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.

Getting Started- Woche 2

For any of you that are familiar with Fiddler on the Roof, there is a great scene when the tailor finally gets his first sewing machine.  It is a day for celebration and of course, everyone breaks out in song.  All Monday morning, Dan pranced around the house singing "Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles" as we not so patiently waited the arrival of the washer and dryer. (One difference, unlike the people of Anetevka, we didn't have the Rabbi come to bestow any blessings on the appliances.)

They finally arrived and then we were told that the washer had to run without clothes for the first time.  The wash cycle took an hour and a half.  But, after that long wait, I was able to finally start cleaning all our clothes and blankets.  The dryers here do not vent to the outside.  They put heat into the clothes somehow and then all the steam is condensed into water and is saved in a container that I empty after every load.  A lot of people here don't even have dryers (Energy costs a ton here and I think that maybe people can't afford it).  With the long wash and dry cycles, it took me two and a half days to get caught up on the laundry.  No thanks to Danyon who seems to need to change his clothes more often than a teenage girl.

Speaking of Danyon, he now is the proud owner of 4 teeth.  The two top teeth came in this week.   Dan is not very excited that he gets to be the high chair for awhile.  Danyon doesn't seem to mind.  Just keep it comin'.  He has been sleeping a ton.  I don't know if it is out of boredom of the same 3 toys, or if he is growing.  He seems to enjoy the short walks to and from the bus stop and our occasional outings.  He has already learned that the floors are hard and when he rolls over, he needs to hold his head up to keep it from smacking down on the stone.  He's pretty smart!  He does, however, manage to get himself into some tight squeezes.  You can get yourself pretty stuck when all you can do is move backwards.

You would think that in a land with so many mountains, there would be Hidden Valleys.  But alas, there is no Ranch dressing here.  The closest thing we found is a yogurt based creamy dressing with chives and parsley.  It is more tangy than Ranch.  The kids are adjusting just fine, as there were no complaints when they dipped their chicken nuggets in it.  I had a craving for Red Vines this week.  I don't even know if I can buy them here.  Every time I go to the candy aisle, I get so caught up in all the good chocolate, that I don't even know what other kinds of candy they sell.  We are eating more than our share of chocolate each week.

Dan's boss invited us over for dinner one evening.  It was very generous of him, as there are only two in his household--he and his daughter.  We overtook his house and ate him out of house and home.  It was very delicious.  He is from Spain and he served Spanish appetizers and the main course was Greek.  It was good.  The kids only embarrassed us a few times with their comments of "This is disgusting!" and "Do I really have to eat it? because I don't like it."  Other than that, it was a very enjoyable evening, AND we got to sit on couches!  As we wanted to bring a gift and didn't know what to get, I tried making chocolate chip cookies to be as American as we could get.  Despite the butter being in grams and the the sugar being larger crystals and the absence of real vanilla, they turned out pretty good.  We took half the batch over and baked the other half when we returned home.  There wasn't even a crumb left for the next day.

Even though we have had our phone number for a week, we just figured out two days ago how to call out.  The good news is, now I can.  Don't expect phone calls any too quickly though, I'm not sure that I know how to make a long distance call.  If you call us, and we don't answer, don't be alarmed at the German answering machine.  I believe she says to leave your name and number after the beep, but I'm not sure.  I also don't know how to change the message into our own, or even, if we can.

The kids almost had a snow day this week.  It was all Dan's fault.  He said that he didn't want to buy Dane snow boots because winter was nearly over and spring is about to begin.  That sealed the deal this week (much like the groundhog on Feb. 1), that we would be consigned to a week of cold and snow.  They were expecting 20-25cm one day.  (You do the math).  That was enough to almost get a snow day, as we didn't really get that much.  But, we still had snow.  The kids got to play in it.  I'm loving the courtyard and garden (everyone calls the backyard a garden here).  They can go outside to play and be completely safe and I don't have to go out with them.  And thanks to the fact that we don't have curtains yet, I can see them from almost every room in the house.

