Budapest

                                             Praise the Lord for the Year of Mercy!
                                        Happy Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady!
     As we come close to the "one-month-till-Christmas" mark we are getting very excited for our December visitors! Madeleine is coming on the 21st, and Michael the 26th. We're hoping to take a trip to Budapest and Italy while they're here, but we have yet to iron out the details.

Ready to trick-or-treat!
Tink, Peter, Mrs. Darling, Wendy....
and three lost boys. :)
(None of us are dressed as our characters for the play)

     We've been pretty busy with school here, the younger girls persevering in their homeschooling each day, and Rosie and I trying to stay on top of our work. Rosie has been diligently working on her papers that are due soon, as well as working with the director of Peter Pan to try to get as much of the play logistics as possible figured out before our long Christmas break. We've had a few rehearsals, and they mostly consist of the actors trying to work slowly through the scene, every so often coming across some odd stage direction which is then interpreted by many little boys at once who know exactly how it should be done. Most of them haven't been in a show before, and sometimes they interrupt the scene to object that there "IS no door into the house..." "That's ok, we'll have props for the play," "REALLY? Do we get costumes too??? CAN WE KEEP OUR COSTUMES???" etc. Needless to say, it usually turns out to be a hectic, semi-productive, loud gathering of mostly eight to twelve year olds, and is quite a refreshing contrast to the rest of the week. I think we may fit in a little better with the "little kids"--today, while a little slap happy on our way through Baden (to buy some cake and coffee after exploring a ruined castle), Rachel remarked that Rosie was about seven years old, and told me that I was the "toddler who's four." Rosie objected that four year olds are not toddlers, and Rachel said, "Whatever. Toddler as in not one and not eighty." I'm not sure what that makes me exactly... And it doesn't help that I'm supposed to play Peter Pan in our play, a boy who is eight years old but also forty because of the timelessness of fairy-land...

Fun in Budapest!

     We ordered another guitar recently, and Mom and Rachel have been practicing it quite a bit. So with my violin, Claire's ukelele and Rosie, Rachel and Mom learning the guitar, now we've just got to figure out how people put it all together! This evening Mom and I had some success playing a hymn together on the penny-whistle and guitar after we had a dance party of sorts in our living room with old mime songs.
     A few weeks ago we successfully received our visas! Quite a relief, we didn't have them by the date we needed them, but somehow it all worked out and so we're legal and still here. The day we all went in to pick them up we were also supposed to get X-rays to make sure we didn't have tuberculosis or something, but the lady who was in charge was apparently rather overwhelmed that day and sent us away rather angrily for coming in on a Monday morning when she was all alone.... So once we figured out what she was saying, we happily left with no intention of coming back for X-rays since we didn't think the lady would miss us and they'd already given us our visas. (Aren't we tricky.)

It was a fun visit!

     Our ten day fall break was a few weeks ago, and Mom's friends from Germany, the Ellermeiers, came for the first few days. We had a relaxing, fun time with the Ellermeiers, involving a day in Vienna, plenty of time to be here and show them the Schloss, and lots of smiling and nodding at the three little boys who didn't know English but liked to talk to us anyway. They were here for Halloween, and so we had fun dressing up as characters from Peter Pan and trick-or-treating at the three rooms at the ITI that decided to participate. Dad also turned on quite a few German Dinosaur videos, and the boys also got to go watch Aladdin with Jacinta and Irene and some of the other children here (most of whom speak German, which was nice for the Ellermeier boys.)

Budapest!

     After they left, Dad, Rosie, Rachel, Claire, Jacinta and I went to Budapest for two nights. (Irene heard someone say, "We'll walk around the city..." and said, "What? We're gonna walk? I'm not coming.") The trip was a wonderful success, it's only about 2 1/2 hours from here and our airbnb was lovely. We arrived in the afternoon and as usual had a little difficulty finding it because our navigation lady in Dad's phone kept trying to convince us to drive up stairways.

St. Matthias

Eventually we found it, and our host gave us a map and some tips and then left us in a beautiful two story bnb, with a winding staircase, cozy rooms and a nice balcony looking out

Looking over the river from
Fishermen's Bastion

In front of the
National Archive building.

