Venice...

     I had intended to do an "Italy" blog, but it's turning into more than one... I guess that's good, although it's taking a good long while. ;P

     As I mentioned before, Michael and I went straight back to Venice after our time in Milan. We caught our train without too much trouble (they're big and fast, but we managed it), and a few hours later we were buying breakfast in Venice and finding ourselves a map. Milan had been a really fantastic treat mostly because of the wonderful people who we got to meet and who showed us around, while I think Venice wins for the most interesting/beautiful city (when one is left to explore on his own).

A man delivering supplies brought by
boat to one of the many shops hidden
among the streets.

     Our airbnb host had told us we'd have to get a water bus to get to where we could walk to our place. There are bus sized boats that are constantly going around on the main canal through Venice, and besides all the little private boats on all the smaller canals, those buses are the way to get around. We got on one and rode it through the city and around outside it, getting a beautiful view from the water, and made it safely to where we needed to go. We were on the south eastern part of the city, in an airbnb a few stories up in one of the old, tall buildings that make up the city. It is always so neat to get to stay, instead of in a hotel or main touristy area, right in the middle of the city just as if we lived there with the locals! Our airbnb had a nice, tiny balcony that opened out between buildings away from the street, over some little back yards and gardens, and we enjoyed being able to make and eat meals there at the airbnb, as well as finding some restaurants over the course of the few days.
   

 We had bought a little paper map for two euro, which proved invaluable for our time there. We used my phone navigation a few times, when searching for a market for example, but usually we just followed our detailed map and found what we were looking for! Like I said, we didn't have a guide or know much about the city, but it was beautiful and interesting enough that we simply enjoyed exploring the streets and seeing all the boats and canals and buildings. The buildings are closely packed and very tall, and the streets are often nothing more than a little alleyway, sometimes not even wide enough for two people, and often only a few meters long. Yet each of those tiny streets was on our map and had a name, usually posted on an old sign on the buildings, so it was a bit like exploring a maze.

This particular part of the maze looked pretty
ominous to us, though...

        We spent quite a bit of time exploring without going anyplace specific. It was fun because was hard to have two people constantly both completely aware of each tiny street we're on and which direction we're heading, since the streets are so short lived and weirdly oriented, and there's only one map with very tiny letters for very tiny streets... so Michael did the navigating (I did help sometimes) and I got to follow him and watch him walk around with his nose buried in the paper, rejoicing whenever the tiny words matched up with the street hiding behind some random wall, and also help keep him from walking into canals that pop out of nowhere when we accidentally ran into a dead end.

There were churches everywhere, so we'd often stop and go inside to pray a rosary, warm up and look around. Sometimes they were charging for entrance, but they would let us in for free to a certain designated spot so we could pray our rosary. One evening we had planned to go to Mass at a church where we saw the schedule on the door. Unfortunately we had gotten some of the information wrong, so when we got there it was locked and dark. We looked up any other Masses nearby, and found one somewhere across the maze of dark streets, about a 20 minute walk away (if we didn't get lost.) We had about 20 minutes till Mass started, so we set out, and made it just in time.  I forget the name of the church, but it was so nice to find it and get to go to a small, Italian Mass at a side alter of a beautiful church we wouldn't have ever seen otherwise. After Mass that night we found a restaurant and had a nice pasta dinner.
     We found a market hidden among the buildings on the first day there, I think, and we went there a couple times and enjoyed making some of our own meals. It was a bit hard to find at first; my phone (which is what supposedly knew where we could find the market) had a bit of trouble noticing that two meters of water between us and where we wanted to go might be an obstacle. But we used our handy little brains and our handy little map and some handy little bridges and eventually found it.
     The second day there we went for a run in the morning (it was pretty cold!), and then walked along the street next to our airbnb and perpendicular to the main walkway where you can catch the water bus. There were lots of bakeries and markets, and people were selling a lot of veggies or freshly caught, weird looking fish and crabs and such. After that we made breakfast and ate it on our balcony, and in the process accidentally spilled a bucket of laundry water down onto whatever was below us... There were little ropes and pulley systems outside the windows where people hung out their laundry. Wherever you look there were clothes and sheets blowing in the (freezing) wind, I found it hard to believe they would dry, it seemed more like the water in them would just freeze...But everybody did it and was sort of a happy sight. :)