The second graders start strings at this school.  Dyllan picked a cello.  It is almost as big as she is.  She lugged it home on the bus and gets to practice everyday.  She had private lessons with the music teacher every morning this week for 15 minutes before school started to get her caught up with the rest of the class (they started at the beginning of the school year).  She starts without a bow until she learns the strings and notes and how to play.  Then she earns her bow.  Dane gets to play the recorder.  Again.  I think it won't take him long, as he was a black belt in Indiana and they do the same program here, just a few different songs.  He can join the band next year with brass.  He missed out on strings, so if he wanted to play one of those, it would require a lot of private instruction to get him caught up on the four years he has already missed.

Valentine's Day came and went without much ado.  We think that they do celebrate it here as we heard commercials on the radio that said "Valenteen's tag".  However, Dan said that on his way home from work, he didn't see hoards of people going out to dinner.  No one in our complex had flowers delivered, so I think it is much less celebrated here than at home.  As for us, Dyllan and Deagan exchanged Valentines in their classes and Dane got to eat a cupcake.  We had love songs playing all day and ate the kids' favorite meal:  stromboli--who cares if I forgot to put in the cheese.  For dessert, I made strawberry eclairs.  I used vanilla pudding powder to make the base for the filling.  The vanilla pudding here is not as sweet as at home, and it doesn't have a lot of vanilla flavor.  It tastes strongly of cornstarch or pectin.  Dan's comment on the dessert was that he would have to bring a suitcase of pudding back with him the next time he traveled to the states.  As for me, I'm still in amazement of my skills to pull off such meals with only the use of a 9 x 13 pan, a pot, a fry pan, a can opener, vegetable peeler, spatula, and wooden spoon.


We took the kids to their first professional hockey game.  The Vienna Capitals played on Friday night.  They lost the game, but it was so much fun.  The fans really get into it.  They all know the players names, they all know several clapping/spirit chants.  There are drums constantly being beat and the noise level is pretty high.  Deagan still managed to sleep through it--until the Capitals scored a goal.  Then the noise level was enough to wake the dead!  At the end of the game, the winning team's fans sing songs and do other crazy things while the team kneels on the ice in front of them (I wonder how you get the job to lead the songs and other chants at the end of the game--he wasn't a cheer leader in the American sense of the word).  Then the winning team salutes the fans and everyone goes home.  It was a lot of fun.  We enjoyed Kaisekriners (foot-long polish sausages, filled with cheese, wrapped in bread dough, lined with mustard) during the game.  They put the Dodger-dogs to shame.

We liked them so much, we tried
 making Kaise Kriners at home

The hockey game allowed us to have our first experience on the subway this week.  We were able to catch a bus a couple of blocks from our house, and then transfer to the underground at the main station in our part of the city (Heiligenstadt).  It sure beat driving to the game and we were home in 35 minutes without dealing with parking or traffic.  There were a few drunks on the subway, but they kept mostly to themselves.  We watched a guy down at least half a bottle of wine straight out of the bottle over the duration of about 5 subway stops.  Must've been a tough loss.  The great news is, though, we have never felt unsafe on public transport anywhere in Vienna.  Except for when Deagan tries to jump in front of moving busses, trolleys, trains, etc.  We still have some training to do there.

Our Demel cake box

We are slowly getting more furniture built.  It takes me awhile to get things built having only one person to manage such big pieces of furniture.  Danyon isn't much help in that department.  Yesterday, he just laid there critiquing me, blowing raspberries every time he didn't approve.  Despite his remarks, I built two armoires this week and am working on a locker.  The kids make it even more interesting as they scatter their new found toys of cardboard and styrofoam all over the house.  What a mess!! 

The last great news of the week, we got it approved from the company to get some temporary furniture until ours arrives!  They are sending beds over for all of us and a couch.  We'll have them on Monday, we think.  They had to make sure that the delivery truck would be able to fit down our street and be able to park in front.  As it is a one-way road, they can't block it.  The company still hasn't even sent any of our stuff, as they are waiting for the proper paperwork.  It is slowly coming together, but it will be nice to have somewhere to sit and it will be very nice not to have to sleep on an air mattress.  We must be getting old because our backs can't take much anymore.  For those of you coming to visit, my apologies in advance, because you will all get air mattresses to sleep on.  Sweet dreams!

