We have survived our first week in Vienna. Here are our initial observations:
1) Austria is not America 2) Euros love wacky haircuts 3) Consuming alcohol in the workplace is expected
This being the second time we've left the country together, we often find ourselves comparing this adventure to the one we had in Jordan. When we do that, we can't believe how much crap we put up with when we were in Jordan.
We got in last Friday night, and Saturday we got some groceries to hold us over for the weekend. It's always interesting to me to see what kind of American food stuffs are lacking in the countries I go to. In Brazil there was no peanut butter. Jordan had mostly everything we wanted, but there were no tortillas. In Austria, there is no mustard. It was pure confusion when I found the red bottles for ketchup, and then quickly grabbed a yellow one next to it... which turned out to be mayonnaise. What kind of deceptive country is this?
Austria quickly redeemed itself with this:
That's right. When I'm out of the country, I only drink American cola.
Today we did find a store that carries things like mustard, pepperidge farms cookies, and the following Scottish Oats:
We went to bed Saturday night about, oh midnight-ish. And were surprised when we woke up the next day and the clock read 17:20. The clock was not wrong. We slept from midnight until 5:00pm the next day. THAT IS 17 HOURS OF SLEEP!
Anyhoo, today we spent some time downtown by all the museums and stuff. This city is so awesome. There is so much cool stuff to see. And there is so much to smell! Specifically, I take a train to work every morning about 7:30am, and it is IN-CREDIBLE how much peoples' breath reeks of alchohol at that time. They have truly mastered the art of substance abuse.
Slowly but surely our bodies have been getting used to the time difference. It seems like it has been a lot harder for me this time than the last. Lindsey doesn't have "regular" work hours so she can just kind of do whatever she wants to as far as sleeping goes. I myself don't have that flexible of a schedule. I'll sleep about 4 hours and then go into work pretending that I don't feel like someone has been punching me in the face all night. But I think I'm over that now - hopefully.
So we're settled in and ready for the next six months. Probably the best decision we made as far as being equipped for the long haul was bringing our imac along.
I'm not one of those "I love my apple so much, I wanna give it ikisses" kind of people. But it does have a nice big screen, with lots of our movies stored on it, and it was surprisingly easy to travel with.
Something else that will make life easier is the fact that we found a Mexican restaurant that is actually pretty good (better than the one in Tel Aviv anyway). And the owners speak perfect English. Swish!
So here is the first blog of our Austrian adventures. Feel free to leave comments even if you are technically "only Lindsey's friend." She contributed to this one, and reads the comments. Don't be stingy. You can see more photo's from today's adventures here
Since Lindsey and I got married almost 4 years ago, we've spent a total of 19 whole weeks apart. I promise readers that extended "dude time" is not as totally sweet as some may think. So here I am again, about 800 miles away from her in a quaint little guest house on pebble beach, spending my days in class while the Monterey Institute inflicts its 3-week professional prep course upon me. It's for my Vienna job. It's teaching me about gender in the workplace...
For any who haven't heard yet, the misses and myself will be spending 6 months in Austria while I work at the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA is the world wide nuclear "watch dog." I can only assume this means my job will be at least as adventurous as Dog the Bounty Hunter's. In a round about way I'll be contributing in the effort to make sure that guys like Ahmadinejad and Al Assad don't get nuclear weapons. I hope Lindsey is cool with me referring to her as "Young Blood" (Dog the Bounty Hunter Reference).
If anyone is looking for a reason to visit the former Austro-Hungarian empire, feel free to drop us a line in Vienna. I start work 3 weeks from tomorrow (on February 2nd) and we'll be there until the first week of August. Packing appropriate clothing for 3 different seasons should be interesting.
Also, I found it amusing that in order to renew Lindsey's visa, we'll have to go to Croatia and re-enter Austria after three months. Weird huh? In the meantime, I'm trying to independently verify that Croatia is actually a place.
Here's a picture of the Vienna International Center where my office will be. Doesn't it look international?
On Tuesday, we are packing things up here in CA to move back to AZ. It may only be for a time, but it should be fun. :) I think I may actually be a little bit sad to leave this time. Not only because I'm so sick of moving, but because it's been a really nice, quiet time in our lives. It also helps that Monterey is a beautiful place to live. Exhibit A:
Exhibit B: This picture is from our street at the top of the hill.
The rent for our one-bedroom here is pretty much equal to a mortgage payment of a three-bedroom home in AZ but when you're outside, it's a little more obvious why people would pay so much to live here. Exhibit C: This is the "Friendly Plaza" that I stroll through to go to the library. I love it! And it's even friendlier right now because there is a giant, decorated Christmas tree right in front.
