All About The Food

It ain't all castles, cathedrals, and palaces. People got to eat too. A few images to wet your whistle...

sore body

Well, tonight at 6pm marks my 10th and last consecutive class in five days. I'm tired! Everyday between classes we've been running around trying to see a new museum or area of town. Today we took a break from being a tourist however. Yesterday's visit to the Leopold museum was enough to sustain us for a day, though. It was amazing. Of course, Evie enjoyed the lobby most of all...lots of soccer ball throwing with one parent while the other looked at works by Klimt (like the one here), Schiele, Kokoschka, or Muehl, to name a few. Tomorrow, I think we'll attempt to hit the Schonbrunn castle. I think I remember reading there is also a zoo there, so Evie will be happy.

Yes, a week of heavy dancing after very little dancing has yielded some noticeable changes in my body. Lifting Evie hurts. My feet are banged up. I have bruises on my shoulders from rolling. My legs feel like anvils. But I'm not complaining! Being a student here is the best. Being a student PERIOD is the best. I found myself explaining to one of my new Austrian friends, Sabina, that I have felt like a big empty container and this week has slowly been filling me up with new information, ready to spill it back out to my students in some sort of transformed way. This workshop was well timed for me- I needed this more than I think I ever have. Dancing and living in Vienna for three weeks is putting gas back in the tank.

Last night I saw a beautiful performance of Jérôme Bel's work, performed by Cédric Andrieux. Stunning work. I wrote about it more at my CTS in Vienna blog...

I continue to marvel at the scene in these theatre spaces. It is THE place to be! The houses are always packed, the energy even in the coat room is tangible. I feel myself smiling like a little kid.

Evie has been at the Impulstanz headquarters with me the last two mornings; she has enjoyed childcare services by a lovely woman named Slyvia while Mommy dances and Daddy rides a bike around town. Afterwards, she and I have lunch at the Impulstanz cafe. Everyone stops in their tracks to admire her. She charms them all with a smile. Suddenly, people notice me it seems. Thanks Evie!

Tomorrow, the castle. Sunday, we hit Prague. Life is good.

A biking point of view

Today, we discovered City Bike - Vienna's public system of bike-for-almost-free access throughout the city. One merely walks up to one of the many kiosks throughout the city, slides in a credit card, and minutes later, is riding one of the hundreds of bikes available to locals and tourists. When one tires of riding, they can drop the bike off at any kiosk. If i did this correctly, it cost me about 1 Euro for my ride.

Here are a few snaps from my ride around the city:


This is the parliament building (as in government, not P-Funk)


An unknown plaza


Never figured out what this building was, but it looked like an apartment. If so, cool place to live, eh?!


View from the Leopold Museum into the MuseumQuarter square


Didn't catch the name of this cathedral, next to Sigmund Freud park


Hmm...


..three years out of office and the love for W is still strong

Evie likes pink bikes

Roseola

Roseola. Or should I say "there's something you never thought you'd google"? (mom- I know you are googling this right now)... Well, thanks to Alyssa, our wise, fellow-parent friend in Winston-Salem, we now have a definitive diagnosis of Evie's virus. Alyssa's daughter Sage battled through this too. Thankfully, Evie is in the clear. Basically, after 5 days of high fevers, a rash arrives all over the body. Fabulous. BUT! Today she ate like a bear waking up from hibernation. It was awesome. After my morning dance class (which was also awesome), we also took her to the natural history museum elephant again (of course) and actually went inside the museum this time too. Evie loved the iguana, and the fish and birds. The large dinosaur bones, not so much. We were really wooed inside to see the 25,000 year old Venus of Willendorf statue, a primitive goddess figure and the oldest known art piece in the world. It's as big as a jar of baby food. She had no feet, the poor goddess! Then we walked through the Nascht markt again, and a vendor who was quite taken with Evie gave her a free apricot...even with her rash, no less. Making our way back towards our apartment, I headed straight for dance class #2 tonight at 6pm, arriving geared up and ready to go until I realized just how young everyone was around me. Kept thinking to myself: "do any of you people have a one year old? Do you sing songs and pretend you're an elephant too?" Ah, to be in your twenties and dance like you're in your twenties. I'm not going to be sore tomorrow, I swear. Jeffrey cooked a delicious dinner tonight and now we are chilling. More dancing awaits all week. Tomorrow night, we have Coly and Nana babysitting and we're off to the symphony! When in Vienna....