Getting here was half the fun!--Woche 1

We said goodbye to our friends and we were off to the airport.  It took a 15 passenger van to get us and our luggage to the airport.  With car seats included we counted 25 bags.  The car rental people called for the sky cap train to pick us up, but it never arrived.  We loaded it all up on to 3 luggage racks and off we went.  We made it to the terminal to check in.  As it turned out, they didn't have us in business class for the first leg of our trip (there weren't enough seats left in business class for all of us when the tickets were purchased.)  We didn't mind, except that we no longer had the baggage allowance.  So we had to pay for all of our 10 checked bags, $50.00/bag.  They also did not have us with seats together.  All 5 of us were spread out through the entire airplane.  No one had seats even in the same row.  The kids did surprizingly well with this and took their seats calmly.  When we got to Deagan, he decided that he didn't want his seat because he was sitting next to someone he didn't recognize.  That gentleman was nice enough to let Dan have his seat, so Deagan and Dan got to sit next to each other.  Oh, and Danyon got to sit on my lap.

The next flight we made sure that we were able to sit by each other.  We were in the front row.  That flight was very nice.  Holding Danyon put a little damper on the business class service, as he wanted to play with the headphones, table cloth, utensils, dishes, drinks, etc., but after dinner, he was fine.  The kids didn't eat much of their meals, except Dane, (it started cheese and bread, followed by a salad that didn't have RANCH dressing on it, and then steak with roasted eggplant and tomatoes.  Dessert was a chocolate torte.  Yum!)  It was all very good, just no kids meal options.  We were all able to get a few hours of sleep before breakfast.  Deagan loved playing the games on his personal T.V.  After breakfast, we were landing!

We arrived at the airport and headed for baggage.  We came to an escalator.  The kids wanted to go up it, so Dan took them up while I took the elevator with Danyon in his stroller.  The doors of the elevator opened, I got out and was already lost.  I went through a few empty hallways, following signs to exit.  I came to an emergency exit and figured I must be in the wrong spot.  I turned around and a police officer called me over to her booth.  I went over and she asked where I was going.  I told her I wanted to get to outside to Vienna.  She said I needed to go through her gate and all she needed was my passport.  I told her that I didn't have my passport on me.  It was with Dan and the kids on the escalator.  She told me to call him and tell him to bring my passport to me.  I told her that I didn't have a phone that would work in Vienna.  She wasn't impressed and told me that it was not possible for me to go through.  I thought I was going to spend my first night in Vienna in jail.  She said she would call her colleage though.  I was standing there sweating bullets.  Just as she was on her phone, another airport employee came through the gate and had Danyon's and my passports with him.  The lady stamped our passports, and the man brought us to where Dan and the kids were waiting on the other side of customs.  We had only been in the country for 2 minutes before we were in trouble!  Never in a million years would I have guessed that by going on an elevator you change your customs line completely.  After that, we ALL took the elevator together navigating all our luggage.  We finally arrived to the waiting area and found the driver who was helping us with all our bags.  He looked at all our bags and about fell over.  He took most of them in his car and waited for us to get our rental car and made sure we could fit the rest of the bags.  Then, we were off to our new home!

We got to our new place (about 30 minutes from the airport) and we were still 2 hours early for our walk through with the landlady.  Luckily though, there were workers who were there and the front gate to the driveway was open.  We emptied all our bags in the covered area (as it was raining) and I sat with the bags while Dan and the kids went grocery shopping.  About an hour later, I was all but frozen and was tired of getting dirty looks by the workers who kept whispering something to each other about all those bags of mine, Dan pulled up and so did the landlady.  She was early, wanting to get some things done before we arrived.  Ms. Demeter is a very nice lady who takes pride in her project.  She put a lot of extras in the house as she wanted to make sure it would be perfect for her children to live in one day.  She gave us a huge flower arrangement, a book on Beethoven (as we live next door to the Beethoven house), and an orange chocolate cake from the best Patiserie in town (it really was very good).  Dyllan said she loved the house as soon as she walked through the front door.  The walk through took a couple of hours as we learned how to run the gargage and other various items in the house.  The kids were literally bouncing off the walls as there was no furniture, no toys, and they had been sleep deprieved and a little anxious for awhile.  Going back to apartment living is harder once you have owned your own house.  I always feel like the kids are destroying everything and I try to be more careful with walls and everything going on.  I feel like I'm walking on egg shells all the time.  Before leaving home, I decided I wanted to paint the walls as everything here is white.  Now that I'm here, I don't feel like I can because it is not mine and I don't think that many people paint their apartments here.  All restaurants and buildings that we have been in have white walls. (Even in the furniture stores, the walls are white and they use color in the decorating, not the walls).

