Schools out for summer! – Wochen 18-19 and then several more wochen

Schools over!  Woohoo! Today Dane is writing the blog. School finished on Friday with a half day! But I know you guys probably don’t care so let’s go back to two weeks ago. On Monday dad left for Barcelona for work. So he was gone the whole week. While he was gone I had a concert for band.  My favorite song was “The Pink Panther”.   Not much else happened that week except for on Friday.

On Friday, Grandma Baker got here.  On her first day here, she was holding Danyon on her lap.  When Danyon looked up, she looked down at the same time.  Danyon's head collided with her eye.  Yep, Danyon gave grandma a shiner on her first day here.  While Grandma was catching up on much needed sleep, we were finishing up our last full Friday of school.  Dad came back on Saturday,  but then left again for Brussels.  Then last Tuesday,  I had a poetry reading and a sports banquet.  We didn’t know what to expect for the sports banquet.  Mom thought that a nice dinner would be served as per the name “banquet”.  However, when we got there, they had bleachers set up and a couple of tables lined with slices of pizza on napkins and juice.  Although this was different from what we had anticipated, we were happy to be fed anyway.  At  the sports banquet,  I got 2 medals for participating in soccer and track and field.  I also got the medal for MIP ( Most Improved Player) in track and field.  This was quite an honor for me, as the coach had a healthy team with over  25 players to choose from.  At the Poetry nigh,t all the 7^th graders had to share a poem.  It wasn’t my favorite thing to do on a Tuesday.  I almost started my poem off with a family favorite, “I love Uranus”, but at the last minute decided to do an original.   Dyllan and Deagan both had picnics at the school.  Dyllan’s picnic included a hike and lots of free time.  Mom went with grandma and they brought the stroller, but they had to push it over the river and through the woods, if you know what I mean.  All the way to grandmother’s house.  Oh wait, apparently just around in a circle.  And to top off the great hike, mom somehow lost the hardware to one of the stroller wheels.  It’s a miracle that the wheel didn’t come off and they would have had to wait for road side assistance.  Danyon was unwilling to walk.   Deagan’s picnic included playing all day.  Nothing much happened until Friday with the last Friday of school.  It was a half day and all we did was party. That night mom and dad and grandma went to a restaurant called Plachute. It was very good, and it is very famous. That was our week!



Danyon's thoughts on Raclette

It is amazing how one little phone call can change your life.  We were just getting used to our surroundings.  The thought of staying in Vienna excited us.  And I guess, with those thoughts, our chances of getting to do just that, diminished.  Just before leaving on our vacation, Dan received a phone call asking him to return back to Indiana.  When the CEO calls and tells you he needs you back in the U.S. now, you don’t have much choice or bargaining power.  So all of our thoughts came tumbling down, and we have spent the past few weeks trying to get over the shock and excitement and have spent a couple of weeks still reeling from the news, and the rest, trying to build a new picture of a future for our family.

 

We still got to go on our Family Summer Vacation.  It was a bitter/sweet vacation.  We were sad that it was our last family European trip, but excited to be at new places and especially excited that we got to spend time with Grandma.

 

We flew to London.  We decided to spend a couple days here, because Grandma had never been.  We started her out with the Tower of London.  And since our family had already been to the Tower of London, our family went on an amphibious car tour of the city.  It was cool to see everything again, but the highlight was definitely driving right into the river Thames and not sinking.  Our vehicle was one of the original amphibious vehicles that was used to storm the beaches of France in the second World War.  They put a roof on them to keep the sun off and added more comfortable seats for the tourists, but we all thought it was cool to ride in a piece of history.  