So you can hopefully see why I've enjoyed being here. Plus, I work from home and have a really easy life... so that's also adds to the awesomeness. But while it will be sad to leave, it will be nice to be back in AZ with my family and friends for a while before we head off to our next adventure. I also find comfort in knowing that we'll be back here in Monterey next fall. As it turns out, fall in Monterey is the best. Hopefully one day next year some of our family and friends will come visit us here (*wink, wink) so you too can experience the awesomeness that is Monterey.
In other news, for those of you don't know, our next adventure is Vienna, Austria. We haven't finalized everything with Brett's internship, but as of right now there is a 99.9% chance that come February Brett will be wearing lederhosen and we'll probably be in Austria too. This guy was none too pleased with our decision to leave... He didn't take the news well. Look at him turning his nose up at us.
But I suppose if you are going to trade this City Hall:
For this City Hall:
I think that's an OK trade. So Merry Christmas and we'll see you soon!
Gather around the fire, cozy up with someone close and cue the spooky music. It's time for a scary Halloween tale...
On Halloween, we received some "earth shattering" news. It all began with a trip to Target. We needed to return something, and truth be told, we didn't have a lot going on that night. When we got there, we got in line behind a cute little Hispanic family who didn't speak English and this other frazzled looking lady. While one of the Target employees was working with the Hispanic family, the frazzled looking woman turned to us to make conversation. She started with, "I'm late for my son's polo game. It's his last one!" I believe Brett and I both responded with an uncomfortable "oh really?" because neither of us really knew what to say and didn't want to encourage her to spill about how frustrated and late she was. However, our non-interest didn't deter her from talking to us some more. We bantered on for a while and just when the other family was almost all taken care of, she said, "it's so warm outside. There must be an earthquake coming or something."
..... What???.......
If you're having trouble tying those two thoughts together, so were we. After she returned her stuff and dashed off, Brett and I returned our stuff and then walked away laughing about how that statement was so weird and disconnected. In fact, we kept joking about it long after we returned home. We joked about how if warmth were an indicator of earthquakes, Arizona should have a lot more of them, that lady must be crazy, why was that lady wearing such ridiculous pants, etc...
We found it all very funny until about 7:40 that night when our apartment started shaking!!!! That's right, the frazzled woman had somehow predicted an earthquake!!! We decided that she must be a seismologist, geologist, or the earthquake whisperer... even though science can't even seem to figure out exactly when a quake is coming. I guess the only other logical explanation is that this disheveled polo mom is actually mother earth incarnate!!! (This would be the point at which I would remove the flashlight from under my face and scream something at you-- i.e. "it is the beating of his hideous heart!" or "...and she was never heard from again!") OK, so it's not necessarily that scary of a story, but it is weird.
Other then that uncanny and mysterious but not necessarily scary Halloween story, we didn't do much else. We did find some raccoons masked as little thieves near our apartment, so we gave them some Halloween treats.
The night before Halloween, we carved up some innocent little pumpkins with some of our neighbors/Brett's fellow students. Here are the end results:
Can you guess which one is ours?
If you guessed the cannibal pumpkin, congratulations. Don't worry, we saved the little guy before too much damage was done.
Here's another picture of him waiting on our doorstep for trick-or-treaters. (We had a total of 3 kids come by)
So that's that. Halloween has come and gone and once again I'm left wondering why there is an unspoken age limit to trick-or-treating. Oh well. Such is life I guess. Till next time, this is Lindsey Walker signing off.
I realize that it has been far too long since our last blog and I apologize. Once we got settled back in the US, Brett got busy with school and I just... well, I guess I don't really have a good reason for not blogging. But, here I am now. I'm going to try to be a more diligent blogger, but it may take me a couple of blogs before I get in the swing of it.
Let me quickly update you on our last stop in the summer extravaganza of 2008: Israel. Here's the quick version of what we did: Day 1: We crossed the border into Israel and started our journey in Jerusalem. One of our friends from Jordan (we met in Jordan, but he is from the US) came with us and acted as a tour guide and honestly, he was probably more knowledgeable about the stuff we saw than any tour guide you could hire. So, thank you Jason. He also told us how wonderful and magical Jerusalem was before we got there. We didn't believe him until we got there. The first thing we did was wander around the Old City. Old City Jerusalem consists of the boundaries that were set by the last Muslim conquerors. We then headed over to West Jerusalem (the Jewish side of town) and discovered that Jason wasn't lying. This was indeed a magical place where food is delicious, things are clean, and it even reminded us a bit of the Promenade in Santa Monica. We also visited the Garden Tomb, Golgotha, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Wailing Wall. Here are Jason and I in the Old City:
Brett at the Garden Tomb:
Another Garden Tomb picture:
Golgotha:
Western Wall (Wailing Wall) And yes, people really do wail there.