Buying lunch at the grocery store near St. Matthias

over the housetops. We discovered that the building our apartment was in was right next to the German embassy, and was on what's called "Castle Hill." It was on the Buda side of Budapest, and it's a hill above the rest of the city, with the National Archives, the History Museum, and an old tower of a knocked down church--all right on our street--and then a few minutes walk away was the glorious St. Matthias Church, Fisherman's Bastion and a bunch of neat cafes and shops. If we go back it would be neat to go into the history museum, it seemed to have lots of info about the revolution in 1956, and there was a big tank outside. Fishermen's Bastion was built in the 1800's in honor of the fishermen who had defended the hill from invaders coming across the Danube toward Buda in the 800's I think. A nice walk through colorful streets took us to the other end with the Palace/Castle and the National Gallery (which we got to go in and explore). There are also apparently a bunch of passageways underground that you can explore, and we think that right near our bnb is where legend has it King Matthias (first king of Budapest) imprisoned Count Dracula. Unfortunately we didn't have time to look into that...
     When we arrived and had settled in a bit, we went out to explore. We crossed the famous chain bridge (that had been all but destroyed in WWII as the Nazi's fled the city, but rebuilt after the war) from which we had a great view of both sides of the city. On the other side of the Danube, Pest, we headed for the city center and got to stop in a huge, beautiful church on the way. We enjoyed walking down the old, brightly lit streets with plenty of Hungarian shops. There was an escalator that took us down under the street to a big souvenir market with lots of friendly vendors who enjoyed speculating about where we were from. We picked up dinner at a little multi-leveled grocery store there on the main street, walked to a bus stop, and took a ride back over the bridge to our airbnb.

Fishermen's Bastion

That evening we looked up some Budapest history, and Rachel and I ended up with the great treat of a few hours WWII/world history lesson from Dad. We had a couple sessions of that over those few days, something that made the entire trip 10000 times more interesting.

     Next morning we hoped to get a tour of the National Archives (second largest collection in Europe I think), so we walked to see the Palace and Fishermen's Bastion, and then hurried back to the Archives for our tour which turned out not to be happening. So instead we got to spend more time outside on Castle Hill. It was beautiful, chilly fall weather, really bright and fresh which made the views really wonderful. From the Palace and Fishermen's Bastion we could look all the way across the river and over Pest, and we even managed to keep all hats and scarves and people from falling over the wall down the cliff. We spent a few hours in the National Gallery, and then headed down to the bridge. We made it back to the church we had visited the day before in Pest, hoping to get to Mass. At first we couldn't find the place they were celebrating (the church is huge, and I think it's bigger on the inside....), but eventually Dad just decided to jump the chains that block the tourists and look into random doors and so we found the "little" chapel and got to go to Mass in Hungarian.

After that we went looking for a place to eat.  Dad was determined not to try any weird Hungarian food, though, because so far every time he had tried "genuine--fill in the black--cuisine it had been very boring/not very yummy/not very much. Eventually we thought we'd give it a try, but then ended up in the middle of a narrow street between two different restaurants and the owners outside each explaining to us why their restaurant was where we wanted to go. In the end we were nearly dragged (I exaggerate a bit) down the stairs under the level of the street, and put at a fancy table with some musicians playing violin and guitar for the table next to us. We had a good time, not too terribly impressed with the food but our waiters were very attentive and friendly and one looked exactly like the bat accomplice from "The Great Mouse Detective", which added to the interest and uniqueness of the situation. They all said goodbye in a grand fashion as they saw us out. One of them said, in his strong Hungarian accent, "goodbye beautiful" and blew me a kiss as we were leaving and then I promptly nearly fell on my face (for the fifth time that day) trying to climb the stairs back to the street. After that we started making our way back to the bridge,

On Fishermen's Bastion.

stopping in at a few shops for Christmas gifts. We crossed the bridge again, enjoyed seeing the city on both sides lit up in the dark, and then walked along the water on the Buda side in order to look at the Parliament building. The Parliament building is right on the water in Pest, and it is completely lit up and magnificent at night. Rachel had a particular desire to see it from across the river, since from the bridge you can only see it at an angle. We walked a ways along the water, carefully comparing the various towers on the building until they were exactly symmetrical, and we could tell we were straight across from it. After that we climbed a whole bunch of stairs up Castle Hill trying to find our airbnb, got only a little lost, and then found Fishermen's Bastion again and made our way back.