From there, we headed to Deptford.  This is where the White Swan pub/hotel  is located.  The White Swan was either owned or run by Dan’s Great Great Grandfather.  He has a picture of him in front of the pub with his wife and Dan’s great grandmother hanging out of the window of the hotel.  Dan’s great great grandfather needed to leave London because of his health.  He was told to go where the air quality was better—the U.S. or Australia.  He chose the U.S. and was upset that he didn’t get on the very luxurious liner, The Titanic.  He instead got on a sister ship that sailed at approximately the same time.  Their ship also hit an iceberg and was unable to assist the Titanic calling for help.  As it was, they crippled into the nearest port—Halifax.  Thus, Dan’s family became Canadian, instead of American.  –To which Dan exclaims, “Yahoo, eh”.  At any rate, we were excited to find this piece of family history.  Some of the outside is very much the same.  Some has been changed through time.  The current owners are in the process of renovating it, so it was in construction mess when we got there.   After we had worn out our welcome (kids were in the middle of a still functioning bar—but one regular, drunk as a skunk, at 11:00am, thought it was great and told the kids to step right up and order a drink.  He even went to the store next door and bought each of the kids a bag of cheese puffs) we decided to head back into the downtown.  Of course, we ate fish and chips (by we, I mean Grandma and Dan) and I’m sure that was great.  (I know my burger was.)   The pub was called “Hung, Drawn, and Quartered” which we felt was aptly named after we received our bill of 150 Euros for 7 people to each lunch.  Grandma had offered to buy lunch.  Lucky her.

I offered to stay at the apartment with Danyon while Dan, Grandma and the kids went to “Wicked” in the West End as part of Dan’s Father’s Day gift.  I caught up on laundry and hung out with Danyon, enjoying English T.V.  I think that Dan and the kids had a great time.  They were all pretty exhausted when they got home.

 

The next day, Dan took his mom out seeing the rest of the important sights of the city.  They saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the changing of the guard.  The kids and I slept in and enjoyed a relaxing morning.  On the way back to the apartment, Dan was walking on the sidewalk and suddenly, something hit him from behind.  He turned to see what it was, and discovered that he had just been hit by a bus—literally.  He managed to stay on his feet and didn’t make a big scene of it, because we had a big surprise for the kids planned for the afternoon, but he was really, really sore, bruised, and wanting attention for several days.  I guess I can’t blame him.  I would have reacted the same way, if I was hit by a bus. 

 

So instead of a huge settlement, we headed to Northwest greater London.  We took the kids to the Harry Potter film studios.  It was so cool to see the actual sets that they used for the films.  We entered the Great Hall (although, it doesn’t seem as big as it did in the movies).  We played with wands and saw people riding on broomsticks.  Dane and Dyllan were so excited that they kept getting further and further ahead of us.  We eventually lost them, and spent a lot of time just trying to find them again.  We did manage to see the Hogwarts Express, meet Dobby and Buckbeak.  We walked along the street of Diagon Alley.  Everything seemed smaller than what it looked in the movie—except for the creatures.  We rode on Hagrid’s motorcycle.  We enjoyed a cup of butterbeer.  The final room was the big reveal of Hogwarts.  It was really cool to see it.  The funniest quote of the day was from Dyllan:  “Don’t bother taking pictures of this one mom.  It’s not the real one.  This one is much too small for the people to fit in.”  I told Dyllan that this was, indeed, the real Hogwarts.  They just filmed it on the green screen to make it look bigger.  She was still unconvinced and would not believe me.  I think that in the end, she finally understood how the filming process was done, but she still has a hard time believing that those actors were shrunken and put into the castle.

 

The next day, we made our way, by bus to Southampton.  We boarded our boat, Explorer of the Seas.  We were so excited to get to more of our vacation.  We had a day and a half at sea.  We played mini golf, went surfing, body boarding, ice skating, and ate and ate and ate.  Dan went to an art auction.  I went to a card making class.  Dyllan and Deagan enjoyed the kids club.  Grandma enjoyed watching the kids do their activities and sneaking ice cream from deck 11.   Life on the boat was fun.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Our first port was Vigo, Spain.  We decided to go to the beach that day.  We walked to the beach.  We had no chairs, just towels.  We sat down and let the kids play in the surf and sand.  Danyon didn’t want to have anything to do with the water.  I walked him down to the water, and he cried and cried.  He wouldn’t go in.  So we just left him to play in the sand.  He was very content there.  The other kids had a great time all day.  We headed back to the ship fully sunned and sanded.  It doesn’t get much better than that.  We had another day at sea before getting to our next stop.