Catching up

Sunday, 4:15pm. Christina here and we're back from the abyss aka "Evie's virus". It's been a tough few days! Our dearest little one has been a champ, with all things considered- she totally tolerated a high fever and sore throat that has been hanging around more or less for five days now. Finally, two doctor visits later and some Viennese nose drops in her system to help with her sore throat and ears, we're happy to report that her fever has broken for over 24 hours and she's slowly re-emerging as the fun girl she truly is. So today, to start off our Sunday morning, we took her to a butterfly museum! Athena and Nicole opted instead to see the Lippinzer stallions. Probably the smarter move. The schmetterlinghaus yielded only 7 or 8 butterflies and was very small inside. But Evie was still quite excited by it all, so we were too. After our short visit to see the schmetterlings, I left for my workshop at IMPULSTANZ (more on this later) while dad took Evie back to the elephant in front of the Natural History Museum. Her. favorite. thing. ever. We're reunited now...and I start a new series of classes at Impulstanz tomorrow.

The last two nights we have enjoyed dinners with the busy jet setters Nicole and Athena, who have been packing their Vienna site seeing activities to the brim. Evie has loved tilting her sippy cup back, taking in a good, long gulp of her milk or water while we do the same with our beverages (beer, in most cases). Last night we hit a rib joint, the night before was the famous wiener schnitzel at Figlmuller restaurant. Meat is always on the menu, folks. Lots of it. And lots of beer. I wonder how one is ever a vegetarian in this town. Or a non-beer drinker. Fortunately, we're all fond of both.

So more on Impulstanz: this weekend, I've enjoyed a two day writing/improvisation/composition workshop with Sabina Holzer, a Vienna-based artist. I was in a workshop with 9 other folks from all over the world: Paris, Romania, Tokyo, Holland, Egypt, England...and me, representing the United States of America. Wonderful to dance and talk shop with such interesting people. I also felt so fortunate to see a performance at the museum quarter theatre by a company from South Africa. I'm writing a review of that performance this week for "Theatre Journal". So yes, there is some work to do. So for now, signing off, but I'll leave a couple more pictures!

Jeff Versus The Giant Schnitzel

Date: 23. July
Location: Figlmuller, Vienna
Winner: Jeff by Knockout

Art in Vienna

Today, we hit the Belvedere museum. Saw Klimt's "The Kiss" and some other beautiful works. We tag teamed this museum trip, Mom staying with Evie outside in the Belvedere gardens first. We mainly fed the pigeons some cheerios (this activity yielded 30 s0lid minutes of quiet) while dad looked at art. Then we switched roles. Then we ate goulash at a nearby brewery. Good stuff. Evie's fever is still up there so we're heading to a pediatrician's office as soon as she wakes up from her siesta. Mom- don't worry. I'm sure she just needs some antibiotics to clear up whatever is still nagging her. We'll call with an update.

Signing off for now. Pictures and more updates later. Must blog about last night's Impulstanz dance performance and the Rathaus evening movie scene with Athena and Coly! (Thanks for babysitting, Jeffrey!)

Fitz's Mit Gosser

The Fitz girls arrived. Dinner was served. Stories were shared. Diapers were changed. And the Gosser flowed freely. All was good in the world.














Coly, always the planner, strategizes our next bier garten stop amidst a forest of Zipfer half liters.

Prater Hype?

Knotts Berry Farm in Austria. That's the Prater.
You seen one amusement park, you seen 'em all. Granted, the amusement park is surrounded by 10,000 acres of grass and trees and openness, but the Riesengrad (big ferris wheel) is what brings the hoards. Evie seemed pretty neutral regarding her first carousel ride, and when it came down to it, thought the grass was, well, grass.

a big ferris wheel

This morning we were a little slower to leave the apartment but at long last, covered in sunscreen, we made it out the door and headed towards the Prater area of town. We got really confused with the public transportation system along the way but we made it! The Prater is the largest public park in Vienna with a pretty intense amusement park connected to it. Our goal was to ride the much talked about ferris wheel. It's a super hot day but Evie was pretty cute 0n the merry go round. The ferris wheel ride was essentially like a gondola ride but instead of a view of snowy mountains, you get a pretty cool view of the city. Evie was more interested in the two little boys who shared our gondola car, however. Flirt. But really, since I am not super pumped about amusement parks and it was kind of a long ride to get out that way, I think we're done with the Prater. Prater-check. Onto part two of this day- the arrival of Athena and Nicole! Yipeee!

