Slowed down, took the phone off the hook

and disappeared for while.

Billy Joel was right, I could afford to lose a day or two. Vienna was waiting for me.

(Stephansdom, the most famous Gothic cathedral in Vienna)

As seems to be the trend with my trips, it did not start well. In the airport, I foolishly said to my fellow travelers (Emily and Mia) that it's taken me a long time to stop associating airports with stress--security lines are faster now, fewer flights are delayed, and there is no longer the need for mad dashes through the airport. And there we were, happily chatting and waiting by our gate...and then 5 minutes before boarding time I stood up to just double-check that our gate hadn't changed because it seemed kind of empty--and sure enough they had changed it, no announcement, to the other terminal, at the complete opposite end of the airport and outside of our security envelope. Commence mad dash through the airport.

Not that we really needed to run, since our flight ended up being delayed about an hour. And if we hadn't run, perhaps we wouldn't have been standing exactly in the right place for the next bizarre experience: again, we were happily chatting--about the JFK airport, of all things--when a woman sitting next to where we were standing says angrily, "Shut up you shitface! I understand what you're saying!" This was weird and unsettling, but somewhat humorous because 1) she clearly did not understand what we were saying and 2) shitface is a silly insult, not even proper English swearing. We exchanged glances, shrugged it off, and continued talking, and after a few minutes moved to stand elsewhere. It was only then that Mia and I were informed that, after the "shitface" comment, the woman had been sharply hitting Emily (who was closest to her) with her umbrella. Emily said that at first she hadn't really noticed it because the woman was just hitting the backpack--but then the woman went for her legs.

...Who does that?

Luckily, after this entirely bizarre experience, everything went smoothly! 

We found our hostel (assessment: functional. And while in a somewhat seedy location, conveniently located right next to a metro station) and then hit the city. And immediately upon walking out of the downtown metro stop, we were met with the sight of a beautiful Christmas market.

They are truly magical places, these Christmas markets--where grown men and women wear Santa hats unblinkingly, where people mill about cupping mugs of steaming mulled wine or hot chocolate, and where sparkling handcrafted ornaments dangle from wooden booths, twinkling in the light from thousands of Christmas lights strung up, at the foot of ornate Viennese architectural wonders.

I felt like I'd finally found a place that fully embodied my Christmas spirit--represented in physical form.

I don't think I can give a true, objective assessment of Vienna as a city (to be honest a lot of the architecture came off as gaudy and imitational to me, and I didn't step foot in any of the museums--next time!)--but I will say that as a Christmas land, I've found no place finer.

The first night, we walked around until we found the schnitzel restaurant recommended to us; in stark contrast to Greece, when we wandered in around 10pm, we were told that they could only offer us schnitzel and fries because the kitchen was about to close. Luckily that was all we wanted, and we eagerly (foolishly) ordered three plates of schnitzel, and two orders of fries (the waitress recommended the portioning of fries, which is funny in retrospect, because that would seem to indicate that she gauged our appetites and came to the conclusion that three orders of fries would be too much--but not three orders of schnitzel:

(this is one order)

We all made it through one of our face-sized cutlets, and I tackled the second one, but after reaching the halfway point I disappointingly had to walk away. The man at the table next to ours was apparently enjoying watching me packing it away (it was remarkable not just for its size but also for its amazing crispy lightness and melt-in-your-mouth tenderness).

Saturday we spent all day wandering the streets of Vienna 

And wandering through the Christmas markets tucked away around every other corner and sprawling out in every major "platz" (square)...

And in front of a palace

And in front of the Natural History museum

And in front of City Hall

Which looked even more amazing at night

The food continued to be excellent (but more reasonable portions): 

Spaetzle three ways: tomato pesto, leek and ham, and cheese with crispy onion (not pictured)

A cheese and pepperoncini pretzel, a good ole brautwurst, and a potato creation (called a "vulcan," perhaps because of it's resemblance to a volcano), which we ordered not even sure of what it was--it turned out to be a heavenly stack of potato, ladled with a cream sauce and sprinkled with crispy bacon and onion:

(okay, so maybe you don't get the full sense of gloriousness from the picture...)

We also tried "sachar torte" at the hotel claiming its origination (verdict: tasty. Not mind-blowing. Very ritzy place, and all three of us are still bitter about the 1-euro coat-check that we felt duped into). 

