More Beautiful Weather!--Woche 7

The weeks seem to fly by.  I got to join Dyllan for her PE class on Monday.  We were a good team.  None of the other parent/child teams could beat us.  We did warm up exercises and stretches.  Then we jumped rope, played a laundry basket bean bag toss game, and finished with an obstacle course.  Tuesday, Dane had a band concert.  They did a great job.  Dan wasn't able to be there because he was on a business trip to the UK and didn't get back until really late Tuesday night, but he saw the recorded version later and said, "For a grade 6 beginning band, they sounded really, really good!"  Danyon didn't sit through the concert.  He is getting more and more active and restless.  He wants to get out and go!--(Which is all relative, as his version of running is the same speed as his walking, his arms just move faster.)

Considering that last week I forgot to take Dane to the youth activity (he is 12 and I seem to have a harder time adjusting than him), they decided to ensure that I wouldn't forget this week by asking Dan and I to teach Salsa to the entire group.  It was a fun night.  It is kind of weird to consider Dane as one of the youth now.  Although we were successful in getting Dane there, he really didn't want to do a dancing night.  With the age, came the uneasiness of being around and touching girls (trying to impress them with dance moves that he wasn't practiced on).

Also different this week, I went out to a friends birthday dinner on Friday.  It was a fun evening.  I got to meet several other parents from the school.  We tried a new restaurant by our place.  It was good.  It is fun to try so many new places to eat.  Most of them all have their own special charm, although a lot of the menus are starting to look similar (you can only eat so much schnitzel, but I have a feeling that schnitzel is one thing that we will really miss).  However, one thing I like about Vienna is that they have special "seasonal" menus.  Of course we have spargel (asparagus) season coming up, they have marrillen (apricot), there was a eierschwarmen (special type of mushroom), we've seen hering, (herring) season, and right now is barlauch season (wild garlic).  During these seasons, many of the restaurants have these products specially brought in from local places and they use weekly menus that highlight these special ingredients.  For instance, Figl's menu on Friday included appetizers that contained barlauch and, of course, cream of wild garlic soup.  The main courses listed were ravioli filled with barlauch, shrimp and barlauch, and a chicken breast stuffed with mozzarella and barlauch, with a barlauch cream over pasta.  I am especially anxious for the spargel season as I have a particular weakness for white asparagus smothered in hollandaise with bacon. MMMMmmmmm.

We went to parent/teacher conferences for Dyllan and Deagan on Friday.  We are very proud of both of them for the work they are doing.  The highlights, besides the good grades, were that Dyllan's teacher said that Dyllan was a really good friend in her classroom, who is always willing to help and seeks opportunities to help anyone in need without ever being asked.  That sounds just like Dyllan to me, as she is my biggest helper at home and is always finding little ways to be kind to everyone and help to make their days easier.  Deagan's teacher told us that Deagan is a good kid at school (surprised?)  We were.  He has a knack for helping the other kids in the class to follow the rules, without being mean or unkind.  He is very assertive and can easily make friends at school.  His German teacher tells us that he is very talented.