     There were lots of shops around, plenty of masks and neat crafty things and beautiful (and weird sometimes) postcards. We went into a neat little shop where a man made a bunch of leather bound journals painted with Venetian city scenes, leather bookmarks and neat wooden pens, and we got a few things there. I wonder what it would be like to own an entire shop of really useful and beautiful things you'd made yourself.
     We also got to spend quite a bit of time reading and not freezing, Michael had read a book called "Gunnar's Daughter" at TAC and really enjoyed it, so we read quite a bit of that. It's about people in Norway and Iceland, and there are lots of intense parts describing characters out in the snow and such... it's a different thing to read that sort of thing now that I haven't only lived in sunny California. You realize that "being cold" isn't just a slightly uncomfortable thing you can make go away by putting on a sweater. :P

     We walked in St. Mark's square, by the huge, beautiful and famous cathedral, but didn't go inside. Rosie, Rachel, Mom and Dad went to Venice after Michael and I were back in Trumau, and they said that St. Mark's was probably the most impressive church they'd been in yet. They said that the entrance was filled with water, though, because apparently the city is sinking and it was in the middle of winter time (rain and snow and such). People buy special rain boots and walk on raised walkways that go over the flooded places. We would have had to wait in a line for a very long time though, and we enjoyed all our random little churches scattered throughout the city. But I hope I can see it sometime.
     One evening we were walking through the square and a "friendly" man came and gave me three roses "for free" "just for you" "for a happy new year..." and we tried to say thanks but no thanks, aware of the fact that he would just ask for money in a second and we weren't inclined to buy roses, but he convinced us (they're awfully good at that...), and as we walked away from our "new friend" who had made an exception "just for us," he of course managed to wheedle some money out of us, get offended that we didn't give him enough, and ask for two roses back. I had been specifically warned by somebody to simply not fall for those sellers' convincing offers...But they are good at what they do. We learned, and were on our guard after that. At one point I was saying something to Michael while we walked, and as I tried to illustrate something I put my hand out and suddenly there was a rose between my forefinger and thumb. I quickly pulled my hand back and we left the disappointed seller as quickly as we could without engaging in conversation. ;)

     After we were there for a few days, we went to meet Mom, Dad, Rosie and Rachel who were driving from Trumau on the way to Rome. We were initially going to ferry across the water from Venice to the mainland of Italy, but they ended up driving over to pick us up (you can't drive in Venice, but you can drive across the bridge that the train comes over on). We had quite the adventure trying to meet them, since we had to catch the water bus again and got thoroughly confused about the routes, ended up getting on the wrong one which took us in the other direction, away from Venice and across the water to the island of Murano. Eventually we made it though, and found ourselves waiting with a bunch of buses to meet the others as they drove in. We told Dad to meet us "by the happy guy singing songs and hitting himself with empty water bottles," since there was a man standing near us, with a huge, happy smile, banging things with water bottles for accompaniment and singing songs like "I'm a barbie girl." They drove in, spotted the landmark, and we got in and headed to Rome!

Here's the link to more pictures:  https://goo.gl/photos/c5S4h2PYTdTeGLVw9

Milan

     Budapest was a lot of fun, and it was so nice to have Madeleine with us for that, but after she left (sad day!) we got ourselves ready for another adventure.

The Duomo in Milan!

Michael and Gianluca

     We spent New Years Eve relaxing at home, recovering from our trip and trying to figure out our next one.  Michael had a few friends from Milan who he'd gotten to know through Communion and Liberation in California where they were doing a semester of school, and he and I wanted to meet up with them on our trip to Italy. They were only available for a few days, so we had planned to leave on January first with the family, Dad driving our van. Unfortunately, as I described, the van wasn't quite feeling up to it that day... so we had to think of another plan, since our temporary rental car wasn't big enough for all of us. So Michael and I bought train tickets to Milan online (or thought we did...) and decided we'd plan the trip as we went! Saturday evening we booked some train tickets, went for a run and then took a train to Vienna to see the New Year's celebration there.
It was really crowded in Vienna, the streets and platz around Stephan's Dome were completely packed with people walking, buying and selling food, and singing and dancing (several live bands were playing here and there). It was really neat to see, though we were a little bummed to find out that Mass wasn't happening in St. Stephan's because of the loud festivities. So we walked about for a while until the hubbub became a little overwhelming, and then found a quiet Italian restaurant to have dinner.

The waiters spoke a combination of Italian, German and English, (so we did also) and although they didn't really listen to anything we said it turned out fine and we had a nice time. We trained back to Trumau around the time when the fireworks were beginning, and it was really an interesting experience. Apparently there aren't really any regulations for those fireworks at all. At least not any that anybody pays attention to. People were setting them off on every corner, and sometimes we'd see them fire horizontally over a lawn with people scattered about on it, instead of straight into the sky (where people don't tend to be.) I'm surprised none of them hit us since anybody walking outside seemed to be a likely target...