After the walk through, we decided to go shopping.  We knew that we needed some barstools for our kitchen and some other things.  We loaded the kids up and went to Electro Haas.  We were on a shopping spree.  We bought a washer (the biggest one we could afford--which is half the size of the one we had at home and the biggest they sell here without special ordering) and dryer, T.V., a mixer that had blender and food processor attachments, and DVD player.  It took only a little while to find someone who could speak English.  We spent a couple of hours wandering through the IKEA and came out with only a few things.  It was okay though because there wasn't much room in the car anyway--however, they were out of the barstools that we wanted, so we still didn't have anywhere to sit in the house.  We were exhausted and all the stores were closed by 6:00 Saturday night.  We came home and had frozen pizza with salami on it for dinner.

Sunday was a little more relaxed.  We slept in and started getting ready for church.  We got lost on the way there so we saw a little more of Vienna than we had planned.  We still made it to church in time for Sunday School and Sacrament meeting.  The kids got to meet their primary teachers and they thought it was going to be fun.  After church, we drove to the kids' school so they could see it.  It wasn't raining so we decided to go for a walk in our neighborhood.  We walked to the park that is just a block away.  There is a statue of Beethoven there.  There are also several really good portrait-taking places at this park.  I'm excited about that.  It will be a lot of fun to get the kids yearly pictures taken in various parts of the city!  Dan cooked a really nice dinner that we had to eat out the the 9x13 dish, taking turns eating off the serving spoon as we only had a couple.  We figured we would buy paper and plastic products until our things arrived, but have had trouble locating any paper products, except napkins.

Monday, Dan had an appointment at the bank downtown.  We decided to drive there (vs. public transit) as we wanted to head to the other IKEA to see if they had our barstools.  We took our GPS, but they must have changed the roads since he was programmed because he kept trying to tell us to drive on a road that we were not allowed on.  We drove around trying to get him to recalculate our route, but he kept trying to take us back the way we came.  We decided to park the car and walk from where we were.  We walked for several blocks through a really expensive part of the downtown (Versace, Cartier, etc.).  Dan got lost and we had to retrace our steps as we had already past the bank several blocks earlier.  Both Dane and I pointed out the bank, but Dan was on a mission--apparently to give us more exercise.  We finally made it back to the bank--20 minutes late.  People here are very considerate of the time and expect everyone to be punctual.  Wasn't a very good first impression, I don't think.  The guy did give the kids some key chains with a weird girl coin with stretchy legs.  These were a big hit as they were the first toys the kids had seen in weeks, so they said.  And, on the way back to the car, we stopped and got a few pastries from a shop for breakfast.  They were very tasty.  Then back to IKEA for 3 hours, yes, 3 hours.  The kids weren't very excited about this, but it is necessary to have something in the house.  We ended up buying 6 plates, cups, and silverware to use for the 6 weeks that we don't have our stuff.  Oh, and 6 barstools, too.  Then we stopped at a few more stores, loading up the car completely.  We had groceries, chairs, light fixtures, dishes, kitty litter, you name it, we had it.  By this time, the kids were complaining of all the items they had to hold on their laps, so we headed home.  We built a couple of chairs, ate dinner and then went to bed.