Look how many turtles were out sunning on one log

Saturday, Dane wanted to spend some time with a friend, Sasha.  Sasha is a Russian boy that moved here from Moscow a couple of years ago.  Dan enjoyed brushing up his Russian with Sasha's parents as they speak primarily Russian.  His mom has taken German classes, but although their kids are attending the American International School, neither of them speak English very well.  We decided to take our kids and Sasha to the zoo.  We walked around the zoo in the beautiful weather (75 degrees and most were wearing shorts except for the baby and the self conscious parents).  Some of the animals weren't very awake yet, but some of them were very playful and enjoying the weather just as much as we were.  We saw some very fun monkeys and lemurs.  There was also a cute baby elephant.  My animal scientist husband, was particularly surprised to observe that elephants mammary glands are actually between their front legs.  We had always assumed that they were like cows or horses.  It was fun to watch the baby elephant curl his trunk back behind his head in order to nurse.  We were able to see the penguin feeding, but were disappointed because the bat cave wasn't as cool as when we went last Spring.  The bats were not dive bombing us as we walked through.  They were a docile bunch yesterday.  We took the kids out to ice cream afterwards.  We really like the spaghetti ice cream (it is vanilla gelato that they put in a press to look like spaghetti noodles, then they pour strawberry sauce over for the marinara and use coconut for the parmesan.  It is fun to eat and really tasty.  We were also very pleased to find both rice and soy ice cream, so we could continue to keep Danyon off milk products all while still getting to enjoy the ice cream treat.  His skin seems to be getting much better.  He still has some breakouts on his arms--which might be a result of not being able to completely eliminate all dairy (he still loves to occasionally have chocolate and baked goods).  Until I can find soy or rice chocolate and have the space in my fridge to have several open containers of milk, I think he will be getting traces of milk for awhile, but he looks a ton better!

Dan and I both had a church leadership training meeting to go to last evening.  Like most of our meetings, we had access to simultaneous translation during the combined meetings.  However, when we split up into our specific leadership groups, Dan quickly found out that he was on his own.  He said the first hour went great and he understood 60-70 percent and was able to follow the direction of all the conversations, but hour 2 found his brain to be mush and he figured he was only getting 35-40 percent.  By the end, it was even less.  He mentioned this to one of his colleagues that is a native German speaker and he assured him that by the end of the second hour, he was only getting 30-40 percent too, as it was a pretty long and detailed meeting. 

After the meeting, we were able to spend some time with Liz and Csaba.  We tried a new Brazilian restaurant in the downtown, called Maredo.  For a Viennese restaurant, it was surprisingly large (1/3 of a block long--most only have roughly 10-15 tables, or less).  While there, we witnessed an interesting sight.  There was a single man eating at a table next to us.  When he got up to go to the salad bar, someone walked in off the street, came up to his table, put their hat down, pulled out their hanky and blew their nose and then walked away.  On the stranger's way back out, he was stopped by the hostess and she asked him if he needed a table.  He indicated that he did and was seated about 50 feet from us.  As soon as the hostess had walked away, he came back over to the table next to us, removed several pieces of bread from the basket of bread of the person who was still filling his plate at the salad bar, went back to his own table and discreetly placed the bread under his hat.  Dan watched him closely and was pretty sure at some point, that the stranger would bolt from the restaurant.  Instead, he calmly ordered a meal and a glass of wine.  He seemed to enjoy both.  Then, one minute he was there, the next minute he was gone.  I guess that's the hazards of having a restaurant a third of a block long and having typical Austrian customer service, where you rarely check on customers or pay attention to what they are doing or needing.  Incidentally, Dan said that the guy sitting next to us did give our table a few weird glances after peering into his bread basket.  Dan figures that he thought that we took the bread, but again, being Austrian, conversation is not something that you never start with strangers, no matter what you want to accuse them of.  We had a great time and really love spending time with friends.

Where's the Best Food in Europe?--Woche 6

Lisbon

In keeping with our new family mantra, "Forget the diet!", we sure did enjoy this week!

Dan had a trip to Lisbon for work. The work part went well and he had a chance to meet with colleagues and potential Portuguese clients, but the highlight was the food! The Portuguese claim to have the highest per capita consumption of fish and seafood of any other European country and perhaps, the world. Dan's colleagues told him that the average consumption is somewhere around 46kg/person/year (that's 101 lbs. or, a whole lot of fish). Since I don't cook fish at home, Dan took full advantage of the chance to load up! He got to eat mussels, salt cod (which funny enough, comes from the Nordic countries, but is one of the most popular dishes in Portugal), fresh prawns, another fish he was unsure of the name, but the highlight was the octopus feast he had during his last lunch, before flying to Spain.