Every time the train stopped and the door opened, we'd jump because of the fireworks being set off just outside the door. It was neat training through the city at midnight though, we could watch them going off all over the city and get more than one view of them! Apparently the spectacle in Trumau was just as impressive if not more so, since it's such a small town. Mom said that the whole place seemed lit up as everybody lit their own. Michael and I got off our train in Traiskircken and walked about forty minutes along the train track to get to Trumau (we thought that would be better than having Dad wait up and pick us up, since we didn't know when we'd get back, and it completed the adventure anyway). The train track is not the most convenient place to walk, the rocks in between are huge and the tracks spaced just right to be annoying, but all the rocks were sparkling because of the ice so we enjoyed that and had a fun time.

     We arrived home safely, in time to pack, sleep for an hour or so, and then get up to catch a train! Unfortunately we found out that we had to pay double the amount we'd thought, and that would only take us to Venice, but we decided to do that and then get another train to Milan, or have Michael's friend Gianluca meet us there. The train ride was about seven hours, and the beginning was really beautiful. It was very early in the morning, and we were going through a bunch of snow covered villages in the mountains, which were a real treat to see. We got to Venice and saw a nice Venetian ticket machine before heading to Milan. In Milan we met Gianluca who drove us to his house, on the way filling Michael in on some Milanese cuss words and explaining which traffic rules one actually had to pay attention to, and which could be overlooked. ;)

After Mass when we arrived in Milan,
with Paul and Lucia!

     We got settled there and then went Mass at a nearby church that Gianluca often attends with his CL community in Milan. It was a very quick Sunday Mass, maybe forty minutes, yet recollected enough as far as Michael or I could tell, who were having difficulty staying awake from one minute to the next--Michael was doing the sleepy headbobble dance the entire time...  After Mass Gianluca told Michael that he'd like to introduce him to some friends of his who happened to be in Milan at the same time, and these friends turned out to be Paul and Lucia Dawson, CL friends of my family who had just been at Thomas and Becca's house a few weeks before, but were now visiting Lucia's family in Milan I think. Gianluca had no idea that I knew them already, and it also turns out that Michaels' cousin is dating Paul's sister, which just added another facet to the slightly weird happenstance of us all meeting on a random evening in Milan... God does strange and wonderful things! 

     After that we went to a pizza place to meet up with Michaels' other wonderful CL friend, Aldo. The four of us had a really lovely time, though we made it short so that we could get a loopy, sleepy Michael to bed. (I of course was completely awake and on top of things...)

     The next morning we were much more refreshed and ready to explore, so we had a nice breakfast with some pastries that Gianluca had bought and then we walked to the metro station and went to the Duomo, Milan's famous cathedral.

Waiting outside the Duomo.

Looking for the monkey?
Or planning for the statue of Gianluca...

     We met Aldo and his sister Elizabeth there and she showed us around and told us about it's history and a bunch of really neat facts about it. (She studies art history I think?) Apparently it took 500 years to build and was begun in 1386. It was was entirely funded from the people of Milan, and today you can still donate to have another spire erected. There are hundreds of statues on the spires and in niche's of the outside of the church ( I think she said more than a thousand?), many of which are saints, but also many people from Milan are represented there, since the cathedral was really made by the people of Milan and is a great treasure for them. (I believe Elizabeth said there was a statue of Mussolini up there somewhere, and Aldo says there's a monkey. I'm not really sure how that's supposed to help illustrate her point, but we talked quite a bit about that monkey- and about the statue of Gianluca that he's going to have erected up there one day.) We looked inside the cathedral for a while, and then climbed to the roof and looked out over Milan, it was a little foggy but still beautiful.

Inside the Duomo!

The crazy fancy shopping area...

We walked through a big, expensive, famous shopping/hotel area and looked at the thousand dollar, plastic looking purses and shoes and such sitting in their lonely glass cages, and felt grateful that we weren't staying in a hotel where we weren't allowed to touch anything or breathe, and then we went to find the historical castle of Milan.
On the way we stopped by a little coffee shop near the Duomo, and had some espresso. It was not a crowded touristy spot since it was sort of hidden out of the way, so it was a neat little experience. I guess in Italy people often just walk in, order a teeny tiny little cup of espresso, stand at the bar and chug it right there, put their euro coin on a plate and leave. So that's what we did. :)

On the roof of the Duomo!