 

We landed in Agadir, Morocco.  The kids loved Morocco so much last year, that we decided to go again.  We went to a different city and went on a ship run excursion.  We got to see the city, acrobats, horse racers, a snake charmer, a local market the beach and other assorted scenery.  This city seemed fairly new, as it had been completely destroyed in 1960.  It was a pleasant day.

Next we went to Lanzarote, Canary Islands.  This island was very volcanic and desolate.  We rented a car and headed out to the Mountains of Fire National Park.  We rode on a bus all around the area seeing all kinds of volcanoes and lava rock.  This island was where Planet of the Apes was filmed.  We also saw the guide put some weeds in a hole in the ground and within seconds it was a flame with the heat from the ground.  I imagine there are probably several hot spots, and that is why you take a bus around the area, not just free hiking.  They also have some holes that they pour water down them and they shoot up like geysers.  It is pretty cool to see.  If you hang around long enough, you can even eat food that is cooked by the heat of the earth.  We didn’t have the time.  Instead we went down the road, and found a camel train.  We decided to ride the camels.  The camels had a wooden saddle that had a seat on either side of its hump.  Two people could ride the camel.  It was really cool to be riding a camel through the desert, but I don’t think I would have lasted very long or even across the desert.  Good thing that I wasn’t one of the Wise Men.  I wouldn’t have ever made it.  We found a grocery store, the beach and some cool stores to explore.  It was a great day!

On to Las Palmas, Grand Canaria.  We heard that the beaches here were the best.  We just headed straight there—riding in style.  Grandma paid for us to ride in a horse carriage all the way to the ocean.  We rented some beach chairs and an umbrella and we set up our spot.  The kids played all day.  Danyon, again, would not go in the water.  I guess I have little chance that Danyon will drown, unless, he never learns to swim.  When we were sufficiently fried, we headed back to the boat, but not before Dan had a chance to get his hair cut at the local salon.  Dan also had to work on some details of our relocation this day, so he was a little more stressed then the rest of us.

The next day, brought another Canary Island, Tenerife.  We hired a taxi to take us to the famous Loro Parque.  This park is very much like Sea World.  The grounds were beautiful and miraculously, we managed to make it to every one of the shows.  The kids loved the dolphin show.  They were amazed that they could jump so high.  Next was the Orca show.  They don’t have Shamu, but they do have some pretty cool whales.  By the time we got there, the only seats left for us to sit was in the Splash Zone.  Everyone was up for getting a little wet.  When the whale came by and flapped his fins in the water at us, all of us were completely drenched, camera included.  We were even holding up beach towels, but still managed to get soaked.  Danyon did not like it.  He screamed so much that we had to move down the row to the very edge so that we didn’t get wet again.  We dried out a bit while watching the sea lion show and even made it to the bird show before we had to leave to meet the taxi driver.  We loved it.  We still had time to walk around the downtown to do some souvenir shopping. 

The next day we were in Madera, Portugal.  This island has no beaches.  It sounds weird, but the rocky formations are such that there are not any beaches around the entire island.  This is the birthplace of Ronaldo, arguably the best soccer player in the world.  We walked around town, took pictures with the Ronaldo statue, shopped, and found a place that served the local food.  The tradition on Madera is to use garlic and more garlic.  We tried the tomato soup.  It had tomatos, onions, and yes, garlic.  It was very tasty.  Dan and Grandma tried the Esperada—and ugly black fish with garlic.  I tried the Espertada—beef cooked on a bay skewer with lots of garlic.  The food was great!  We had a great time.  We were pretty tired because we had so many port days all in a row.  We were ready to slow things down again.  Luckily, the next day was a day at sea. 

