'll never see a bill for the visit to the urgent care clinic or for the prescription eye drops.  Given that the same sequence of events would have cost at least $60 in co-pays, not to mention hundreds of dollars a month in my contribution to our health insurance, I have to say that so far I'm a fan of socialized medicine ... especially when my premium is €20/month (about $27)!

Russ

p.s.  Grace was diagnosed as possibly having conjunctivitis ("pink eye").  Whatever it was, the drops seemed to clear it up in about 24 hours and Grace is doing well and will be back in school tomorrow morning.

Parents Evening at Grace's Schule

Thursday night was Parents Evening at Grace's schule (school).  As it turned out, this coincided with Liz and Jerry being here, so we had babysitters and both Sue and I could attend.

This was like no other Parents Evening that I had ever attended in Fayetteville (and I assume elsewhere in the US, although I could be wrong about that).  First, the participation was incredible.  I think 19 of the 21 families were represented with two other families having both parents attend.  We barely had enough chairs to sit on!

And the reason that I had some idea of how many families were represented was because we had to have a quorum for the issues that we'd be voting on.  That's right, some of the issues were decided by a majority vote and you needed 2/3 of the families represented to make the vote official.

So, what did we vote on?  What kind of grades to give (grades from 1-4, with 1=A, or just "comments")?  Who would be the parents rep?  How much money to collect for the parents fund?  Whether to have "ski school" again this year?  Should we purchase apples from a local farm so that the kids had fresh fruit (this area has great apples, by the way!)?  Where to go on the 4th-grade trip, where the kids go away for a week?  Etc.  I can't remember them all, but it was interesting to be in such a dynamic.  (And if you are interested, the answers, in order:  both, with no comments with a 1; 50 euros today; yes!; yes!; a farm where the "city kid" children learn farm chores and how food is produced).

And besides the voting, there were other things.  A couple (and Sue can add more).  Some children's parents may not be able to afford some activities.  But instead of avoiding more costly activities (like ski school!), they setup a fund, out of which all children's fees are taken.  What they avoid is collecting money event by event so that no one can really figure out how many parents are contributing (easily, anyway).  And speaking of this money ... this teacher, at 8p at night, collected nearly 1,000 euros ($1,400) in an envelope and did what?  Put it in a drawer?  Took it home?  I don't know, but that's a lot of money without any formal accounting.  Just can't imagine this in the US at a public school.

Another dynamic that was interesting.  This group of teacher and parents have been together for 1st and 2nd grade already (the teacher stays with the same group of kids from 1st through 4th grades).  So, she was really frank with the parents.  She lectured at length about the importance of reading; both, to encourage kids and to be a good role model by showing kids that parents read.  She lectured the parents about being encouraging with their kids as they struggle with more advanced comments.  And she even said to one (talkative) parent, "you are just like your son ... you interrupt me all the time!"  And all this seemed to be well received.

And I'll close with this.  You may be wondering how we could keep up in the meeting.  You might have assumed that because this was a bilingual elementary school that the meeting could be conducted in English.  Well, no.  Not all the parents are comfortable in English.  So, the meeting was conducted in German, but the teacher designated two parents to help Sue and I.  She tried to position one on each side of us so that they could translate as the meeting progressed (one person didn't make it, but another stepped up to fill the role).  Not only did this make the meeting much, much more accessible to us, but it allowed us to connect with a couple of parents, both of which we've contacted since in the hopes of making family connections.

I'm sure I'm missing many of the interesting details in this post, but both Sue and I came away with a much better understanding of how the school operates and presumedly how other public schools operate.

Russ

Sue's Parents Arrive

Faithful blog followers, we have quite a backlog of blog posts.  So, you'll get some shorter posts, maybe even one or two without pics, so that we can catch up, so to speak.

The big news of the week is that Sue's parents, Liz and Jerry, arrived on Wednesday morning.  And they didn't look too worse for wear (they had a pretty nice itinerary).  Sue, the kids, and I were really happy to see them arrive safely and have enjoyed the first few days of including them in our daily routine.

They are staying a couple of weeks.  Due to space (and stairs!) issues, they are staying at a comfortable, completely accessible hotel right across the street from the kids' schools.  This makes for natural occasions to connect.  If things go well, maybe they'll even pick up the kids one day from school and take them back to their hotel (hint, hint!).  One of the things that I like about their hotel (besides that the rate is very reasonable), is that each floor of the hotel has a dining area, so we brought dinner to them one night and ate in their hotel.  But given that it wasn't me that cooked everything and carried it over (I went right there after work one day), maybe I wouldn't be quite so positive about that feature :-)  I must be right about that because they've been over here for every night since.

Anyway, there will be more posts about activities during their visit, but I wanted to get this one "in the books," as I've got a lot to go!

Russ