Last night's AIDS march is really the highlight of this post though -see attached video (thanks Jeffrey!) and this link to the international AIDS conference going on this week in Vienna
http://www.aids2010.org/

One final note: it was delightful to see this glorious city at night! What a groovy vibe, especially in the museum quartier, where the march took place. Next time we head that way, we'll take Evie to the butterfly conservancy there. I really want to go in the national library too. I know Evie will want to go to the Natural History museum, if only to visit the big elephant out in front again!!

day two...

...and we're practically locals. Not quite but close. This morning we rode tram line 71 into the beginnings of the old city area. Something to note: avoid buying your fare ON the train, it's more expensive than if you buy it at the stop from one of those machines. This is why we're not really locals at all. At any rate, Evie was her normal self - charming everyone on the train and enjoying herself immensely as she arched her head back and admired all of the tall, ornate and gorgeous buildings on Renweg. We got off after 2 or 3 stops and walked several blocks to the much-hyped Naschmarkt.
Yes, it's worth all the hype. This was one of the loveliest outdoor markets I have ever experienced. So many fresh fruits, veggies, breads, grains, lentils, herbs, dried fruits, cheeses, and specialty goods like fresh pastas and olives and peppers stuffed with garlic or cheese...mmmm. We also treated ourselves to fresh squeezed fruit juices; for two euro I got about 8 oz. of mango kiwi juice and couldn't stop smiling as I gulped it down. The best part was, Evie napped practically the entire time. She fell asleep soon after we arrived at the market and then woke up as we were getting back on the tram.
Many delicious treats await us all as cousins Athena and Nicole arrive in Vienna tomorrow after whirling through Budapest. We can't wait for the aunties to visit!
Oh - forgot to mention that yesterday we checked out the Impulstanz headquarters at the Arsenal building. It's heavenly there! You can rent pink or blue bikes with Impulstanz logos for only 5 eu a day! I picked up their performance calendar, got my registration materials taken care of, and met the delightful childcare person there named Slyvia. She and Evie were smitten with one another. We decided Evie will enjoy a couple hours there for one day while I'm dancing so Dad can enjoy a bike ride. From the apartment, getting to Impulstanz is a mere 10 minute walk through the greatest kids park! Evie loved swinging and feeding the du (ducks). Dad was happy there was a beer garden strategically placed right by the swings.
More later. Evie just wolfed down an Austrian pretzel and loved it.

the case of the missing green children's book

Christina here. Blogging for the first time. So, as Jeffrey mentioned, we had some significant time to kill in the Munchen airport. In our sleep deprived haze, one of our activities was to buy Evie her first children's book in German. It was a really cute foam, green flip book with a froggie on the front and a story that I could probably decipher even without understanding the German. Upon arriving in our apartment, I showed the book to our landlady, thinking she'd appreciate the German thing. But later that night, as we were cleaning up toy debris and heading to bed, the green book was nowhere to be found. Did our landlady take it, thinking it was a gift? Odd. Not sure if we ask her or not? Whatever...on to the good stuff.

Today, after sleeping until 10:30 am, we all woke up with smiles and less puffy eyes. After some delicious Viennese bread and butter and fruit for breakfast, Jeffrey and I packed some snacks for our girl and headed out for our first adventure. We were giddy to walk away from our abode on Khungasse and see what our new city had in store for us. Evie was content in her stroller, taking in the cool city vibe and watching cars, people, and beautiful Viennese architecture pass by her. We traveled down towards Fassangasse, a major street two blocks from our house with supermarkets, coffee shops and resturants a plenty. We spotted a suitable coffee spot, got our fix, and then proceeded towards Rennweg - the street that connects you to the lower region of the Belvedere gardens and museums. What a stunning jewel! Fountains, statues, flowers, and plenty of gravel paths for Evie to run amok. Many pictures ensued. We started to get hungry so we exited via the Prinz-Eugen Strasse area and walked passed many international consulate buildings until we stumbled upon a Greek restaurant. None of the waiters spoke Greek or English and they didn't have avgolemono soup. How does a Greek restaurant miss that? This obviously upset Evie too, who refused to try Daddy's burger stuffed with feta or my keftedes with tzatiki. The meal was quick, and Evie napped immediately upon resting in her stroller. We then went to "Billa" and got groceries. EVERYONE in Vienna brings bags to the grocery store, I may add. Kudos to us for remembering to bring some from NC. Signing off for now as we thinking of what to do in part two in the afternoon...I promise I won't be this detailed every time. One last thing: Evie said "DONE" today after eating her second lunch. After "dada" I guess "done" is her first word. Not so exciting, is it?

