Trying New Things-Woche 3

We got furniture!!!!!  The rental company delivered a couch, love seats, lamps, dressers, beds, nightstands and clothes racks.  We have moved out of suitcases!  The house feels more like home already.  It is so nice to have somewhere to sit after dinner.  The beds are wonderful!  With all the furniture in it, the house seems smaller, but it is nicer to have things--even if it isn't ours.  Our air shipment should be arriving by the end of February and the sea shipment is scheduled to arrive in Germany at the end of February.  It then has to clear customs, get on some trucks, and then arrive in Vienna.  They don't know how long that will take.  I am really hoping that a month from now, we will be completely settled with all our stuff and our pictures on the walls.  We did buy a rug for the boys' room.  We have seen all sorts of rugs here at the IKEA.  They have cow hide rugs, mock bear skin rugs, sheep skin rugs, camel hair rugs, and this rug.  We're not sure what it is (possibly Mongolian goat), but everyone in the family seems to be enjoying it.  My favorite rugs were the camel hair rugs from Turkey.  They were soft and thick and you had to have a thick wallet to go with them.  Even at Ikea they started at 1000Euro ($1300) a piece.  Maybe Dan can pick one up for cheaper in Turkey when he travels to Istanbul for meetings in April.

The other great news of the week is that our neighbours no longer have to feast their eyes on our bottoms.  We have graced the city of Vienna with the addition of curtains to a couple of rooms in our house.  We finally were able to purchase a curtain for the boys bathroom and curtains for our bedroom.  The landlady had permanent curtain tracks installed throughout the house so that makes it pretty easy to hang curtains, but pretty hard to do window treatments.  We figure since all the walls are white and have to be returned to white when we leave, maybe floor to ceiling curtains to add colour is going to be easier than painting and re-painting.  We hope to get the remainder of the curtains in place over the next couple of weeks (Ikea here we come - AGAIN!  We should own stock in that place by now).

This week was ski week for the kids.  Every school age kid in Austria gets a whole week off of school sometime in February to go skiing.  Most of the schools have organized trips, for 5th grade and older students, that leave on Sunday and don't come back until Friday or Saturday.  We figured it was a little early for our crew to head off in the Austrian Alps without parental supervision, but the kids did enjoy their break from school.  They spent a couple of days helping me around the house and being bored.  They didn't seem to be acting as kind to one another as they usually are, so I decided it was because they had nothing to do but bug one another.  We planned a trip to Toys R Us (although I'm boycotting it in Indianapolis).  Dane and I checked the hours online, found the address, and by the time Dan got home, we ate dinner and were ready to head out.  We got to the store to find that it was closed.  The hours posted online were not the hours posted on the door (another strike against Toys R Us).  So, with disappointed kids we tried to find another store open.  The only thing we could find open past 19:30 (they use military time here) was a gas station convenience store.  We drowned our sorrows in ice cream and chocolate.

Wednesday, we couldn't stand it any longer and finally decided "when in Rome, do as the Romans".  So Dan took a couple of days off work and we started the morning with a surprise for the kids.  We loaded them up with all their snow gear, and off we went.  We headed for the mountains.  It was our first time on the actual autobahn.  At times, we were going around 150 km/hour (95 mph) and were getting passed like we were standing still.  Dan says our Austrian version of a mini-van starts to get a little loose at 150 so that was fast enough for us.  There seems to be a lot of tunnels here in the city of Vienna and on the highway.  The kids try to hold their breath through the tunnels, but one of them that we pass through regularly is 1 min. 40 seconds long.  Dan and I have tried it, but not made it yet.  Dan's pretty sure he could make it, but figures it would be irresponsible to pass out while driving.  We both break at just over 1 minute.  I tried to get some pictures of the scenery as we went, but all of them were taken while on the freeway, so the quality is not great.  We did find some castle ruins on the top of a very pointy mountain.  Just as I went to take the picture, another guard rail was added to the freeway, so I couldn't see the ruins very well.  I had to hold the camera up at the top of the car, point and click.  The blurry stuff is the castle.  We drove for about an hour and then we arrived at the Stuhleck Skischule at Spital am Semmering. 

