Friends from Auburn Visit

We were really lucky to have two of our dearest friends from Auburn visit us during their spring break.  Claire and Darrell go way back to our early years at Auburn (which is unbelievably almost 20 years ago!) and were our most loyal Cookie Night folks while in Auburn.  And we even ended up naming a cookie after their daughter Elaine, but that's another story.

As it turns out, Claire and Darrell are not worldly travelers.  But Claire was asked to sit on the dissertation committee of a student in Vasu, Finland.  And Claire and Darrell must have thought, we'll just stop on by to see Sue and Russ while we are over there.  Of course Finland to Austria is no small distance (Europe isn't that small!), but it's true that once you've flown over the Atlantic, nothing seems too far.

They spent the wekend in Vienna before taking the train down to Graz to spend the week with us.  A lot of it was spent just checking out the city.  Sue and kids had them over most afternoons and all but one night, we had dinners together.  They were able to spend a fair amount of time hanging out.  As you can see below, Henry and Grace were able to coax them into playing games with them, which it seems everyone enjoyed.  

Claire, especially, really wanted to go on this outing to hike up to the ruins of Gösting.  The construction started in the 11th Century.  It is on top of this REALLY steep hill.  I'm not much for remembering altitude and pitch and all that of my hikes, but there was this really steep hike in Blacksburg that I one time measured to be 500' gained in 0.5 miles.  Well, the hike to Gösting is 600' in 0.5 miles and there is a flat section in between.  The first quarter mile must be 400' of the 600'.  It is not to be taken quickly, but Claire, Darrell and I made it up (the kids were in school and Sue had something to do).

We had just rotten weather for our climb :-)

An overlook before the ruins ... apparently where you go to get out of arranged marriages.

I'm not sure what impression of Austrians they came away with (hanging out with us doesn't tell you much about Austrians), but we sure enjoyed having them here to share in our adventure!

Russ