Dan thought that the food in Portugal was the best he's had in all of Europe so far, and is unsure about how the Portuguese have not developed an obesity problem like the Americans--maybe it's all the fish! We are adding Portugal to our list of family vacations for sometime in the future. Dan finished his business trip with one day in Madrid and then came home Wednesday night.

We realised on Monday, that the weather forecast for our part of the world on the weekend looked amazing, at 65 degrees. The kids also had Friday off, and since hockey is winding down, we didn't have games or practices on Saturday. We decided to go on a road trip to Prague. We headed out on Friday afternoon and drove 3 1/2 hours to Prague. We rented an apartment that had 4 bedrooms and could sleep 10, so we brought our friends, Liz and Csaba with us.

We rolled into town, just at dark. We stayed really close to the old town section of Prague. Prague is different from other cities nearby because it has a very new feel, with modern buildings and architecture, except for the old town, which looks very medieval. The architecture there is stunning. Walking through the streets is delightful! That night, we could even leave our coats at home and just thoroughly enjoyed walking around in our sweatshirts. We stopped at a local pub for dinner. Finding one that could fit our entire group was a little difficult, but we managed. The food was incredible. Dan and I shared a plate for 2 that probably had a whole pig on it (if pigs had chicken wings). The kids all enjoyed their chicken schnitzel and fries--all except Deagan who slept through dinner. Dinner here was much cheaper than Vienna. We headed home to let the kids sleep.

The original recipe

The next day, we woke to much colder weather and rain (so much for Monday's weather forecast). We had to make a pit stop for umbrellas and hats for the kids. We walked around the old town more and visited a chocolate museum. We were able to try their pralines at the end of their demonstration. Interesting note: pralines in all other parts of the world just means a bite sized piece of chocolate with some kind of filling. (The tour offered hazelnut nougat). Unlike home, pralines are not just pecans and caramel covered in chocolate, or caramelised pecans.

We wandered around and discovered that old town is full of crystal/glass shops, Czech garnet/jewelry shops, and marionette/puppet shops.  You could also find Russian matroshkas and fur hats.  While wandering we stumbled upon a Mexican restaurant for lunch. We had to go through an alley, down a flight of stairs, around the corner and into the basement restaurant. We had the best Mexican food ever, in this little back alley in Prague.  Everyone enjoyed their burritos, homemade mole enchiladas, and nachos.  They even had horchata.  Who would have ever guessed that you would find really good Mexican food in the middle of the Czech Republic???

We were reeling from our lunch, so we decided to do a bit of walking around and shopping to burn a few calories.  We ended up purchasing
some yummy dipping chocolate and some fudge from the chocolate shop.  The apricot fudge was so tasty.  Then we found some Czech crystal.  I bought 2 vases.  One is a contemporary cut, very simple in design, and the other is more of a classic style with the cut glass.  Now all I need is for Dan to bring home some flowers so I can show off my vases!  On our jaunt through town, we also came across something new.  We found a chess board for 3 players.  Since Dane is starting to get into chess a bit, we decided to pick up a small board, and figure out how to play!

After all that shopping, we happened upon an ice cream shop.  This ice cream was again, very good--certainly up to European standards.  The mango ice cream had huge chunks of mangoes in it.  We knew it would be good ice cream, when we saw that they had a crystal/glass chandelier hanging over the freezer. 

We stopped in a small mall towards the end of the day.  Deagan got bored and started throwing his new hat up in the air and trying to catch it on his head as it came down.  Although Dan told him to quit about 100 times, Deagan continued throwing.  When Dan realized that Deagan was no longer walking beside him, he turned around to find Deagan in a very serious conversation with a jewelry store worker.  Deagan was pointing behind the counter trying to explain in English that he had lost his hat behind her counter and she was looking utterly confused.  When Dan backtracked and finally could hear what was going on, it was very clear that she did not speak any English.  Since a lot of the workers we encountered also spoke Russian, Dan decided to bail Deagan out and give Russian a shot.  Sure enough, the lady spoke Russian and when she realized what was going on she laughed and laughed.  After handing Deagan back his hat, she explained to Dan that she thought he was asking her to see a very expensive (several hundred Euro) necklace that was displayed in the case.  She wasn't sure how he was going to pay for it and was not about to open the case for him as he didn't look like he had the money to cover such a purchase.  We all thought it was very funny and had a great laugh, but Deagan didn't think it was as cute as the rest of us and threw a hissy fit in the street in front of the mall because we were "making fun of him"
.