The castle goes all the way to the edges of the mountain it is built on

And then, we went skiing.  The kids and I had never been skiing before so we all got lessons.  The three kids were put together with one teacher.  I got private lessons (I guess they didn't want me to feel incompetent next to the kids).  We had all day lessons (it was really only 2 hours in the  morning and 2 hours after lunch), but it was enough.  Everyone loved it.  I was sore after my first day.  By lunchtime, I was ready to graduate from the bunny hill to the beginner routes.  By the end of the day, I was okay on the Familien route.  We all had some mishaps here and there (I think that all four of us managed to fall at some point while getting on the lifts.)  I think that I only fell 5 times total, but my instructor managed to tell me that I fell "just like a cat".  I'm not sure what he meant by that--I'm sure the translation did not come through well--as his first language is German.  But at any rate, I only used 5 of the 9 lives. 

Dyllan, Dane, and way out in front, Deagan

Dan got to hold Danyon all day.  Danyon loved it, but Dan's arms were about to fall off by the end of the day.  He was just as sore as the rest of us.  We found a shopping mall on the way home and had some very good Thai food.  There was also a Toys R Us, and . . . it was open!  We ran in and each of the kids got to pick out a new toy to play with until the others arrive.  Dan picked out a movie, making sure it was also in English.  He picked the movie "Brave", but here it is called "Merida".  We noted that several movies had different titles.  I'm guessing there are copyright reasons or something.







Deagan, kid from Lebanon, Dane, Dyllan, Instructor

The next day, we got up and drove to the mountains again.  The kids went back to ski school for the day and Dan got to go skiing for the first time in 20 years, while I held Danyon.  Thursday was much colder in the afternoon.  No one seemed to notice except for Danyon and I.  Dan skied every route they had (except 1--but he didn't realize that he missed it until after we got home).  He was pretty proud of himself and figured skiing is just like riding a bike.  He claims he only fell once all day, but had a close call or two.  My guess is that since he is still walking that he is probably telling the truth.  I don't think he'd bounce back from a good fall as quick as he did two decades ago.  The kids also graduated up to the Familien lift after lunch on the second day.  They really enjoyed it.  They can't wait to go again.  Dan is already hoping to spend several more weekends in the mountains skiing.  The good news is that his knees were sore, but not too much more than any other day.  The rest of his body was more sore.  I wish that I had gotten to ski the second day, just to solidify it with my muscles, but I will wait for the next trip, I suppose.  With my instructor, I never had to actually leave the lift on my own.  He always pushed me away from the lift at the top.  I'm not sure I know how to actually get off the lift by myself.  But, all that doesn't matter--we can honestly say that we have all skied the Austrian Alps (except Danyon, who at best, can say that he ate some snow in the Austrian Alps.)

At the end of the second day of ski school Dan met up with the kids and they still had an hour left before the lifts closed, so they got to do a few runs together.  The first  time up the mountain the kids were so excited to not have an instructor, and to show what they could do, that Deagan immediately got off the lift, turned his skis straight down hill and never slowed down until Dan finally caught up to him about 50 feet from the lift and yelled at him.  I think it was something like, "if you ever want to do this again you better get in control" (okay, I am sure it was more colourful than that, but not completely appropriate for the blog).  Deagan promptly stopped, surprising Dan as he was sure he was completely out of control and was preparing to tackle him before he took some innocent bystander out.

Along the way

Dan had to go back to work on Friday, so life was back to normal (despite the begging from the children to go back to the mountains).  We spent a pretty relaxed day at home on the couch, watching it snow, as Dan spent a very hectic day at the office, doing presentations and getting caught up.  It is probably a good thing we stayed home from the mountains anyway.  It started snowing as we were driving home from the ski hill on Thursday afternoon and hasn't stopped as of Saturday morning.  Great for skiing, but the driving could have been a little treacherous.  I know Dan had some trouble going into work on Friday and most of his peers were pretty late getting to work because of some slipping and sliding.