Christmas Markets

I'm writing this at the end of January. The whole country seems more disgruntled than usual. It's cold. It's dark. The streets are covered in a nasty brown salt-and-slush mixture that soaks my boots and leaves white stains on them. I am constantly cold despite the fact that I keep the radiator in my room cranked up to 5. (Radiators are standard here and 5 is as high as any of them seem to go- I keep wishing some one would invent a Spinal Tap-style heater for me. One that could go "up to 6" would be a dream come true.) I run to catch the tram every day not just because I'm running late, but also because I want to spend that much less time outside.

All of this has made me realize just how pleasant Christmastime was in Graz. Picture this: a city square dotted with little huts selling various gifts, foods, and warm drinks, and the entire city gathered around to shop, chat, and enjoy the gemütlich Christmas atmosphere. This was the scene at the Christmas markets -Christkindlmärkte in German- that sprang up throughout the city, which was covered in white lights and various decorations (a giant Advent calendar was even projected onto the outside of the town hall).

Graz had 6 or 7 Christkindlmärkte throughout the city center. The markets can be divided into two categories: 1) those selling Austrian things to mostly foreigners 2) those selling foreign things to mostly Austrians. Really every one went to the markets for the same reason- to buy unique Christmas gifts, and of course Austrian gifts wouldn't seem like anything new or special for Austrians. But the first type was the type that I frequented and have part of pictured here.


Most traditional markets will basically sell a few standard things. There are always stands selling Lebkuchen, which is like gingerbread but milder and with a honey flavor (I can live without it) and often comes in hearts that say various mushy gushy things in German like "Komm Kuscheln" ("come snuggle").

There are also always stands selling wood-cut, mercury glass, and orange- and cinnamon-scented  ornaments.

 Plenty of stands sell various types of Schnapps, oils, and vinegar (preferably organic because Austrians- who smoke like chimneys- just can't IMAGINE putting preservatives into their bodies).

I thought roasted chestnuts were a figment of Nat King Cole's imagination, but stands selling them can be found throughout the city. Chestnuts are huge over here. On the Feast Day of St. Martin, the Name Day of St. Martin, or some sort of holiday having to do with some one named "Martin", Laura (Italian roommate) and some of her Italian friends came over and made an Italian chestnut flour cake for this mysterious day. The cake looked chocolatey and delicious but turned out to taste liken hardened paste. The only ingredients were chestnut flour and water.
I haven't cared for chestnuts since, but Austrians buy "heisse Maroni" wrapped up in newspaper ranging in size from 1/4 liter to an entire liter.

There are also always stands inexplicably selling puppets.

It's really easy to get swept up in the charming, old-world feel of the markets, but as you're shopping you also have to keep in mind that Austria is part of a 21st century global economy, so it's easy for them to buy and sell hecho in China products. This is best demonstrated by stands like "Engelwelt" ("Angel World"), where you could buy the same products you'd find in an Oriental Trading catalogue.

Luckily the question of whether the products at the Christkindlmärkte are "authentically" Austrian or not ceases to bother you after a few glasses of Glühwein. Glühwein is mulled wine, served at every Christkindlmarkt, and is wonderful for a number of reasons.
First, It's is delicious. It's spiced and sweet and tastes like Christmas.
Second, It's is practical. Austria is cold. The cup of Glühwein is warm and alcoholic.
Third, Glühwein is profitable. You can KEEP the mug that it's served in! When you buy a cup of it you pay an extra 2-3 Euros that you get back if you return the mug. If you want another cup they just refill the mug you already have and charge you for the price of the Glühwien, but not for the mug again. Because the price of the mug is absorbed by the price of your first glass, it's almost like you're getting the mug for free. I absolutely love free things (I look forward to going to the dentist so I can get the mini toothpaste and Dr. Bradley Bath, D.D.S. toothbrush) and because of this I now have set of 6 Christkindlmarkt mugs.
 They're nice-looking enough to make my mom, who doesn't drink coffee, only drinks tea seldomly, and has more mugs than she could ever use, have a minor break down when she saw one at Christmas and found out that I didn't get one for her. Luckily my roommate came to the rescue and picked one up for her in Vienna.

Even during Advent it was dark, and it was definitely cold, but the streets were a little brighter when they were covered with Christmas lights, and the weather was a lot more bearable with a Glühwein crutch.

