Austria... mustache capital of the world??

Location: Vienna, Austria (!!)
Time: 23:32

My friends!

It is going to have to be a short update as it is quickly approaching midnight and I am exhausted! It's been a busy week since my last update, filled with family, friends, lost socks in freezing mountain streams, eis kaffees (ice coffee but with ice cream which is basically the most delicous concoction you can possibly imagine), Wiener Schnitzel, laugher, reading, and odd dreams.

We left Graz on the 21st and stopped by the home of our distant cousins to visit Tante Claudi, our 100 year old cousin. It turns out she and I have the same birthday which is wicked cool... shes only 79 years older than me! We ate a wonderful lunch with her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren and then hit the road again. I beleive that I, as per usual, slept in the car until we reached the small town of St. Kathrein am Hauenstein. This was where we planned to meet up with our group of friends to spend the weekend, however we ran into a bit of trouble. It turned out we didn't know exactly where to go because we had been instructed to call when we got there for further direction. Neither of my parents could remember the name of the farmer with whom we were staying. We had tried what we thought was my godmothers cell phone number (turned out it was her landline which did no one any good). After driving around aimlessly for a bit we decided to park in the parkinglot of the towns cemetary as that sat right on the only road from Vienna into the town. We figured they would have to drive down this road and we could flag someone from the group down. Now let me tell you something about my mum folks, she is mighty resourceful. She went for a walk in the cemetary and looked at all of the names on the stones until she saw one that rang a bell. When a local woman walked by she asked her where the family Weisenbacher lived and we were told that they were just a ways up the hill. It turns out we hadn't gone up far enough and that we would have been waiting endlessly for someone to drive by!

the group!

The weekend was passed in wonderful company, eating amazing food (WAY too much!) and chatching up. I always love spending time with this group because many of them have known me since i was a wee thing and there is so much love and joy in each others company that it is hard not to be happy!

the newest addition to my mums "pitchers shaped like animals" collection!

My biggest adventure while in St. Kathrein was losing one of my socks into an ice cold mountain stream... the story goes like this: I was out for a run/hike and stopped along the creek to change the music i was listening to. I keep my ipod in a sock when i run to keep it from getting sweaty and nasty and had put the sock next to me on the rail of the bridge while i did this. just as i was thinking 'i hope my sock doesn't blow away' who should happen by but a gust of wind. I am sure you can imagine what happend next... i cursed because it was one of my favorite dark blue socks, and started to walk along with the sock as it floated along. It finally got stuck and i shouted 'stay there socky!' down to it. I then assessed my options: jump the rail and scale down a wall or run back over the bridge and climb down a less steep wall made of boulders. I chose the second option, got to the bottom, jumped through burnnig nettles (the long pants turned out to be the right choice) and then kicked off my shoes and waded up stream... well what do you know, the sock was gone! I actually stood there in disbeliefe until i realized that my feet had gone numb and that i needed to get out of the water. I followed the creek as far as i could but with no luck. rest in peace in what ever body of water you ended up in my little socky friend!

The family and I returend to Vienna on Monday and have spent the last two days running around like crazy visiting friends and family. It is lovely and there is so much good food but I am also looking forward to my time on the farm!

Well, I said it was going to be a short update but I didn't quite succeed in that goal! :)
Until next time,
A

p.s. i apologize for any and all spelling mistakes. i blame them on not only my dyslexia and the lateness of the hour, but also the fact that this computer is only spell checking German...

p.p.s. pictures to follow!