Tuesday the cats finally arrived in Vienna.  The appeared to be okay when they arrived.  They got out of their crates and started exploring.  We showed them the new litterbox and food and let them go free.  The kids had their assessments at school.  We drove up to the school.  The kids got to tour the school.  They even had a couple of 4th grade students who got to assist on the tour.  Every student, teacher, person, we met was very nice and the kids got to meet their teachers.  Deagan passed his assessments so he will be able to attend kindergarten here.  The others also did well on their assessments.  They are so excited to go to school.  They can hardly wait.  They are bored at home with nothing to do.  We do have T.V., but it is all in German except for a couple of news channels in English.  The kids did find SpongeBob, but his German voice is very different from his English one.  The tour of the school took most of the day.  They even gave us free lunch in the cafeteria.  The lunch is expensive, but it is good.  There were 5 dishes to choose from (meatballs, enchilada, vegetarian kabob, and tortelini)  They each had their own side dishes.  There was a small salad bar and all kinds of juices and milk to choose from.   After finishing there, we decided to go to a BIPA (a store that you find all over, as plentiful as Starbucks, that sells soap, shampoo, baby food)--but it still took us 45 minutes driving around to find one.  Dan parked the car and we shopped for about 20 minutes.  When we got back to the car, we had our first parking ticket.  Apparently, we didn't have a parking sticker for the district we were in and we were possibly in a handicapped zone.  This we learned from translating the words on the ticket in the online dictionary.  We feel stupid that we can't read signs and can't understand people in stores.  We almost missed out on an $85.00 rebate because we couldn't understand what the saleslady was trying to tell us.  The people are not rude (at least that we can understand), it's just that we can't speak or read the language very well yet, and not everyone speaks English.  They usually speak several languages though.  The kids that toured our kids around the school each spoke 3-5 languages.  That's pretty impressive since I only have one and am having trouble with a second.  We built some lockers that we got from IKEA and got to bed really late.  When we got to the bedroom, one of the cats left us a nice surprize on our air matress.  He was mad at us so he peed on the bed.  He got both blankets, the sheets, and one pillow.  Quite a mess.  It was already after midnight, we have no washing machine, and no extra blankets.  We threw the blankets and sheets into the tub, and scrubbed the air matress.  I put on an extra pair of socks, put my jacket over my feet, and Dan borrowed a blanket from Danyon.  It was a pretty miserable night.  I heard Dan mumbling that if that ever happens again, the cat will be burried in the back yard.

Wednesday the kids and I stayed home.  I tried to clean all the blankets with dishwashing soap.  I stomped around the tub for an hour.  I hung the blankets to dry and then the kids and I started building more things that we bought at IKEA.  We don't have closets here and have to build wardrobes and other things to put all our clothes in.  We don't feel like we're in that much of a hurry, though, because we're not sure when we'll get all our stuff.  The house echoes and when Danyon cries, it is VERY loud.  We need to get some carpets in to keep the noise down.  Even the kids running around the house is very loud.  By the end of Wednesday, I'm even more excited for the kids to go to school than they are.  That night, my cleaning attempt failed:  the blankets still smelled like cat pee and they weren't dry anyway.  We borrowed a second blanket from the kids, as they all have 2.

The first day of school was great!  The kids all love their teachers.  They made some friends and they had a good time.  I got the notes from the teachers that they need to make Valentines for their classmates.  It gives me an excuse to find some sort of craft store--maybe this weekend.  We got internet installed and we have a phone number.  We don't feel as isolated now that we have internet and can communicate via email.  Phone calls are expensive, I think.  We've got workers in the house today finishing up a few things. 


Our Apartment

I will take public transit for my first time today to pick up the kids from school.  It is a longer trip than we had planned--at 55 minutes to get to the school.  It is only a 10-15 minute drive, so I may want to buy a car after all.  I had orginally thought that there would be no need, but that is a long time to get to and from the school.  There is a Valentine's program in Kindergarten and I'm sure there are other things to do at the school, so I may spend quite a bit of time there.  The ride to and from school took 2 1/2 hours.  The kids got to ride the public transit for the first time.  I managed to get them on all the right buses and trolleys going in the right direction (on the way to pick them up, I had a small mishap and ended up going the wrong direction.  By the time I realized it, we were already at the end of the line and it just started over, going in the right direction, so no worries.)

Our Backyard

 Our first Friday night here, we decided to take the kids out to an Austrian meal.  We went 2 doors down to the neighbors Heurigen.  These are little houses with restaurants in them.  They typically serve their local wine and have small assortments of food.  You know if they are open if they have an evergreen bough hanging by the door.  We had schnittzel and German potato salad.  We also tried their deep fried veggies (zucchini, cauliflower, mushrooms, green onions--these are large in size here, and eggplant) and their fried chicken.  We, of course, did not have the wine, but did have the Almdudler.  This is a local drink that is like gingeraled lemonade.  It's pretty good.  It kind of grows on you.  Another thing that we found that grows on you is a brand of yogurt that is so creamy and good.  They have vanilla and pineapple kiwi flavor with real fruit.  We learned that it is 10 percent milkfat.  No wonder it's so good!!