Even the meringues were good!

After that, all our eating and walking, the kids (particularly Deagan) were worn out.  The rain did stop, after the chocolate factory, but the wind picked up and we were all still cold.  We decided to head back to the apartment.  We hung out there.  The kids played games on the ipad.  We visited a bit with our friends.  After awhile, we called it a night.  We got up fairly early on Sunday morning and headed back for home.

We got back to Vienna, just in time to shower and get ready for church.  Dyllan was asked to give a talk in primary, and Dane was asked to teach the lesson in priesthood for all the Aaronic Priesthood quorums.  It was an exciting day, as Dane was ordained to the office of a deacon and he was able to pass the sacrament for the first time.  Certainly a memorable day for all of us!

As for Prague, we felt like we didn't get quite enough time there.  We would have liked to have at least one more half day.  I think we will plan to go again.  It seemed to be cheaper and we haven't seen it all yet.  I think that Dyllan and Deagan have next Friday off too.  Hmmmm, sounds tempting.

Birthday Greetings!!--Woche 5

Well, just a normal week in the life of the Baker's.  We had school, we had work, we had hockey, we had German lessons, we had music lessons.  I spent a lot of time planning more trips or vacations, or dreaming of trips or vacations.

Dan had a work colleague come from Texas.  We spent an evening with him at a couple of touristy places.  We took him to Cobenzl, where you can see an amazing view of the city.  We stopped at a restaurant at the top and enjoyed some dessert.  Next we headed to Mayer am Pfarplatz (one of the heurigen down the street) for dinner.  It was an enjoyable evening.

We decided to try taking Danyon off milk products for a little while to see if his skin would get any better.  It seems that we just can't get rid of the eczema.  Sometimes, it seems manageable, but then the weather changes, or we look at him weird, or we put him in jammies, and he breaks out again.  We started him on almond milk, as he is not allergic to nuts.  Since then his skin is much, much worse.  However, we were told that this is a good sign that the milk was the culprit.  If we can just hang on for 3 weeks, then we would know if milk was the cause, or one of the causes, of his eczema.  Hopefully, we can get him cleared up before too much longer!

The big news for the week:  Dane turned 12!!!!!!  We wanted his birthday to be fun, so we did our grocery shopping early.  I know it is every young man's dream to go shopping all day on his birthday, so that's just what we did!  Okay, it might not have been his favorite thing to do, but we wanted to get Dane new shoes and a new suit for church.  He needed to be there for all of it.  The good news is, we found a huge store that sells traditional Austrian clothing--including for kids (Dane decided that he wanted his new suit to be Austrian cut), and the store is just a few minutes drive from our house.  It was a good find!!  We found stuff for Deagan, Dyllan, and Dane, but they didn't have the right size jacket for him.  So, we found another store at a huge mall.  We had a fun time going through the mall.  Just when we thought we were done shopping, (we found all Dane's suit stuff, plus a few other little gifts, plus shoes for Dan), we found another GREAT find.  We walked into a store that was crawling with people.  It was a huge store that you could barely move in, with all the people.  We soon learned that this store is like the Austrian Walmart for clothing, shoes, and accessories.  We found all kinds of deals surrounding us, but didn't have the time to fight through the crowds to get them.  I did grab a few T-shirts for Dyllan (as she is quickly outgrowing hers), for 2.50 Euro a piece.  I found a couple other tops for her as well.  Everyone was tired and ready to go, so I left the rest of the store untouched (at least by me) with a promise that I would return again--SOON!  I ended up getting Dyllan 7 different tops for 30 Euro.  Comparing to my other "cheap" store, I would have only come out with 3 tops for that same price.  I realize that with clothes that cheap, the quality might not be that great, but even if all the shirts end up as P.J.s, it is worth the money, even for that!