     Then we walked to the castle, it was a fortress where the ruling family of Lombardi (? I think) lived way back, and it was at one end of the wall that surrounded the old city just like in Vienna. I think it used to be a palace, and then was a training ground for soldiers and a fortress used for various battles-- it was neat to see the big walls with little holes all over it for shooting out of, and the moats that surrounded the walls. Gianluca showed us on a map the places right outside the wall where people would be sent when they had the plague. Several years ago I read "The Betrothed," which takes place in Milan and near it, so it was really interesting to hear all those names again and actually see the sort of places described in the book. Gianluca referred to it a lot as he told us about the city, too.

A gate at the Lombardi Castle.

     After that we walked through the city some more to go see Gianluca's university (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart), and on the way he educated us a bit on types of motorcycles, and told us which ones were cool and which weren't. Apparently there's this rental system with cars there; you can search for certain rental cars with an app and find out where they're parked, when you find one you can drive it for a while, and then park it somewhere else for the next random person who needs it.
     Gianluca's uniersity was really quiet (since it was Christmas break) and really beautiful. There's a big CL community of students there, and Father Carron (the president of CL) teaches one of Gianluca's classes too. The university used to be a monastery, and so it had a beautiful inner courtyard with a garden surrounded by a colonnade. I read a bit about monastery gardens last year, and it's been neat to see (just like at the monastery of Heiligenkruez) how they are set up. In the middle of the garden is a tree that represents the tree of life, and then there are four walkways leading from the tree to the colonnade, which have to do with the four directions (corners?) of the world. I think I remember reading (and Pater Edmund describing at Heiligenkruez) that the monks don't ever actually go into the garden (just the gardener does...) but can only see glimpses of it and the sunlight of the open sky between pillars as they walk around it in the darker corridor. It's a sort of constant reflection and reminder of paradise and the monks' life on earth as they wait for that life.

View of the garden at
the university.

There's my best shot at describing something probably much deeper and more thought out. :) Anyway, obviously people walk in the garden area now, and Gianluca said when the students pass their final defense they run around on the grass and jump the hedges (which they're normally not allowed to do.) After that we got to see another historical treasure, a highlight of the day. The university is right next to St. Ambrogio Church, which, as you can probably guess, is very old and was founded by St. Ambrose. It was constructed in 379 on a site where many martyrs of the Roman persecutions had been buried. It was a really beautiful, simple, brick church, and we got to go inside and see the body of St. Ambrose on display in the crypt, along with two other martyrs.

St. Ambrogio

     That evening, after a restful time reading and recuperating at Gianluca's, we went to Aldo and Elizabeth's parents' house to have dinner with them and some friends of there's. We parked in a random illegal spot along with countless other cars that did the same ("Well, this isn't technically allowed but there are like two policemen for this whole area so there's no way they can give everybody a parking ticket, we're fine..."), and then while Gianluca went off to buy a cake Michael and I tried to get into the building. After Aldo opened the door from upstairs with some magic button, and Michael promptly locked us out again while trying to illustrate to me how confusing he thought the doors were, we eventually managed to get into the elevator and up to dinner. That dinner was also a real treat, I was pretty amazed to find that we had hopped on a train to go to a city that I had never seen before and didn't know a single person in, and then find myself at a dinner table in a cozy home with a group of joyful, loving new Italian friends, talking easily about anything from TAC vs ITI vs Italian university experiences, to language learning and Bible study.

What a great bunch!

We got to hear about their impressions of their various visits to the states-they were all admiration-and their complete astonishment at why Michael might want to learn Italian at all... they couldn't understand where the motivation for that might come. We also thoroughly enjoyed listening to hilarious stories from Christiano's experience (a friend who, 20 years back, attended Catholic University) of living with a Japanese roommate in college and discovering (in some unforgettable ways) the cultural differences between Italians and Japanese, and the friendship that formed nonetheless! After our delicious dinner Michael played the guitar and we all sang together. Aldo had been living in California for the past semester, and he attended the weekly CL meetings at TAC and apparently he and Michael were the "song-masters" of the group. I think they were happy to do it together again in Milan!

One with all of us. :) (Not including Pietro and Christiano,
the friends who joined us for dinner later that night.)

     Next morning our faithful host and guide Gianluca (who'd spent quite a bit of time the day before researching trains, boat rides and tickets for us) took us to see Lake Como-about an hour train ride out of Milan. We met up with another of his friends, Andrea, who had been in the states with Gianluca and who Michael had met briefly while they were on a road trip in California. The four of us had a really awesome time; Como is a beautiful, rather quiet town with a big church (surprise) and lots of old, cobblestone streets.

OUR horses were real.