Our final port was La Coruna, Spain.  We went to the beach for one last day.  This beach was rocky and hard on the feet.  Dan and I left Grandma and headed into town to do a little more shopping.  By the time we got back, everyone was pretty much ready just to head back to the boat.  We are getting to be a very spoiled bunch.  That beach was just too rocky and we didn’t have any lounge chairs.  We had one final day of fun, food, and relaxation back on board the ship before reality set back in.  Before we knew it, we were headed back to the airport and then to Vienna. 

 

Our dryer broke the night before we left and we were hoping that the people house sitting would be able to get the repairman here to fix it before we got back.  We had no such luck, and we were doing load after load of laundry all while having to dry it on the rack.  It just seemed to take forever.  In fact, I just yesterday, finally got caught up on all the laundry we had. 

 

We had to say good-bye to Grandma.  It was hard to do, because it was the last time she would be in Vienna.  She got off alright, but in her haste to get everything she had left on previous trips, she managed to leave behind all of her treats that she had bought for everyone back home.  I’m sure she was very sad when she found out.  Well, at least, some of her grandkids got to enjoy them!

 

We weren’t too sad for too long because we had more visitors coming.  Dan left for Russia the same day Grandma left.  He had a good trip, but again it was sad, because it was his last trip to Russia, for a long time, we assume.  Just as his brain had switched to Russian, he was on another plane back to Vienna.  He speaks great Grussian.  On the way to the airport to get to Russia, he spoke German the entire time to his taxi driver.  On the way home, he had the same taxi driver, but couldn’t seem to put a full German sentence together.  I’m sure the driver  thought he was drunk or otherwise incapacitated. 

 

While he was away, oh how the mice did play!  My sister Lisa, and my nephew, Josh, arrived in Vienna.  We picked them up and brought them back home.  We visited and had a great time.  It was so good to see Lisa.  Because of the time difference and work schedules, we haven’t really talked for a couple of years.  We had a lot of catching up to do!  The next day, we packed up and headed to Salzburg.  We wanted to show Lisa and Josh as much of Austria as we could.  We went to the Marionette theater and saw “The Sound of Music”.  It was great!  The next day, we went on “The Sound of Music” bike tour.  We enjoyed the bike tour so much before, that we decided to do it again.  We had no rain this time, so no mud in the mouth for Deagan.  Deagan and I were on the tandem bike.  Dan had Danyon in the trailer.  They also added a canal swim to the tour.  We got to jump into the canal—which had freezing water in it.  The guide failed to mention that the cold would take our breath away.  But we all managed to jump in fully clothed, as we were not wearing swimming suits to go on the bike ride—except for Danyon who opted to stay in his trailer.  The refreshing canal was great, but it did take a long time to finally dry off.

 

From there, we headed to St. Wolfgang See.  We love this little town.  We wandered around all the little shops.  We bought some souvenirs.  We stopped and sat along the banks of the lake.  The kids all jumped in and had a swim.  It is so pretty in this little town. 

 

On we went to find our hotel in Obertraun.  We got up the next morning and headed straight for the Salt mine.  Danyon was not able to go on the tour, so I stayed back and had to be stuck wandering the streets of Hallstadt while we waited for the rest of the crew to get back from the salt mine.  It was a terrible view, but I guess, someone had to do it.  The salt mine was very salty, so they said.  They came back with salty souvenirs.  Then we walked the streets of Hallstadt and stopped at the Bone House.  We wandered back to our car and headed back to Obertraun.  We headed up the mountain by cable car to go to the Ice Cave.  This ice cave was hard to get to.  It was very hot outside, and we had to hike up to the cave opening.  Dan had Danyon in the backpack on his back, and he was really having trouble.  We were not prepared with enough water.  But, we made it.  We cooled off in the cave.  It was cool to see, but the other one we had been to a year ago was a little cooler.  Then we headed further up the mountain by cable car and had to hike again to the Five Fingers Overlook.  The view was amazing and it was pretty cool to be standing that high up with just plexi-glass under our feet.  They also had a diving board that extended out past the railing, but, don’t worry, they had a sign posted that said, don’t go out on the diving board.  We tried to tell Josh, but he insisted on going out there.  We told the paragliders to catch him if he fell.  We headed back down the mountain via cable car, not via jumping, and we were safely back to the car and headed home.