Mission accomplished.

     Next morning we packed up and went home, telling the phone to avoid highways, which meant we had a long, beautiful ride through the Hungarian countryside and a bunch of little towns.

This is by the Palace and National Gallery. Across the
river, in the far right of this photo, you
can see the church that we went to Mass in later
that night. I think it was St. Steven's, but the
Hungarian name was hard to decipher. :)

Happy Birthday, Jakie!

                                                               What We're Up To

It's always a bit difficult writing a blog when you haven't for a while, since there's so much to catch up on, but I'll do my best.

Queen for the day.

     Jacinta's birthday was on October 12, and she arranged a sleepover with her friends at the ITI on the Friday before. It was lots of fun, and I never knew Salad Bowl and Murder in the Dark could be such intense experiences... On her actual birthday we had lunch at Burger King and then had Father Mollenbeck (a professor of Jenny and Rosie's) over for dinner. Jakie is a very happy and affectionate 12-year-old, often you find her literally chasing her sisters down to give them the biggest hug they've ever received. (Hence the reason for having to literally chase them down to give it...)

Dinner with Father Mollenbeck.

     A few weeks ago Mom, Dad, Rachel, Claire and Jacinta decided that it was time to home school. They gave their public school a very good shot, but it became clear that they would be happier and more productive studying at home. So, since then they've been getting up bright and early, saying morning prayers together and working on school in the living room. Dad works with them right up until class time, and when I stop by for lunch they're all repeating various German phrases back at him or identifying words and explaining grammar--Dad: "So, Claire, in the sentence we're talking about, 'the girl gave her soul to the witch,' what word is the direct object?" I don't usually stick around for long.

Looking out over the city!

     A few weeks ago some friends invited Rosie and me to go on a biking trip to Vienna with them, and although Rosie wasn't able to because she's responsible and had a massive amount of European History to read for her block course that week, I was able to borrow a bike and go with them. It should have been about 30 km each way, but we got a bit lost on the way there and so it ended up being nearly 70 total! It was so much fun, very hard, and on our way back through the city and on into the fields it began pouring rain as it got dark, but we got back safe and sound--though wet and tired. Once we made it into Vienna we stopped for some pizza (one of the two guys I went with is from Germany, so we could relax when it came to communicating with people...), and then we went on to stop "for a quick look" inside the famous St. Stephan's. It's so huge and magnificent, and the streets all around it are so crowded with people and horses and carriages; quite the sight! We went in and happened to see a friend from the ITI, a son of one of the Byzantine priests here, who recently began studying at the seminary in Vienna. He was giving a tour to two girls from Franciscan University who were studying in Gaming (where the ITI used to be), and he casually invited us to join the tour. So our "quick look" turned into over an hour of exploring every part of the church, all the way up to the tallest, off-limits towers, because Danylo had the key for  everything, and was apparently best friends with the elevator lady, the ticket guy, and whoever has the keys to all the secret doors that lead to the not-so-safe parts...

Freed from the never-ending
staircaseand out onto the roof!

Anyway, we ended up climbing at least 700 spiral stairs (there's nothing quite as maddening as a dark, endless, small, closed off, spiral staircase...), standing right next to the bells in the tower at 1500 as they rang out over the city, and at one point climbing out onto the little walkway next to the roof. He even brought us into the gap between the inside ceiling and the towers. The church from the outside looks about twice as tall as it does on the inside, so we got to explore the inside of the roof and climb up dark ladders to a tiny trap door, stick our hands out and touch the very top point of the front of the church. When we finally came down the endless staircase after that, (my legs were shaking and we still had 30 more km to bike), we stopped by a little building stuck in between several regular looking city apartments on a random side street, which turned out to be the Byzantine church that Danylo went to there in Vienna. We opened the rather boring looking door and went from the cold, rainy, overcast day to being smacked in the face with all the spectacle of the solemnest part of a Byzantine wedding ceremony. Music, gold, bells and incense; and the couple were both wearing beautiful gold crowns. We stayed for a minute or two, and then back to the regular world and sore sitter-downers for the ride home!

Taking a break to eat some cookies.

Strawberry Ice-cream and
complimentary blanket. What
more could you want?

Sopron!