There was a Christmas market of sorts still going on right next to the lake, and we also found (and paid to ride on) a merry-go-round (I think the other little child on it thought we were weird). We had lunch at a little pizza place on a side street, and then headed to the water to take a boat ride across the lake to Belagio. It was a beautiful day and it was so neat to see all the little villages around the lake, each with its own church with a steeple sticking up over everything else.

     In Belagio we did a lot of walking and exploring the tiny, quaint streets that led steeply uphill, and we took a long walk all around and enjoyed the old houses and restaurants hiding away and the beautiful gardens and sail boats on the water. After a relaxing (second?) lunch by the water we took the bus back, another lovely trip with a slightly different beautiful view of the lake and villages as the sun set.

We walked again through the square with the church, there was a Christmas light show going on, so there was snow and angels and trees projected onto all the buildings, and people everywhere. We got on the train to go home, and then Michael made a nice dinner (he was the chef for the trip) and another of Gianluca's friends, Christina, came over and we had a good conversation and played a game of pictionary telephone.  (Which we soon discovered isn't quite as hilarious with four people who sometimes have trouble understanding each others' languages, let alone their sense of humor...)

Walking on a wall in Belagio.

That night we stayed up late trying to figure out the next leg of our trip, since Gianluca's family was coming home the next day, and we ended up booking a train to Venice for early the next morning and an airbnb there for a few days. It was a little daunting, since we wouldn't have a Venetian Gianluca to help us, our airbnb host spoke mostly Chinese, and we don't know much Italian, but we just booked our train tickets and got ready to get up bright and early to get to the station and see what happened!
   

Photo credit: Michael

    Here are links to full albums of recent pictures I've been using for the blog:
Milan-- https://goo.gl/photos/yoKERoFLy4q3qZnM6

Budapest-- https://goo.gl/photos/9ZoCCjveaGaAsbyD8

Christmas in Trumau-- https://goo.gl/photos/iBKX36LFU5brkmKt8

Budapest from a few months ago-- https://goo.gl/photos/J6SV4nryeeSbpeZj7

Budapest Round Two

   

     I'm at home now, after a good house cleaning session. We're listening to Rascal Flatts, enjoying our cozy Christmas tree while watching the snow fall outside, and waiting for Mom, Dad, Rosie and Rachel to get back from their Italy trip! Claire is making cookies to welcome them with. Praise God for family, Christmas lights, snow and coziness!

   

Outside the car
after we successfully
made it to Budapest.

     Our Budapest trip all began smoothly and as planned, the five of us piled into the van on time and began our drive to Sopron, right on the border of Hungary. I wanted Madeleine and Michael to see all the beautiful old buildings we had found there, and so that was our first destination. Michael drove, I was co-pilot, and Madeleine, Rosie and Rachel goofed around in the back seat and kept everybody cheerful. (They also helped navigate when my phone would freak out later in the trip, it often politely asked Michael to make a U-turn on the freeway.) We arrived safely, the drive was only about 40 minutes. We realized we didn't know how to find the Old Town where we had been last time, since I had only told my phone to direct us to Sopron, and nothing more specific (silly me). My Austrian phone wasn't able to make connection in Hungary, so we drove down a one way street the wrong way, got out of that predicament and found parking, and then went on a hunt for our favorite part of the city.

We enjoyed jumping and sliding on frozen puddles along the way (you can never get enough out of those amazing little guys) and then somehow we ended up coming across the church sort of hidden among the other buildings that we had found last time, and when we discovered that, Rachel and I remembered how to find our way around to the the rest of the places we'd been. It was a little miracle, since we really had no idea where we had parked in relation to where we'd hoped to go, or how big the town was and which direction we should head. We just walked down a main street until I felt like we should turn right, then all of a sudden we recognized some things and there we were! We stopped by a bank and got some Hungarian money, and bought some weird pastries. We walked around the same places we did last time, but no Gelato this time since it was so cold.

Madeleine and Rosie found
 a wine bottle in the Castle wall...

We were there for a few hours, and at about 1pm we decided to head back to the car to drive to Budapest. Unfortunately I hadn't thought through the timing very well, and when we plugged our new destination into my phone, we were going to arrive at least an hour after our airbnb host was expecting us and I didn't have a way of contacting him. We didn't want him waiting around for us, so we just decided to keep driving, and pull over at a place where there might be wifi so we could text him and let him know our arrival would be later than we had told him. So off we went!