Just to make the vacation complete, Danyon puked all over himself and his car seat on the way home.  Luckily, Josh and Lisa were the ones who had to share the row of seats with him.  Monday, we headed down to the Zotter Chocolate Factory one more time before leaving.  Lisa and Josh were kind of wusses, as they couldn’t hold their chocolate.  The rest of us, however, are well seasoned and we could handle all the chocolate without any trouble at all.  After rolling out of the factory, we decided to burn some calories by walking around the farm.  All the kids insisted on going down the slide (Dan warned all of them that it was too hot and they would all get burned).  Not one of them listened to Dan, and all of them did, indeed, get burned.  Maybe Dad does know what he’s talking about sometimes.  For a refreshing finish to the day, we went to Loipersdorf and to the hot springs.  We swam and went on the slides and the wave pool.  We even went to the hot tub and then to the cold pool.  It was all a lot of fun, but was too hot to try the saunas there.  So, Lisa and Josh did not fully get the cultural experience of textile frei saunas.

 

The next day, I took Lisa and Josh on the walking tour of Vienna.  We stopped for ice cream, saw the Manner store, the Stephel, walked on the Graben, had a lemon tart from Demel, and up to Michaeler Platz.  We saw the Lippizaner horses.  We saw more churches and then saw Sisi in the People’s garden.  We walked by the Rathaus and then headed for home.  We were very tired and hot.  That night we drove up through the Vienna Woods to Kahlenberg and saw the view of the city by night.

 

Wednesday was Lisa’s last day before heading home, so we took her to several stores to do some souvenir shopping.  It has been a long time since I have shopped all day and literally shopped till I dropped.  It was fun and we had a great time.

 

Thursday, we sent Lisa on her way home.  She had a good 24+ hour journey home.  We were glad we were sending her and not going ourselves.  On the way home from the airport, we had an exciting experience.  We were stopped at a traffic light in Vienna.  All of a sudden, a car drove to the curb on our right to park his car.  Three teenage boys jumped out.  Meanwhile, another car pulled up in front of the first car, blocking him in at the curb.  Then two guys got out with guns pulled and aimed at the people in the car and the boys.  The driver of the second car got out and aimed his gun at the driver of the first car and was yelling something at him.  The passenger in the second car had his gun out and was running after the teenage boys.  He caught one and brought him back to the car and laid him out on the hood and had his gun pointed at him.  All of it happened so fast, and once I saw the first gun, my eyes stayed glued on the first gun, just to make sure that it wasn’t pointed in my direction.  It never was, but if it had been, I would have been dead before I knew it.  We didn’t know if these people were gang members or unmarked, plain clothes police officers.  After reflecting on it, and combining what I saw, with what Dan and Josh saw, we highly suspect that these were police officers—by the way that the second guy was pushed onto the hood of the car.  Also, Dan noticed that the guns were out, pointed at people, but the trigger finger was never on the trigger.  Anyway, it was enough to get the adrenaline going and both Dan and I were shaking for several blocks.  Nothing like this has ever happened to us in Vienna.  It felt weird and scary.  Hopefully next time, I will duck first when I see a gun—especially if I’m not driving!

 

We put all that adrenaline to good use.  We got home and started to do a thorough clean of the house.  It had been a long time since the cleaning had been done.  It took us most of the day, but the kids were still able to enjoy the pool and to have some free time. 

 

We have been working on things for the move every day.  We have taken the cats into the vet, so they are ready to travel.  We have called the school to get the proper discharge papers for the school here.  I have also called the new school but got them on their off hours.  I will try again next week.  Every day, we are working on all the little projects and things that have to be organized.  We also cleaned out the basement and storage room.  It is organized and ready to go.  It is much easier doing this knowing what to expect.  It also is a huge help to have Dan’s help.  I’m glad that he didn’t leave me to do all of this on my own this time.  It’s making it much more enjoyable—even if it can’t be much less stressful.