     The next day we went on a trip to Hungary! Sopron is just right near the border, so it only took us about 30 minutes to get there. It's a beautiful and old town (city?), and everything was wonderfully cheap. Also, we had a bunch of Hungarian cash that Margaret had acquired when she visited Budapest, and so we could really live it up. We walked around and explored--several more experiences of the boring door squished between other buildings, opening up into a magnificent church--and enjoyed plenty of pastries, pizza and ice-cream.
We spent some extra time in a big church/Monastery and bought some tea that I think the monks there make. I think it was built in the 1300's, originally by the Franciscans, but damaged, and then restored and now a Benedictine Monastery. I'm not sure about all that, I try to pay attention to the history of the places we visit but it's turns into one big muddle as soon as I read it. It was lovely anyway.
     We also stumbled upon a Jewish synagogue/museum, that had been rediscovered and restored in the 70's. It had gone out of use in the 1500's when everybody was kicked out, and it was a really neat place to see.

Rachel in a church
in Sopron, Hungary.

     Besides our various day trip adventures, we've been pretty busy here at the school. Rosie is helping put on Peter Pan with some other students here (who happen to be from California and know some people from TAC, Saint Monica's and some of our other friends), and I'm playing to role of Peter, Claire is Smee, Jacinta is Toodles and Irene is Michael. Should be a fun production!
     Rosie and I invited some friends over for tea the other day, and so we had a nice tea/brownie/apple pie/cinnamon role party before heading back to classes in the afternoon. Rosie has been going on various trips with the Studium Generale people, last weekend she got to spend a night in a Schloss in Wasserberg and go for a beautiful but cold and long hike in the mountains. She and I are planning to join the school for a trip to Croatia in November!
     Last night Rosie and I were invited to join some friends going to "Cafe Wess" in town, so we had a nice time with our giant pints of beer and goofy friends. I only stayed for a little bit because I had to come back to study Latin with some other friends, but it was a fun little spot, and is apparently sort of an ITI tradition. I'm not planning to get too involved with that there tradition, however, since I've discovered that even a small amount of alcohol makes me really sick. So I'm gonna stick with grape juice and cake generally.

Walking about Sopron.

     Tonight there is a 50's dance/birthday party as well as our next drama club meeting, and we make up about half of the Byzantine choir for the liturgy today (heh), so it'll be a busy afternoon.
     Irene speaks lots of German now, and it's fun to hear. She's only been in school for less than two months and is already using what she knows to make her own sentences throughout the day.

This is a very old wall. Yes.

     I think we aren't yet entirely sure that our visas are on track, so prayers appreciated, but we've done all we can do so we're waiting to see if they'll come in time!

Pilgrimage to Heiligen Kreuz

We haven't talked about the Stift Heiligenkreuz.   Not far from here is the monastery which used to be the center of all the lands around here, and which has a college and many devoted monks, young and old.  Pater Edmund Waldstein invited us to the profession of four monks and so we experienced our first German and Latin Mass on the Assumption.  The huge gothic cathedral is full of beautiful statues, wood carvings, stained glass, and its greatest namesake treasure, the largest piece of the True Cross north of the Alps.  It is housed in a monstrance and kept on the altar.  For the skeptics that think there's probably enough relics of the "true" cross to rebuild Noah's ark, a fellow in the 1800s did some calculations based on the weight a man could reasonably carry, and the total pieces claimed to be floating around, and found the collected pieces not even nearly adding up to enough to be comparable.  Not that that proves anything,  but it seems a little premature to dismiss a tradition going back hundreds of years, just because it is a tradition!  Here's an article that discusses some of this: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/taking-the-measure-of-relics-of-the-true-cross
Afterwards Pater Edmund invited us to the dinner celebration in the courtyard, as a traditional Austrian band played for us in honor of one of the newly professed, who was a member of their band.   P. Edmund gave us a tour of the monastery, and explained the meaning of many of the paintings, the reason for the particular architectural shape, the history of its founding, and we saw the funeral chapel, where the monks are laid for 24 hours before burial, which had creepy black skeleton statues.  P. Edmund said with a big smile: "When I die, I will be laid here."    /http://www.stift-heiligenkreuz.org/english/