Saturday night we attended a concert in Stephansdom. The music was beautiful, the location was unbeatable:

...but the combination of my exhaustion from a long day of walking and my unconscious automatic response to fall asleep at all events like this one after 6pm made it an active struggle to fully enjoy the music. Not to mention it was absolutely frigid. Miserably cold, without being able to move. Perhaps the nicest part of the whole event was the Canadian man who we met standing in line before the doors opened for the show--when we were surreptitiously trying to scootch under his umbrella, and he goodnaturedly held it out for us. It turned out he was a newly-retired teacher, and was just finishing a Eurotrip of sorts. We had a nice conversation, and when we were sitting down waiting for the concert to start, he graciously bought us each a program (after overhearing our initial excitement at getting a program fade to "oh two euros each, never mind that!")

And Sunday it was back to the Christmas markets!

Drowning homesickness in Milano rain and Venetian canals

This year I spent my first Thanksgiving away from my parents.


It was hard to be away, but I felt lucky enough to have such a supportive pseudo-family here, between my fellow fellows:

 Evan and I cooked our very own turkey for our TeachingFellowThanksgiving 

(wild success; just barely fit in our little oven; inventive use of carrots as a makeshift rack)

 One of the many kitties around our house, checking out the potatoes cooling off 

outside when there was no room in the fridge

And all the lovely teachers I work with. The English Departments of HAEF kindly catered a Thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday for us:

Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry, corn, salad, stuffing 

(apparently Greek stuffing involves ground meat, carrots, peas, and corn...no bread involved)

...and of course no Thanksgiving would be complete without some pita!

 And at school we celebrated more extensively than any school in the US. I made four bulletin boards:

 

And accompanied the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade songs, which they sang in the theater after their respective grades' Thanksgiving plays. It was a truly beautiful moment for me, sitting on stage with a guitar and strumming along as a bunch of Greek 4th graders sang Peter, Paul, and Mary's "If I Had a Hammer" (the 6th graders sang "This Land is Your Land")

And thoroughly enjoyed all of the little first and second graders with their paper pilgrim hats/bonnets, singing poorly-constructed "Thanksgiving songs."


-----

And then I drowned any remaining homesickness in the Milano rain and the canals of Venice.

We (Missy and I) arrived in Milan Friday afternoon (originally scheduled for Thursday night, but the Greek air traffic controllers had other plans)...and spent a lovely day walking around the city, which struck me with its modernity and its chic-ness. The rain also gave it an almost eery, post-apocolyptic deserted-city feeling (and also made it difficult to take many pictures...apologies...I did snap a shot of the Duomo of Milan, at the very least).

An amazing tradition in Milan is the "aperitivo"--the happiest happy hour I could imagine, complete with any drink (I chose prosecco) and an all-you-can-eat buffet of yummy Italian food, from 6pm to 8pm for a grand total of...7 euro!!

The mound of fresh mozzarella the size of a softball would have been worth it alone, even without the salami, the gnocchi, the frittata, the chicken...

After proving ourselves true Americans by filling our plates multiple times, we wandered back to the train station, and headed off to Verona, en route to Venice.

We arrived in Verona at the magical hour of 12:30AM--when, it turns out, everything is very closed. Except for one blessed coffeeshop, where we took refuge for a good hour, enjoying some electricity to charge our phones, coffee to charge our brains...and a TV showing "Texas Tarzan," featured on the Discovery Italian channel--a show I would highly recommend doing a quick Google Image search of.

And then when, just before 2AM, we were kicked out, we roamed the deserted streets of Verona.

It's hard to truly convey how bizarre this experience was: the sleep deprivation, the feeling of being awake while everyone else was asleep, the utter emptiness of the city

--the feeling that it was all ours.

 

Even stumbled across a little Christmas village (a little creepy/bizarre in the nighttime)

  

We returned to the train station around 3:30, where Missy slept on me for an hour or two, until our train was finally ready to leave.

And then we were on our way to Venezia!

 We got in around 8, just as the sun was lighting everything with a beautiful golden quality, and, rather than immediately collapsing onto a bed and recovering from a very long night, we marched forth, enjoying the quiet serenity of the twisting canals and streets of Venice before everyone had really woken up. Most of the morning we spent wandering, barely talking to each other, just soaking in the beauty of the city.

 

 

 We did eventually wind up joining the throng of tourists (briefly) at the Palazzo Ducale, mostly to indulge my art historical interest. The Doge's Palace was just as much of an aesthetic failure as I had hoped and learned!

And the Basilico San Marco was disappointingly half enveloped in scaffolding.

...in just over 24 hours, we walked just under 24 miles.

Then enjoyed the best tiramisu I have ever eaten.

Delicious handmade pasta with seafood

And prosciutto and mushroom wood-fired pizza

And after a whirlwind of 72 hours, our Italian weekend came to a close!

And I was very thankful to return to a place that has really started to feel like home

(Christmas decorations inside of the fort that Missy and I constructed

in my living room--improved upon architecturally by Evan)

Happy December!