Note to Self: Classroom Time Is Not a Therapy Session

I'm slowly settling back into my routine after the best trip home ever. I got to meet Owen (!!!) and spend some quality time with him. I know we'll be best friends when I get back. I also met Reese, who, aside from her penchant for peeing on people's beds (bet you'll put "a door" at the top of your birthday list this year, won't you Ellie Bear?), is also very sweet. We had a great trip up to Chicago, complete with bread dumplings, I got to see all of my Evansville family, and I watched as many DVRed shows with Mommy as possible. I spent an entire week with Joel (which is unprecedented since we graduated) and even got to see Meggy O'Roark. I wasn't quite ready for it to be over.

My suitcase was lost on the way back, as I had a sneaking suspicion it would be. After three days of wearing the same clothes I became convinced that I would never see my wonderful blue Samsonite again and started compiling a list of the contents so I could hopefully be reimbursed by KLM (whose motto, ironically, is "the reliable airline"). As the list grew longer and longer I grew sadder and sadder. Coming to terms with the fact that you'll never see things like "Christmas presents from Grandpa and Uncle Sonny" and "Cabbage Patch Doll/Childhood Best Friend" again is a difficult task.
Luckily KLM eventually called to let me know that a suspect "matching my description" had been apprehended in Amsterdam, and a day later my rogue suitcase and all its contents were delivered to my door. So the saga of my suitcase had a happy ending, but I think all the worry I experienced because of it, combined with jet-lag and readjusting in general, contributed to my little incident in class 5c on Thursday.

The day's topic was unemployment in the US. We started with the facts and figures and then progressed into more personal territory. I told the kids about people I knew who had lost their jobs and how hard it was for my very-qualified friends to find jobs right now. Then it got REALLY personal. As I talked more and more the hour transformed into "Emily touchy-feely sharing time" and I poured my heart out to a group of 15 year olds, telling them how scared I was to not have a job next year, how awful it was to not have a plan, what a rude awakening it is to realize that it really isn't what but who you know that matters, and about how I really don't even know how to search for a job. I don't think they understood most of this (although whether it was because of the words I used or the fact that I showed emotion I'm unsure), which only made me more sad. Somehow this snowballed into me feeling like no one in the entire country of Austria understood me.

6 Ferrero Rochers and a nap later, though, I felt like a new person.

Arnold Was Here

One restless Saturday in December I took the bus out to Thal, which is notable for two reasons: it is the home of a famous church designed by Ernst Fuchs, and it is the home of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The town was small, but because I decided to go on an impulse, and because I'm not very good at being impulsive, I had no idea how to get to the church or any Arnie sights. I stopped in a Gasthaus (a restaurant/bar/local hangout) and asked for directions. The moment I stepped in, every person in the Gasthaus, all middle-aged men, turned to look at me. I asked for directions really quickly, said thank you, and left pretending not to understand the guys who were asking/yelling for me to have a drink with them. I probably should have expected the town that produced the terminator to seep testosterone from its pores.

The church turned out not to be too far away. It also turned out to be just as much of an acid trip as it looked like in pictures. The theme seemed to be "under the sea", with the floor and pews curving like waves and covered in pebbles that looked like they had come from the ocean floor. The glass in the windows was full of tiny bubbles, and all this was illuminated by reflecting lights and psychedelic colors. Sebastian and Flounder would have been more at home here than St. Jakob. The whole time I was there I had to suppress the urge to sing "Part of Your World" (it wouldn't have been the same without Meggy anyway). It's very Little Mermaid, but also looks like a place that might play music by the Doors and reek of patchouli, doesn't it?

Outside the church there was a little museum celebrating Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I heard that somewhere in the town you can see his childhood home and the row boat in which he proposed to Maria Shriver, but the best Schwarzenegger sight, in my opinion, was his school. It was locked so I couldn't go in, but I hope artistic execution of the painting/giant photo of Arnold's head on the outside (which basically says you can move mountains if you believe in yourself) makes your day just as much as it made mine.

Slovenia: A Case-Study in Happiness and Self-Portraiture

I had a few days off to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (not a joke), so I went to Ljubljana, which is the capital of Slovenia.

Slovenia is like the central-European Delaware. Very few people know where it is, and NO ONE can name the capital . To help us all out I'll provide maps:


As a side-note, it still blows my mind that Delaware is so close to NYC, New Jersey, AND
Maryland.

I wasn't expecting too much from Ljubljana. Let's Go didn't have much to say about it and I had trouble finding an actual person who had been to tell me anything about it, BUT Rick Steves made it sound nice. Because I placed blind faith in Rick Steves a long time ago and Ljubljana is only 2 1/2 hours away by train, I decided to go. Alone. Just like Rick Steves does.