 Pilgrims returning, Jakie and Irene in front

 Pater Edmund on the cover of their newest CD

 Clouds over our buildings

 Trumau parish church

 Irene's school

 Jenny on the deck



Rachel, David and Maureen went for a walk in Baden, happened upon Beethoven's house and also some dancers in the street:

  Beethoven's house in Baden (where he composed the 9th symphony)

St Stephan's in Baden


Last week most of the family joined the ITI students for a pilgrimage walk to Heiligenkreuz monastery (20 K) on Sunday in honor of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (Kreuzerhöhung) which is a big deal feast there. They pulled out all the stops at the Mass, (literally, since the organist is particularly dramatic) and with all those singing monks (the ones who make the famous Chant CDs) singing Latin, as well as beloved German hymns in the large Gothic cathedral, it was spectacular, though for many of the pilgrims it was chiefly a chance to sit down!   The homily was by Cardinal Schönborn, the fellow who started the ITI with some others, and who was also instrumental in writing and organizing the latest Cathechism of the Catholic Church.  After Mass there was a procession, but there were so many people in the church that by the time they all joined the procession it had come around and re-entered the church...we all trooped around to the wall behind the altar to pray and sing about the Holy Cross, and to kiss the relic of the cross and receive a blessing.  The priest doing this amazed me, as he had the happiest smiling face while he focused on each person receiving the blessing, and intoned song after song and prayer after prayer.  This is one of the prayers on the cards they handed out: "Wir beten Dich an, Herr Jesus Christus, und preisen Dich.  Denn durch Dein heiliges Kreuz hast Du die Welt erlöst" (we adore you O Christ and we bless you, because by Your holy Cross You have redeemed the world")

School Begins!

Happy Birthday, Madeleine!

Mariazell

 

At the Monastery in Melch. 

       Now that it's September 16th, I thought it an appropriate time to wish Madeleine a Happy Birthday on the blog! Keeping with the Quackenbush tradition of not celebrating too close to the actual day. Monday, September 5th was not only Madeleine's birthday, (we wish we could have been with you to celebrate, Madeleine!) but it was the first day of school for all of us. Rosie and I had our matriculation ceremony at the ITI, after singing for Mass at the parish in Trumau and a procession back to campus. The ceremony was in a  room in the Schloss--where all the classes take place. For some reason a room full of silent people staring at somebody signing their name in a book cracked me up, as well as the fact that each person carefully replaced the lid to the pen, meaning that each next person had to carefully remove it again three seconds later.  Other than that and the fact that I took five times as long as everybody else because the pen confused me, there's not much more to report.

Afterward there was common lunch, and the girls arrived back from their first day of school. Rachel, Claire and Jacinta are all going to a school near Baden (about 12 minutes away I think...?) called Don Bosco, (some of the other kids from the ITI go there also,) and Irene is going to the Volkschule just a few blocks away. Irene's been doing fairly well there and enjoying it I think, (she just got moved up a level because she's simply too smart, although she usually offhandedly remarks that school was "fine. I sat in a room and listened to people say a bunch of stuff I couldn't understand." But I think she's picking up a lot of German all the same) but the other girls are having a bit of a rough transition. Beginning a new school in a new country is a big enough change for me and Rosie here at the ITI, I can't imagine

Day before school, on our way back
from Marizell. We stopped to get Eis
and visit a church in a beautiful valley along
 the way, and Jakie and Claire made a new friend. 

beginning it in a new language as well! They certainly are troopers.
On their first day, Claire reports that during a break Jakie left her classroom to find Claire's and make sure that the "other kids were being nice to her." This was no small feat in Claire's eyes, who had had some difficulty figuring out where her class was supposed to be, and hadn't yet understood that the teacher leaving the room and everything erupting in chaos meant "break," and that apparently when everybody started yelling, "Sie kommt! Sie kommt!" and scrambling back to their seats that this meant break was over. Anyway, Jakie did not seem too daunted by this, and didn't let her uncertainty about what was going on stop her from checking on her sister! It's been fun to hear Claire's description of the other students and their reactions to the Americans. Claire says that they'll crowd around and ask questions, and if she replies then they seem taken aback, excited and surprised, as if to say, "It speaks!" Apparently yesterday the only student in her class who hadn't spoken to her yet came up to Claire and said with a timid smile, "You are long and shiny." Claire thinks that what was intended was "You're hair is long and shiny."