    We drove about 15 minutes, and Michael started noticing the gears being funny on the car, and we could smell some burning rubber or something (we had noticed the same smell the day before and Dad had taken it to the mechanic and gotten it "taken care of..."). We were looking for a place with wifi, and found ourselves in a small not very promising town for that, just houses here and there and a grocery store. We came to a stop sign, realizing that we were not likely to find a place in that town where our phones would work, when we noticed large amounts of smoke pouring out the front of the car. Thus began our approximately five hour "stranded in random Hungarian town with no working phone" adventure!

     It was really pretty interesting, actually, since we hardly ever have really stumbling logistical issues. There we were, all pumped to go spend a day and a half in Budapest together, with an airbnb booked, one day to go to Budapest in because we had limited time with Madeleine and Michael, no working car, in a freezing cold town as it was getting dark and no way to contact anybody because we were in a different country- although we were only about an hour away from home. 

     So what did we do? Well, while Rosie and Rachel stayed warm and no doubt helped the process along by their presence and by willing the phones to work and I tried to look helpful while being confusedly interested in the fact that something had actually gone "wrong" and wondered what normal people do when that happens, given that we were all there alive and had money and company but just didn't quite know what to do with ourselves...God worked his work through our competent driver and master nurse sister!

Michael and Madeleine just began thinking and trying one thing after another in order to get a hold of somebody who could help, which would involve finding a way to make a phone work. We had a couple numbers we could call on my phone, but only got automated messages in Hungarian.

Waffle-cone thingie from
the Christmas Market outside St. Steven's.

I could try to describe the whole process, but basically we spent maybe 45 minutes listening to Madeleine calling various phone people in Europe or the US until she somehow got data on her phone and could contact Dad over Facebook. After that, I think Dad spent those next five hours being the middle man with our rental people and car insurance, and we hung out in a grocery store parking lot (we drove the car a few hundred meters and parked it there), bought some groceries, cleared ourselves from the suspicion of shoplifting that fell on us because Michael was eating a bun in the store (we'll definitely learn how to say "I bought this already" in Hungarian for next time...), had a delicious car picnic, met some friendly Italian men who came to tow our car, then carried our bundled selves and luggage into a cosmetics store and Michael and I played with the kids' wooden toy car play set while we waited to hear about a rental car. I couldn't have thought of a better group of people to get stuck in Hungary with. :) 

In front of Fisherman's Bastion
and St. Matthias Church.

     After a while the need for a bathroom meant we carried our stuff out into the dark and cold, crossed the highway and trekked along the side of the road to a loud bar (with a bathroom!) and bought a beer and a few weird sweet juice drinks that we called our "Crappys." (I think the correct term was "Cappy").

   

On our way up to the Palace
on the Buda side of the city.

Some of us took naps around the table there, and finally Dad told us that we should be contacted about a new rental car within the "next ten minutes." Hurray! We were still determined to go to Budapest even though it was getting pretty late (our airbnb host, Peter, had been notified and said that we could come as late as we wanted and that he had left wine and chocolate there for us.) Ten minutes turned into an hour, but eventually a little five seater car made it's way to our Hungarian Crappy Bar and we did a quick bit of paperwork and were off again! 

     We made it to Budapest, spent a good half hour looking for parking, and when we finally found a spot and tried to lock up to begin our walk to the airbnb we discovered we couldn't unlock the car from the outside with our key. (We hadn't closed all the doors yet, so there was no real problem.) This began the long stream of jokes about our next rental car that we would receive after this one had locked us out forever, disappeared or exploded. 

 
 But none of those things happened and we arrived at our airbnb (grateful for that wine and chocolate), and then Michael and I went back out to find pizza to bring back. We took a detour and got to see the Parliament building all lit up over the water (we didn't know we'd end up staying late enough the next day to see it in the dark with the girls also, but I'm so glad we did, it's not something you want to miss). 

Across the water from Parliament!

     Next morning Michael went out early and got us all breakfast, and then we went off to explore the city! There were several Advent/Christmas markets still going, so we explored those and walked across the bridge and along the Old Castle/Palace. We visited St. Mathias church and Fisherman's Bastion again, and then took a boat ride on the Danube when it got dark! It was so nice to sit down (we'd been walking all day) and cruise along enjoying our lukewarm hot chocolate and singing Christmas carols or our various three part harmonies we used to sing with all our sisters. We were sitting outside on the deck because there was no room inside, and it was much nicer that way even though it was cold. We had fresh air, a clearer view and freedom to sing! After that we walked back to our car which we half expected to find crashed at the bottom of the hill where we had parked it, or completely covered in parking tickets...but all was well. On the way the girls stopped by a shoe store while Michael and I waited in Starbucks, and they got Madeleine some much needed boots. As we left the city Madeleine said, "Guys, I'd like to congratulate us all because we did that whole trip and never once stopped at any of the McDonalds!"