The rest of Dane's birthday was fun, too.  Dane chose to go to his favorite Greek restaurant for dinner.  The food there was absolutely amazing last night.  Maybe shopping exhausted us more than we thought, but it really seemed better than usual.  We came home and Dane opened a couple little presents from his siblings and family.  Then we ate cake.

Dane still opted to have a homemade cake at home (although, this year, Dane picked a traditional chocolate cake with salted caramel buttercream icing).  I guess no more skateboards, pirate ships, and sharks eating penguins for cakes anymore.  I think the other kids are planning to choose more elaborate cake designs, which may prove hard to find candy and other implements for, but Dane seems to be over it--now it's just about the taste.

We did have firework candles.  They were fun.  Dyllan had previous experience with some from a friend's birthday party.  She said they almost burned down the bowling alley, so we opted to put the candles in the lawn outside, instead of in the cake.  We sang to Dane outside while he tried to blow out his candles. 

We finished to evening watching a movie together as a family.  Hopefully, it was everything Dane wished for on his big day!

Raining Confectionaries??--Woche 4

The first week back went relatively well.  The kids reluctantly went back to school.  Hockey seems to have slowed down, somewhat.  Dan was gone to Antwerp for a couple of days this week.  We seem to have things running pretty smoothly. 

On Monday, I went to a girl's lunch.  I haven't done a whole lot of "girl's nights" since we got here.  Things just seem to be very busy with all the kids activities and spending time with Dan, when he is in town, seems to be more important.  Since this one was during the day, when kids and husbands schedules did not conflict, I decided to go, and I was glad that I did.  It is Restaurant Week in Vienna.  Some restaurants have set menus for set prices during this week.  It is a good way to get out and try new places.  We met at a little tiny restaurant called Chameleon.  It is right in the downtown area.  It has about 5 tables maximum.  The owner is Swiss, and his restaurant is fondue.  On our set menu, we were served a very nice salad, followed by a cheese fondue and then dessert.  The owner was so good to us and to Danyon.  I've mentioned before that it is rare for someone here to pay attention to Danyon, and when they do, you can usually bet that they are foreigners.  This was no exception, but the owner was very happy to have Danyon there and thoroughly enjoyed him.  He even asked to hold him, but Danyon wasn't having any of that.  The food was delicious.  When the owner discovered that we did not drink alcohol, he said that the "set dessert" had alcohol in it.  He said he was working on something else, especially for us in the kitchen.  He came back with a huge platter of fruit and a chocolate fondue.  It was very, very good.  I would like to go back with Dan sometime.  Anyone who has that amount of customer service in this city will get my vote and return visit!! 

We went to the final home AIS basketball game.  We had a friend who was playing on the team.  It was interesting to me that we didn't need to buy tickets and they only had one set of bleachers set up.  Our family got there just as the game was beginning and we doubled the people in the stands.  According to a friend, the school only gets about 3-4 parents to come out and watch the games.  For a varsity basketball game, I thought that was sad.  Our team ended up winning fairly easily.  It was fun to support our friend and school.