This turned out to be one of the best decisions I've made since I've been here. I was completely charmed by this city.

My first pleasant surprise, and the moment in which I knew I wasn't in Austria anymore, was when I started interacting with people. Did the man on the train actually smile when he checked my ticket? Did that woman just say "excuse me" when she bumped into me? Did the waitress at the restaurant really act happy rather than inconvenienced to have me sit at her table?

Slovenians are not only nice, but also proud to be Slovenian. They take a lot of pride in their language (Preseren, their national poet is pictured with a muse to the left), history, and culture. (A note about Slovenian history and culture [which is chronicled on the doors to the cathedral, pictured right]: Slovenia is a Slavic country, and the Slovenian language is also Slavic. They're a part of the former Yugoslavia but have historically had and have the most stable economy and governmental infrastructure of any of those states. Therefore, their break from Yugoslavia in 1991 only took 3 days, they are now an EU member state, and they are on the Euro). Certain things are particularly Slovenian: painted panels on beehives (thought to help the bees recognize which home is theirs) and roofed haystacks (yeah, I'm not really clear about what these are either). Ljubljana's symbol is the dragon, which Jason supposedly slew when coming back on his quest for the Golden Fleece. The dragon is even on the man-hole covers, which I thought were pretty awesome.

The second pleasant surprise was how beautiful Ljubljana was. I heard it compared to Salzburg a lot, because the city center is fairly compact, a river runs through the middle, and a castle sits on a hilltop overlooking the city, but for me the similarities stopped there. Unlike in Salzburg, I wasn't body to body with crowds of American and Japanese tourists. I actually had room to breathe and enjoy the city. Good ol' Rick described Ljubljana as the next, next Prague, meaning that in the coming years Ljubljana will become more and more popular and crowded (probably as more and more people like me tell everyone how great it is... which makes me wonder if I should publish this).
Much of the city was designed by an architect in the early 20th-c named Joze Plecnik, who combined classical form and modern function to create really beautiful and practical designs. He has lots of bridges and buildings throughout the city, including the Tromostovje, or Triple Bridge, which spans across the river and connects the Old Town to the New Town, funneling pedestrian traffic into and out of Preseren Square (the main square) in three congestion-free directions. I happened to be the only person to visit the house, so I got a private tour from a really nice girl who spoke really good English. We only spent an hour together, but I'd like to think of her as my Slovenian BFF.
The architecture in Ljubljana was an interesting mixture of Medieval, Baroque, Art Noveau, and Modern Classical, but it was colorful and added vitality to the city. Though Graz is considered a student town, Ljubljana felt much younger, and the streets and cafes were crowded with 20-somethings rather than old ladies with bad dye-jobs and their rolling shopping bags trailing behind them.

The third and last pleasant surprise Slovenia offered me was the most, well, surprising. After a full two days of sight-seeing, including visits to the National Museum, Joze Plecnik House, an over-night stay in a former military prison-turned hostel, Tivoli Park, the city hall, the Contemporary History Museum, Preseren Square, and many, many churches (including the sensory-overloading Serbian Orthodox church, pictured right), I stood up at the castle, looked down at the city, smiled and enjoyed a foreign, warm, fuzzy feeling. It was a vaguely familiar feeling and after a while I realized that I had felt it before. After a while longer I realized I even had a name for it... HAPPINESS. To document this emotion I took lots of self-portraits (special thanks to my camera's self-timer function and the guy who took the picture at the Dragon Bridge- unlike in Austria he smiled when I asked him and didn't stare at my camera as if he had never seen such a contraption before. How refreshing!).
Picture 1: Happy on the Triple Bridge!
Picture 2: Happy on the Triple Bridge going towards the castle at night!
Picture 3: Happy at the Dragon Bridge!
Picture 4: Happy on the Triple Bridge in the opposite direction!
Picture 5: Happy at the castle with the wreath I bought at the market!


To conclude, I'd like to share one last thing that made me happy: this woman, sitting in a front pew in the cathedral... reading the newspaper.

Salzburg and Waking up Early: These Are NOT a Few of My Favorite Things

Last Saturday I woke up at 4:30.

AM.

Why and how could this possibly be necessary? Because I went to Salzburg with my Slavic friends on a mission to confirm my dislike of the city.

Two years ago I visited Salzburg by myself after European Studies and before going to visit Meggy. I had pretty high expectations for it because everyone I knew who had been there raved about how beautiful it was. Books and people told me that it was charming and the most pure example of a Baroque city anywhere in Europe. Even my beloved Let's Go led me to believe that if you have any sort of interest in classical music, you'll love Salzburg.