     Then we drove all the way to Trumau, with a quick stop at McDonalds, and got a good laugh out of listening to Michael try to communicate with the drive-through lady with his non-existent German: "Shprekin the Inglish?" confidently combining all sorts of unidentified accents into made up German phrases.  

     When we got home we watched "It's a Wonderful Life" and drank gin and tonics because it was Madeleine's last night with us in Trumau. :) And there you go, our Budapest adventure. :)

      I hope this description wasn't too detailed in the random logistics, I just found those little mishaps to make clear the fact that time spent together with happy attitudes and people you love can turn many a challenge into a wonderful trip and adventure, one far more interesting than what one might have planned beforehand! Thank you Lord!

The whole team. :)

Christmas Break

As busyness increases, the time for blogging decreases, and thus I have way too much to say when I finally find time! But at least I won't lack for material, and I'll try to relate what I can remember. 

Getting ready for the school Thanksgiving
dinner!

Irene enjoying the
snow from our balcony.

     School finished up on the 17th of December after a week of finals for Rosie and me. Our exams were all oral, and so we had an entire week to prepare for five or six 15 minute conversations. That ended up being challenging in a different way than I would think, mostly because it didn't actually require a ton of extra work that one might be expecting to do over finals week. Consequently I spent a lot more time wondering what and how much to study than I did actually doing it. Rosie did a better job of just sitting down and going over what she had learned diligently, and in the end we both did fine and were glad for break.

Our lovely Jenny
helping prepare for
Thanksgiving dinner!

     We had one week after school and before Madeleine arrived, and so we prepared for Christmas and looked forward to seeing a familiar face from across the world! We got tickets to the Nutcracker at the Slovakian National Theater in Bratislava, Slovakia's capital. It was right next to a big Advent Market, so we explored that and then watched a beautiful show in the small, historical theater. It was small enough that we could see the dancers very well, and hear the sound their shoes made on the floor.

After we saw the Nutcracker. Everybody's wearing
hats I finally finished making!

The Advent Market was very cold, and very Christmassy. There was no snow, but they had a giant Christmas tree set up with a life size creche scene under it, and several stands selling strings of dried oranges, limes, cinnamon and all sorts of Christmas-smelling goodness. We bought several to decorate our flat with, and also tried the traditional Christmas drink they were selling. In Austria it's called Gluhwein and is basically hot wine. I think it's pretty weird and can't take more than a few sips, but it's pretty famous and people seem to like it! They had a traditional Slovakian band playing, and Jakie and I danced the Polka and tried to avoid pumping into people with hot wine.

One of the stalls at the
Bratislava Advent Market.

Vienna on Rachel's birthday!

     Rachel's birthday was the 18th, and Mom, Rosie, Claire and I went to Vienna to explore the Advent Markets there. We bought plenty of beautiful Christmas presents, (Christmas shopping is much easier and more fun to do at those markets than at home in the mall or wherever else!) and we tried a bunch of the different kinds of food they were selling. While we were out it started to snow, and we thoroughly enjoyed walking down the streets lit up with Christmas lights with snow falling all around. Quite the new experience for us Californians! Dad picked us up in our van and we made our way home for dinner and a movie. While we did birthday things inside, it snowed outside, and we took some breaks to run around barefoot on the deck and enjoy it.

Snow on our deck, and signs
 of cold feet.

Another day we went to the Advent Market at Heiligenkreuz and got more beautiful things and helped support various monasterys at the same time.

     We spent some time Christmas decorating, picking a tree, trip planning, and getting ready for Madeleine and her two nursing school friends to arrive. They came on the 21st, and after the first joyful hello tackles, we all went over to lunch in the girls building on campus, because a kind friend invited the whole family. We told him we'd have three extra people, and since he was serving fish he just said if there wasn't enough, Jesus had multiplied fish before and might very well do it again. It was a delicious lunch, and we had a relaxing afternoon and evening with Madeleine and her friends.

     We learned how to make really neat paper stars to decorate our tree with, and those stars, combined with popcorn strings and ornaments from Advent Markets in Vienna, Bratislava, Berlin and Prague, (Madeleine brought us several from her travels before arriving here) as well as beautiful handmade decorations from our Montrose family all made up our simple and lovely tree for this year. 

We found a tree!