Brownie Picnic!

     Rosie and I are doing well and enjoying things for the most part! We've been playing soccer on the weekends with the other students, (last week it was all guys except us two and one other girl) which has been a lot of fun. Usually it means walking around a bit awkwardly for a few days afterward due to soreness, but it seems worth it to me. Rosie is still playing guitar and learning a bunch of neat songs and singing them over and over and over and over. Last weekend she made brownies, and we went for a LONG walk to the other side of campus (approximately 3 minutes) to the plum orchard to have a brownie picnic and sing/play guitar. We're both enjoying our readings, although classes are taking some getting used to. Rosie isn't too thrilled by them, I think there's hardly any talking on the students' parts' in her class, and I'm also learning how to just sit and listen more than to discuss. However, this week there seemed to be a little more student participation than last week, and there really is a lot one can learn from reading and then just listening to the professors, although it feels very different than TAC. Today Rosie is going with her Fine Arts class to Vienna, and hopefully we'll get an update about what that's like. :)

Heureger! Waiting for seats, food and wine!

     Last weekend there was a swing dance class that Rosie, Claire and I went to. It was fun and led very well, for beginners, and it has gotten Claire extremely interested in learning more! Every day she says, "Gemma, are you too tired to do some dancing today?" and so hopefully now that it's the weekend for me, (I only have one class on Fridays) we'll be able to practice some more. Rosie, Claire, Rachel and I also went with a big group of students to a heuriger after the dance class. We drove to a bunch of vineyards where the farmers set up shop and sell their new wine and some food. After some difficulty finding enough seating, we looked at the menu to see if we could order any food. We were with several other Americans who didn't know German, so we decided to get one of everything on the menu. (Little starters and things.) Unfortunately, after we had finally decided there turned out to be no food left, so we just ordered two liters of wine for ten euro and shared it around. The heuriger one vineyard over was playing some loud, catchy dance music, and eventually us Quacks and the family we were with got tired of dignified relaxation and conversation, and made our way over to the other one, where we danced the night away. :) It was a blast, and rather exhausting, so when we'd had enough the girls and I wandered through one of the vineyards and plopped down in the grass to star-gaze.

Marizell!

    The Sunday before school started we went with the school on a pilgrimage to Mariazell, the town with the Church that is the home of the the most visited shrine in Europe. Our Lady of Mariazell was visited by JPII and declared to be the patroness of Austria, the "zell" has something to do with the monastic cells that were there originally. It was a beautiful church and town, and we got to stop at several other places on the way there and back. We stopped in Gaming where the ITI used to be--a much more scenically beautiful area than Trumau--and Father Juraij from the ITI gave us a tour of the place. It was interesting to hear about how hard it was for people to have to leave there when the school moved, but also how beneficial and good, as they were reminded that the value and beauty of the school was in the people, not the place. When we arrived and finally found the group (we drove separately, everyone else took a bus), we had a big group lunch--one huge pot of soup for everyone to share and lots of cold beer.

At a Monastery in Melch that we visited on our
way back from Mariazell!

Our first stop on the way To Marizell, Mom and
Irene we're looking for a WC (bathroom). This
is some sort of cellar thing under the Church.
As I took this picture I heard Irene say, "Well,
it looks dark and dreary enough to be a potty."

Enjoying a Sunday Breakfast with the Parish!

     Sunday we went to Mass at the parish in Trumau, and then went over to the Church hall for "coffee." This turned out to be more like a feast with all sorts of pastries, wine and bread. We enjoyed talking with wonderful Pater Pio, the Parish's hilarious and holy priest.
     I thought it should be mentioned that Claire, along with going to school, learning German, and picking up dancing, has taken up carpentry. (Sort of.) A few weeks ago she opened her top drawer full of clothes and it fell out of the dresser and lay smashed on the floor. So we ordered two nice dressers from IKEA, and they arrived a few days ago. However, they had to be put together upon arrival. So for the last two days, with Jenny's help and then all on her own, Claire's been screwing and hammering and banging in our living room, cheerfully chatting away about school while building her dressers! I went to bed last night with her still working, and this morning there are two lovely, completed dressers standing in the living room. Good job Claire!

Rosie in a church on our way
to Marizell.