But both times I was just not impressed. Even on a sunny day Salzburg was monochrome, and not even an exciting chrome, but gray. Don't be fooled be the pictures- I picked the most colorful ones. And it's only exciting if you're obsessed with Mozart and/or the Sound of Music. I've never been a huge fan of Mozart, and because of Amy's aversion to Julie Andrews, the movies we watched as kids were Scamper the Penguin, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and George of the Jungle (this last one because my mom seems to have a thing for men in loin cloths), so Salzburg holds no niche-interest for me.

We walked into the city center and started at Mozartsgeburtshaus (birth house- it's big and yellow). I didn't want to go in (I went the last time I was there and the exhibits made use of too many trippy neon lights. Frankly it kind of creeped me out.) and hoped that none of my friends would either. Luckily it turns out that Slavs are a thrifty people and no one was willing to pay 6 Euros for a ticket.

Our next stop was St. Peter Friedhof (cemetery), which has the graves of both Mozart's sister and the torso of Joseph Haydn's brother Michael (I don't ask questions, I just read the guidebooks). The graves are all extremely well kept, especially considering the fact that many of these people died over a hundred years ago, and the tombstones are iron-works. My most well-spent euro bought me entry to the catacombs of the cemetery, although "catacombs" isn't really the right word for them. They're more a tunnel that's been dug into a mountain and go up rather than down. There are a few chapels along the way and the whole thing has a really covert, cave-like feeling. The catacombs led to a little overlook, where we stopped to take a gemeinsames Foto ("group picture"- my new German phrase!). The Russians are missing from the picture.At the Residenz (palace) most of us went to see an outdoor nativity set exhibit that Mom would have loved, while the Russians (whom I had never met before) took picture after picture in semi-clever poses with various sculptures. According to Yasha Russian girls love to do this more than any other nationality.
We saw other things, like the Mozartswohnhaus (the house that he lived in and the Slavs also didn't care to pay to visit), Mirabell Palace and its gardens, Getreidegasse (a famous street with lots of iron-worked Medieval signs- pictured above with the Russians in the foreground), and the cathedral (even though it's not heated we ducked in to warm up- it's also pictured above), which are all ok, but the highlight of the day was the fortress (Festung Hohensalzburg). It was only 5 Euros to go in, which included entry to the grounds and fortress itself (it's huge! and part of it is pictured), a visit to the Marionette Museum, and an audio tour that I would have paid a lot more for just because it was in English. I also have to admit that the view, of both the city and the countryside, from the top was great. On the way down (the fortress sits above the city, you can see it in the very first picture) I got a really pretty picture of the cathedral.
After all this sight-seeing our feet were frozen, even in boots, so we stopped to have a warm drink. The problem with this was that all of Austria and most of America seemed to be in Salzburg this weekend, and every tourist seemed to want to warm up at the same time. When we finally found a cafe there was only one table open with four seats for eight of us. Europeans are used to not having any personal space, though, so this wasn't a problem for my friends. Katinka and I shared a chair and I pretended that having a tiny Slovenian on my lap was normal for me.

We walked around the Christkindlmarkt (Christmas market) to kill time before our train left, and as we were leaving there was a countdown and light show (Austrians seem to go crazy for those) because the Christkind was visiting (an angel/spirit who comes on Christmas Eve and brings presents to good little Austrian children). Unfortunately we had to leave before the countdown was over, but I would have loved to have seen what the he looked like.

We got home around 11, totally exhausted. I did have a nice day, but mostly because the people I went with are really nice. The fortress and catacombs are well worth a visit, but I wouldn't have gone all the way to Salzburg just to see them. I think so many Americans go to Salzburg because they know it from the Sound of Music, and if the sights had a more personal meaning to me in such a way, I might like it more too. I think Graz is much prettier and pleasant than Salzburg, though, and I was happy to get home. When I have my midlife crisis and quit teaching to become the female Rick Steves I'll make note of all this in my guidebooks.

Do They Know It's Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving in Austria was interesting.

As you probably guessed, they don't celebrate it here. And they don't really understand it. You eat lots of food? You give thanks for things? You wear elastic-waist pants to the dinner table? You take a nap after doing the dishes? (OK, so the last two things are particular to the Feitl family, but still inexplicable to all of Austria)

In two of my classes we had Thanksgiving breakfasts (each class has a yearly breakfast and because it was the end of November they decided to have a Thanksgiving theme). I explained all the different Thanksgiving foods and how to prepare them to the kids, and they all signed up to bring different things.