Day 2: We did some more Jerusalem stuff including the Dome of the Rock, Pools of Bethesda, and the Mount of Olives. Covering all we wanted to do in a few days required A LOT of walking. For instance: Here is Brett after hiking to the Mount of Olives and beyond: Notice the tiny gold dome in the background. And remember we had already walked up that giant hill in the middle of the hot day.
And now here we are at that tiny gold dome-- the Dome of the Rock: You might be wondering why in that much heat I was so covered... well, most of these places ask that you dress modestly, so I did my best. I mean, check out this sign: The fine print says, "Modest clothes include: Closed Blouse, with long sleeves. Long skirt - No Trousers, no tight-fitting clothes. Please do not disturb the sanctity of our neighborhood, and our way of life as Jews committed to G-D and His Torah." They won't write out God--that's what the G-D is about. Then we headed into Bethlehem. To get into Bethlehem, you have to go into the West Bank through this giant wall: We found the juxtaposition of the "Peace Be With You" sign on a giant barbed-wire fence to be funny too. There wasn't a lot to see in Bethlehem, so we went to the Church of the Nativity, which is built over the cave that marks the place of Christ's birth, and then headed back out.
This is me "kissing" the silver star that marks the birthplace. It took forever to get back through the wall because some Spaniards couldn't figure out how to work the revolving door. While we were standing in line we did meet a very interesting Polish nun though. She says that some Palestinians have to get in line at 4am just to get through the wall to get to work, so I guess we didn't have it that bad.
Day 3: We took a bus up to Tel Aviv and hung out on the beach. It was nice to be in the nice cool water, but there were a few too many gross people there including some speedoed Israeli who made a point of talking to me and following me around for a while. From there we drove up to Nazareth. We were having a difficult time finding a place to stay but lucky for us the local law enforcement came through. We ended up staying in a 300 year-old house owned by a police officer.
Here we are in Tel Aviv: Day 4: We walked around Nazareth and went to the Basilica of the Annunciation. It incorporates the cave in which the Virgin Mary received the news from Gabriel that she would give birth to Jesus. We also drove to to the Church of the Beatitudes on the Northern Coast of the Sea of Galilee. This is the traditional spot of the Sermon on the Mount. It was absolutely amazing.
Here's a view out to the Sea of Galilee.
We also visited the Church of the Loaves and Fishes. (Have you noticed yet that a church has been built on every holy or possibly holy site?) This is also on the northwest shore of Galilee in Tabgha, for you scriptorians that's ancient Heptapegon. It's not 100% proven that this is where the 5,000 were fed with a loaf of bread and two fish, but it is a possible site.
This is one of the most famous mosaics out there--it's a depiction of the bread and fishes: After we had seen mostly everything (including Peter's house and the Valley of Armageddon), we drove back to Tel Aviv to stay there.
What's left of Peter's house: We also apparently stayed in the nastiest hotel. It wasn't dirty in the "unclean" sense, but it was apparently meant for dirty things. While flipping through the channels, I discovered that porn came free with the room and that our next door neighbors had no concept of "quiet so as not to disturb our hotel neighbors" sex. So we ended up watching Olympics coverage and then trying to get some frequently disturbed sleep.
Day 5: We drove back to Jerusalem to do some last minute souvenir shopping before heading back to Jordan. We purchased some things and then hopped on a bus to get back to Jordan. We had only been on the bus about 5 minutes when it crashed into another car.... right in front of the Garden Tomb. It was ridiculous and hilarious at the same time. No one was hurt, but plenty of Arabs were there to cause a scene. Another bus came around to pick us up and then we headed back to Jordan.
All in all it was a sweaty but incredible trip. I would highly recommend a trip to Israel if you are ever given the chance. The whole thing was a bit surreal. It's hard to imagine that we walked in the same places that Christ once did. While Jordan is not a place that I think I will need to revisit, possibly ever, I would definitely go back to Israel.
Some of the other highlights were: Managing to get a tour of the BYU Jerusalem center because one of the professors just happened to drive up when we were trying to get inside after hours... oh and he just happened to be someone we knew from our ward in Provo. And another truly unique experience was watching "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" in our hotel room the first night we were in Jerusalem.
So we have been home now for nearly a week, and it has been great to see some of our friends and family. Last night at a gathering of old friends I was turned on to the following YouTube classic. It's obviously the new "viral" video. Unfortunately, only those of you from Gilbert, AZ will really be able to appreciate this. Fortunately, those of you who aren't from Gilbert are about to understand the mentors of my adolescence a bit better, and those upon whose dreams I was fed.