Just before stepping into the awaiting carriage

This was a big week for us.  I had to finish preparations:  I got my dress all ready.  I got my fingernails and toenails painted.  I bought fake eyelashes for the first time.  Dan got the babysitter.  We were so excited to finally go to the ball!  We picked our friends up and headed to the Wiener Konzart Haus.  We walked into the building, that was crawling with people.  In the large foyer, they had little bags and candies for everyone.  They also had a gift for everyone--ladies got a package of cookies and the gents got a package of coffee.  (Dan was a little less excited about his gift--we will find someone who will be the lucky recipient.)  This is a tradition that started long ago, with the first ball.  This gift called the Damenspende is a token gift presented to the ladies upon arriving at the ballroom.  It used to be something really cool like a mother-of-pearl fan and a card given for gentlemen to claim a dance from the lady.  But now it is something cheaper--usually confectionary or a CD or something of the like. With the equality of the times, some balls also give a Herrenspende (man gift), but it was not given long ago.  At the Bonbon Ball, there were 3 different dance rooms.  The main hall had very good music with fully orchestrated band.  The music played was traditional ballroom music with a huge variety of styles.  There were waltzes, rhumbas, fox trots, etc.  In the other rooms, the bands were playing other genres, one was a latin room.  It was so much fun to dance.  However, when I say dance, I mean it quite loosely.  There are so many people on the dance floor, that you can not move without running into people.  Although most of the people at the balls know how to dance--especially the Viennese Waltz, it is impossible to do any dance correctly.  It seems that no one knows the line of dance, and everyone was milling about with no rhyme or reason.  We now know why line of dance was created!  It was still so much fun to try to dance!  The bands also shortened the songs so that they were only a couple of minutes long, rather than the entire version of every song.  This made it possible to get more styles of dance in and also it kept the men, who were in their jackets the entire evening, from completely overheating. 

Of course, eating Bonbons

We watched the crowning of Miss Bonball ceremony.  It wasn't really a highlight.  It seemed rather boring, actually.  But things picked up with the midnight Quadrille.  It is a traditional dance that is called (kind of like a square dance) and they play it at every ball--stemming from the first balls in Vienna.  Since our German is not spot on, we decided to watch the first round.  It was fun to get to see the chaos that was the Quadrille.  Everyone had a great time.  We loved spending time with our friends.  We had to pay extra money to have a table, but we were so glad that we did.  It was nice to have somewhere to go and sit, visit, and rest our feet.  They had a few more candies at each of the tables, which was nice, but paying 4 Euro for a small bottle of water was a bit steep, I thought.  It just seems that water would be a given at a dance--to keep people from passing out, but not here.  You have to pay for it. 



Props to Dan, my best hairdresser. 
This was even after the
 entire evening of dancing!

No one lost their glass slippers and no one was forced to leave at midnight.  We quite happily danced the night away, and finally our feet gave out and we ended up leaving at about 2:45.  I thought I would be okay with going just once--as it is a once in a lifetime experience, but somehow, we had so much fun and the music was so good, that we are convinced that we will go again.  Maybe not to the Bonbon Ball, but we would love to attend another one next year.  Dan was even ready to go again on Saturday night, although, I have to admit, my feet couldn't have handled it!

Side effects of the Bonbon Ball

So instead on Saturday, we did our usual grocery shopping.  Dan took Dyllan and Deagan to their last hockey practice on the outdoor rink.  (It is getting to look like Spring here.  We have leaves starting to pop out on bushes and trees have started to bud--a huge turn around from last year.)  Dan met some friends at the hockey rink and helped their little boy with his first experience skating.  Dane went along and Dan helped him with some pointers for his skating as well.  I stayed home with Danyon, while we both took naps.  That night, Dan promised the kids that he would take them to Ebi again (the all-you-can-eat sushi buffet).  I think the promise was more for Dan's enjoyment than the kid's, but it worked.  We met our friends there and had a great evening.  By the time we got home, Dan was practically a zombie.  He hadn't gotten a nap in and we since we live with kids, there was no sleeping in that morning.  He needed to send a text to someone from church.  He fell asleep 4 times while trying to type one text.  I woke him up each time telling him to hit the send button.  Once he did, he was asleep before he could put the phone down--and he told me he was ready to go to another ball that night.  It would've taken a lot of help from his fairy godmother, just to keep him awake for another ball!