Getting Here... Half the Battle

We arrived Sunday afternoon. All flights were on time surprisingly. We flew on Lufthansa, and for all practical purposes, especially traveling with a toddler, it's a pretty solid airline. Our flight attendants were tall, pretty german ladies and were overly accomodating with Evie.

The flight from Charlotte to Munich was a bit brutal. Upon checkin, the customer agent let us know that we, [wink], had an entire row to ourselves! Suddenly, visions of a miserable flight were being replaced with thoughts of spacious cabin bliss. But alas, 4 seats and all, Evie had a tough flight. She couldn't get comfortable enough in the provided bassinet (a nice touch by the way) and didn't ever get into a deep sleep. What's worse, she kicked things off 10 minutes into the flight by throwing up all over mom. A few hours later, she soaked through her diaper leaving mom with a pair of pants that looked like she wet herself. Needless to say, Christina had a rough flight, wet pants and smelling of baby vomit.

Munich airport was a pretty impressive place. Thank goodness because we were stuck there for 8 hours on our layover. 8 hours is just enough time to go crazy running out of things to do in an airport but not quite enough to justify a rushed trip into the city. So, resigned to killing 8 hours in an airport terminal, we did our best not to spend money in the various shops and duty free stores, even though our lunch comprised of a small salami sandwich and tuna salad (and beer) that set us back 30 euro (35 bucks!). Evie did catch a few zzz's in her stroller so it wasn't all that bad. The flight from Munich to Vienna was a puddle jump. We arrived in Vienna, blurry-eyed, crabby, and schlepping our 6 heavy bags and carriers and strollers.

Our "landlady" met us when our cab pulled up and warmly welcomed us to our 3rd floor apartment. It's a sunny, spacious one bedroom with all the modern necessities covered for our stay. Tomorrow we'll explore. For now, we are just happy to be here, unpack and get a little rest.

'Twas the Night Before Vienna...

24 hours till Vienna. Bags are packed. Diapers loaded. Stroller and backpack ready. Interesting note: the heaviest bag of the bunch is not the 35" rolling duffel filled with clothes, but rather, the small carry-on backpack designated as our electronics bag. This thing contains our laptop, iPad, Digital SLR (that's a camera), point-and-shoot, Flip, external hard drive, a dozen power chords, extra batteries, a smattering of chargers and what not -- and it weighs a ton!

So yes, 24 hours from now, we'll be in our apartment in Vienna... We can't wait.

Two Weeks Out - Things We Want to See

With a little less than two weeks until our trip, we have have started a list of "things to see in Vienna". I always think it's a great idea to memorialize some of the thoughts and plans that one has prior to a big trip. Then as the trip becomes reality, it's funny to see how the plans actually turn out. With little connection to Vienna, I know very little about the city and surrounding area. Much of this list is based on scattered reading and research as well as recommendations from friends who've been.

The list as of today:

Belvedere Museum. Duh. The apartment is 2 blocks from this famous landmark. I expect to be fully versed in Belvedere history and navigation by the end of our stay.

The Prater. Another duh. This is the big, forested park on the northern flank of the city. Among all that open space, it boasts the big, famous ferris wheel you see in all those Vienna pictures.

Salzburg - Mozart's birthplace. Not sure if we'll make it to this western city, but it's on the list. Also a great jumping off point for visiting those green hills seen in the Sound of Music.

Dessert at the Sacher Hotel. The real reason to visit is culinary in design. The official home of the Sacher Torte, the chocolate cake that originated in this city.

Vienna Boys Choir. With little research into this subject, it makes the list because it sounds cool. Who knows if they are performing when we are there, or how much it costs, or if we can bring a toddler. It makes the list, just because.

Prague. No, i'm not implying Prague is in Vienna, but it's 5 hours or so by train and how cool will that be. We hope to spend a few days there.

Bratislava. We hope to take a boatride down the Danube to this Slovakian city!

Coffee Houses. As many as possible. The famed Viennese coffee house experience sounds excellent and I hope to hit as many cafes as time allows!

Budapest. Perhaps a bit optimistic to hit Hungary in our limited travel time, but it's on the list. Important to note - one can take a boat ride all the way from Vienna to Budapest!