Both breakfasts turned out really well. Students in both classes managed to find cranberries (they don't really eat them over here) and made cranberry sauce. We had assorted vegetables at both breakfasts and lots of delicious desserts. The teacher for both classes had the students name some things that they're thankful for, and I got to sit and just chat with them for a while. The students of 3b are 10 and 11 years old and absolutely adorable. The entire class is in the first picture, and the boy sitting next to me in the second picture is also from this class. The students of the other class, 5a, are 12 or 13 years old and past the cute stage but are great.

And now for the things they just didn't understand. My beloved American holiday turned out to have plenty of Austrian flair. I had explained sweet potatoes in detail to the students (long, orange potatoes that taste sweet), but at breakfast with 3b the sweet potatoes were regular white potatoes with sugar (in the first picture next to the dish with the lemon slices). I also explained that pumpkin pie was a dessert (they use pumpkin almost exclusively for savory things), but one of the pumpkin pies looked and tasted suspiciously like carrot cake with lemon icing (behind the "sweet potatoes" in the picture). In the breakfast with class 5a we didn't have roasted turkey, but turkey schnitzel (which the boys are eating in the last picture). They were all so proud of the things that they had brought in that I didn't have the heart to tell them that some of them were so very wrong.

So although the breakfasts were really fun, afterwards I still had a sweet potato-shaped hole in my heart. To fill this hole American roommate Zach and I made Thanksgiving dinner for Italian roommate Laura and Latvian roommate Yasha. I did the sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and stuffing, and made a failed attempt at gravy, and Zach did the turkey and vegetables. We used the turkey paper plates and napkins that Mommy mailed over, although it took a while to convince Yasha and Laura that it was okay to throw them away after using them (they're always curiously hesitant to believe that disposable products should be disposed of). Afterwards I did three of my favorite things: changed into pajama pants, video chatted with my family, and went to sleep.
And that's how I celebrated Thanksgiving in this mysterious land of schnitzel and sugared potatoes.

"I'm nice!"

Last Wednesday I went to Vienna for a Fulbright reception at the American Ambassador's house.
I always feel a little like a country mouse visiting the big city in Vienna. It's Austria's New York. Though Graz has over 200,000 people, you might as well be from a place like Darmstadt or Cowan. Vienna is not seen as Austria's biggest city, it's seen as Austria's ONLY city.

I got to Vienna early and met up with Emily, who is a Fulbrighter living in Linz, for my first experience with a Christmas market. We had a nice walk-around and I ate a lunch of apple strudel, a chocolate and banana smothered waffle, and Gluehwein (it's ok, I take vitamins). I'll explain more about the Christmas markets later.

After out little excursion we got ready to go to the ambassador's house for the reception. I wasn't sure how to dress for this, so I decided to wear black. I thought I looked like I was headed to a funeral, but the less color you wear the more Austrians seem to like you so I probably just blended in.

To get into the ambassador's house we had to give the guards our invitations and present a picture ID. This is probably the first function, save that party I went to at IU with Andrew, that I've had to be on the list to get into. If I had to use one word to characterize the rest of the night, though, I would say that it was nice.

The ambassador's house was nice. The ambassador and his wife were both nice. The food and wine they served were nice. But most of all, I was nice.

After we walked into the house and checked our coats and bags, we entered the main room to join the rest of the Fulbrighters. I spotted a group of people I knew from orientation, waved to them, and started to make my way over to them when someone suddenly stopped me. "Emily, this is Ambassador Eacho," the Austrian-American Fulbright director (on the left) said. The man standing next to him smiled at me, stuck out his hand, and said, "Hi, how are you?"

The reply seems simple enough. I had any number of adjectives to choose from: "Great!" "Wonderful!" "Fantastic!" "Good!" "Happy!"

But could I think of any of these? Nooooooooo. I was so flustered to realize that I was actually meeting the ambassador that I forgot all of the appropriate responses and replied, signature confused smile on my face, "I'm nice."

WHAT?! "I'm nice?" Really, Emily?

To prove that I really was an articulate master of the English language I decided to chat with the ambassador longer. I made some small talk about something I don't even remember now (I've apparently suppressed the wrong part of that conversation) and think that I probably did redeem myself.

The rest of the night went much more smoothly. We listened to remarks from the Ambassador and from a few of the Fulbright people and had a little time to mingle (aka network). In any case, I don't think my grant can be revoked over the misuse of adjectives, so I'm probably safe. Furthermore, the ambassador doesn't speak a word of German. I consider us even.