Thursday, December 17, 2009

We're coming to America!

Well, Pöchlarn has treated us well, but we're ready to be back in the USA. With our first snowfall on Sunday and a few stray flakes every day since then, we're starting to get the Christmas itch.

Tomorrow we'll celebrate an early Christmas with Elsa and Josef followed by Michael's choir concert in the Vienna City Hall on Saturday. Sunday morning, we're off to Amsterdam and then it's back to home-sweet-home. It will be strange to return after just 10 short days in the US, but our life is here now for another 5 months. If all goes well, and we think it should, I will also be working as an English teaching assistant during the spring semester. It makes coming back better knowing we'll both have renewed energy and purpose. There's much still to see and do in Österreich!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Random sightings or experiences


Below is an assortment of random sightings and experiences from the past couple weeks. I hope you enjoy them. They are listed in no particular order.
  • Michael and I didn't buy a real Christmas tree. Instead we cut some branches from the sickly looking evergreens propped up all over Pöchlarn and made our own. Ours definitely looks better than the trees on the street.
  • We picked up that little pumpkin in the background at the beginning of October. We found it in a field on our bike ride back from Baumaxx (Austrian equivalent to Lowe's) and it was completely green. Two months later it's turning orange!
  • I finally got my chocolate crepe fix at one the many Viennese Christmas markets.
  • Last weekend we bought a candy bar out of a vending machine in Vienna. We put in exact change so I wasn't expecting anything in return. I usually check the coin return anyway though because you never know. And guess what?! 80 cents was in there!
  • We were shopping for salad dressing at Spar and one of our choices was "Thousand Islands" - Islands with an "s". Haha!
  • Spare ribs anyone? Elsa and Josef made sure we don't turn into spare ribs by taking us out to eat at this delicious restaurant in Vienna.



  • Today they were doing some statue work outside. One man working, five men watching and a one free-swinging bishop. Amen to that.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Chickens

I have a couple things to say about chickens - yes, the animal. In small towns in Austria, it's not uncommon to see chickens running around people's yards. I'll be walking by houses in Wieselburg and all of the sudden hear clucking and other chicken noises coming from behind the fence. One house by Michael's school had five or so running around the yard. They were running by the children's play equipment and everywhere. It's so funny to see. I laugh every time.

Secondly, in regards to eating chicken - up until a couple weeks ago, I thought we had been buying chicken from Spar. The meat looks like chicken, it's packaged the same as chicken would be packaged and it has the same pink color. Heck, it even tastes like chicken when you cook it! However, much to my surprise, it turns out we've been eating turkey all along! It's not like turkey and chicken are that different when it gets down to it, but my turkey at Thanksgiving looks quite different that the turkey I buy at Spar. I think we've determined the difference between turkey and chicken is that the turkey breasts are thicker than the chicken breasts, but that seems to be the only real difference. I've been resistant to acknowledging this fact and in my head, continue to shop for and eat chicken when in fact I now know it's the other, other white meat.

Lastly, all of the chicken eggs here are brown and stamped. My mom pointed this out to me.
I guess I'm not that observant.