     Next day Rosie, Jacinta, Rachel, Madeleine and her friends Jen and Rachel, and I all went to Vienna. We enjoyed looking at the Advent Markets again, and also got to go into the Albertina, a big art museum right in the middle of Vienna. Then we saw Stephan's dome and had pizza, met up with Dad our faithful driver, and came home in time to watch Muppet Christmas Carol with our friends at the ITI. We watched the movie with what seemed like 10000 little kids, who more or less behaved themselves and the entire room only erupted in loud screams and yells a few times. One little boy named Johnny who sat next to me loved to lean over and explain to me what was going on throughout... When the Marley brothers appeared: "When your heart is painted black that means you're a ghost." It was nice to have things clarified.

The Kolassa boys--friends
from ITI. :)

That day we finally managed to stand our tree up, using a stand that Dad built, since we didn't think we had one here. We bought a rather expensive one and tried to use it, but the tree didn't fit. So Dad returned it and decided to buy the materials and make one instead. He bought the wood, saw, nails and whatever else he needed and worked away. In the end he had a nice, sturdy tree stand built into the tree. Unfortunately there was no way to put the tree in water with this stand, but it's lasted pretty well all the same. When Dad tried to think of a place to put his tools, he thought of outside on an out-of-the way part of our deck, so he went over there and set down his tools. On doing so he discovered that he had placed them right on top of a nice, functional tree stand hiding on our deck.  So now we have two, but our tree was already nailed into the first and it looks nicer anyway. 

     

We have light from Bethlehem!

We had a really great Christmas day; we received a huge box of presents from Grandma Judy so we were well supplied and did our usual several hour long, one-at-a-time present opening session. We had a candle that was lit from the light of Bethlehem. We are told that every year in Bethlehem where Jesus is said to have been born, the Patriarch goes into the cave and a fire lights up on the rock, and he brings the flame out to the people. That same flame is sent all over Europe by plane, and then on horseback to all the churches. So on Christmas Eve we walked over to our Parish church, saw the horses and lit our candle from the light of Bethlehem. (The horses were transported by car I think...perhaps in the old days they actually transported it by horse and now it's just the tradition...) 

Irene making good use
of her face paints.

     Irene received some face paint for Christmas, so Rachel and I got very decorated throughout the day, and went to the ITI Christmas dinner with very colorful faces. We had a lovely dinner, everybody contributed something, and then afterwards we played games for a long time. We began with charades, and then the "song game," which consisted of Irene firing her unloaded dart gun at somebody, giving them five seconds to think of a song to sing, then she'd immediately shoot somebody else and they had to begin a new one. So we jumped from song to song for nearly two straight hours, and went to bed with a hundred songs running through our heads.

      Next day my boyfriend Michael arrived at the Vienna airport and I went to meet him, and then we trained to the Vienna city center and had a great time looking at the Christmas decorated city and getting lost because we were relying on my navigation skills.

It all worked out though, Dad picked us up (again, he's the best) and we made it safely back to Trumau. We had planned to go to Budapest with Madeleine and Michael and the older girls on the 29th, and so Michael had to practice driving with our car. He drove it around Trumau for a while, Dad giving little tips and me working very hard to hold back snarky comments, and soon he was comfortable enough with it to drive us all to a nearby ruined castle. So we got to show Madeleine and Michael our favorite castle in Baden, I've posted pictures of it before. That night we had a cookie party planned by Rosie; we brought a bunch of ingredients down to the common kitchen in the boys building, invited our ITI friends and had a loud, chaotic, really fun cookie making/decorating session.

Our Baden Castle!

It was fun having my friends meet Michael, since for the last few months they seemed to talk more about him coming than I did. :) We tried to sing some Christmas carols after our party, but there were too many energetic little boys jumping about, and so it sort of fizzled into watching Muppet Treasure Island with a big group on a small computer. 

     Claire's birthday (the 28th) was to be a stay at home day, and though they ended up going shopping for a while, for the most part we had a great family and friend time in our cozy flat in Trumau! We had brunch, and then while the others went to the mall Michael and I went to the Byzantine Liturgy and I showed him around the Schloss where we have classes. When the others got back we did some Budapest prep, stole some bikes and went for a beautiful ride in the cold through fields and little neighborhoods, and then invited some friends over for dinner and games. 

     We've also fit in several wonderful skype sessions with Margaret and the Montrose family, so good to see all their faces at Christmas time! We miss our family, it's sort of odd having Christmas with only half of us, yet it makes us especially grateful for the family who are here and for the ones who came all this way to spend Christmas with us!

     Next day was our Budapest adventure, which turned out to be much more of an adventure (in the real sense of the word) than we had planned. But I think I'll tell about that in another installment. :)

Enjoying the snow in Vienna!