And Then There Was Light: St. Paddy's day, Purim and sunshine!

I meant to post earlier than this, but I’ve been distracted by absolutely gorgeous weather. It’s been hovering around 60 with sunny blue skies for pretty much the past week, so when I haven’t been in the classroom, I’ve been outside making the most of it. Sadly Alex, my usual sunny day buddy, hasn’t been here to frolic in the sunshine with me since he’s on his high school’s trip to England. Poor him.

Mentionable school moments:

- In one class we’re learning “I like” which almost all of the kids pronounce as “I lick” which is unfortunate but often hilarious. Example: “I lick cats”.

- I taught about St. Patrick’s day in a bunch of classes and in one of the CE1/CE2 groups (the littlest ones) the lesson quickly evolved into “how to catch a leprechaun 101” which I should have put a stop to sooner than I actually did since I was pretty amused by the whole thing.

- My Skype teaching has been moved to Monday afternoons which I rather like seeing as the sooner I can get it over with the better.

- Example of the things only young minds can get away with: we were discussing the idea of the melting pot vs. tossed salad metaphor in one class and one girl absolutely insisted that all Africans and all Asians looked the same. The teacher and I both tried to convince her it wasn’t true, but she just would not let it go. I felt a little uncomfortable on behalf of the one Chinese girl in the class.

- As I was just leaving the school one day last week, I saw one of my students running towards me. I assumed he was eager to show me something he’d found or ask me how to say the name of some wrestler in English, but instead he just gave me this big hug and looked up at me and said (in French) “class this morning was so great!” I almost died. Then a new kid in school who had seen the whole thing came up to me right afterwards and asked if I was the kid’s mother.

Other happenings of note:

- I was warned by Alex ahead of time that Wednesday of last week was known as “Père Cent” and was a Lorrainian tradition. It marks the 100 day countdown to when the high school seniors take the Bac (their equivalent to the SATs essentially). So to celebrate, they all dress up in costumes and parade the streets dousing each other in mass amounts of flour with the occasional (and far less pleasant I’d imagine) egg or condiment thrown in. They all seemed to get really into it and the costumes were far more impressive than anything I’ve seen an American high schooler wear on Halloween. I’d say it’s definitely got March to the Rueb beat. I couldn’t help but think though how much flour was being wasted. The bakers of St. Dié must have been looking on and lamenting all the bread (figurative and literal) that could have been made.

- The Darou had a special St. Paddy’s Day event with a musical group confusingly named “Moussaka”. Despite the name, they did play some very Irish sounding jigs and it was a lot of fun. Though there was one song where they would abruptly stop playing every now and then and the crowd would have to yell “moussaka!”. Plus, every pint of Guinness came with a free shot of whiskey AND all of the waiters were wearing kilts (which, when I ignorantly pointed out were Scottish, I learned were apparently invented in Ireland. Or so the Irish claim. Who knew!?)

Alex gives St. Patrick two big thumbs up

- It was Purim last weekend and since there’s no Jewish bakery in town (or Jews for that matter), I decided to make hamentaschen myself. They weren’t as pretty as I was hoping, but pretty tasty. I also made noodle kugel which gentiles Alex and Estelle tried and agreed was extremely bizarre, but good (at least that’s what they said to my face).

my not-so-pretty but yummy hamentaschen

- Lastly, I discovered that my favorite German discount grocery store is closing and I am currently reeling over this great loss.

Wieners Galore: my trip to Austria

Back in St. Dié now having had a fantastic February break. Vienna (and it’s accompanying excursions) was great. Hannah was a fantastic hostess and eastern-central Europe was full of goodies to explore.

Since Hannah had to work during the week, I did some solo exploring in the mornings and would meet up with her for lunch and activities in the afternoons. On Monday morning I explored Vienna’s main market—a HUGE upgrade from St. Dié’s handful of stands and when I went to meet Hannah for lunch, our original plans for dining at a well-known sandwich shop were foiled by a man dying in the place minutes before. After having found an alternative lunch option, we strolled the extensive gardens of Schönbrunn, the Hapsburg’s summer palace before going inside for a tour. After that we went to a museum with wavy floors designed by an artist obsessed with the idea of spirals followed by a traditional Viennese café (where waiters wear tuxedos! Class-y.) For dinner Hannah took me to a traditional Austrian restaurant where I had the schnitzel for which the city was named (kidding, but it’s no joke how much they love schnitzel here) and some tasty potato salad.

Schönbrunn and the museum with uneven floors

By Tuesday, the dead guy in the sandwich shop had been cleared out, so we went back and tasted a “Vienna institution” which are essentially little open-faced sandwiches with various toppings, each pureed into a mousse and smeared on a piece of bread. Despite my initial skepticism about this mousse-cuisine, it was pretty tasty. Hannah went off to Tutor and I went off in search of the Jewish Museum. When I got a little lost and asked a local for directions, he told me that the Jewish Museum, like EVERYTHING ELSE in Europe, (he didn’t include that last part) was closed for renovations but as I had walked way further than I should have, I was actually just around the corner from the Jewish Quarter Museum, so I did that instead. Afterwards I met Hannah at the movie theater where we took in yet another Vienna institution: The Third Man. It’s a British movie but it takes place in post-war Vienna and the city is rather proud of it, seeing as the movie screens daily and there are walking tours based on the film, tours of the sewers where a famous scene is set, as well as a museum whose most prized possession is the zither used to record the music. To be fair, it is a truly great film. This was not enough to get Hannah and I to tour the city’s sewer system however. After the movie we went to dinner at a funky little hole-in-the wall place near Hannah’s apartment. The atmosphere was so cozy and convivial that even our waiter sat down at the table with us to take our order and give us our bill.

Wednesday was pretty low key. I strolled around the city a bit in the morning and met Hannah at an art museum in the afternoon. We saw a great exhibition on the “blue rider” movement (Kandinsky, Klée, etc), some classy palatial apartments, Durer's rabbit, and a show of Mel Ramos with masterpieces like this one:

Thursday was the first of my day trips: Bratislava! I found a really funky coffee shop, walked around a castle, saw Europe’s narrowest house (now a fast-food restaurant), dined on the traditional Slovakian dish of potato dumplings served with local sheep’s cheese, bacon and sour milk, 63 CENT BEER! , and had an all-in-all pleasant visit. As soon as I got back to Vienna, (it was only about an hour by bus, apparently Vienna and Bratislava are the “twin cities”. Here I was thinking it was Minneapolis and St. Paul…) Hannah whisked me away to dinner with a couple of friends--one American and one Austrian who spoke flawless English (and who knew about Carleton!). The food was good and the waiter was just about the cutest old man you’ve ever seen. When we asked him about the beer on tap, he came back a little later toting his two pairs of glasses and a book about Austrian beers, so we all learned about it together.

Bratislava, Bryndzové Halušky (the national dish of Slovakia),

and the narrowest house in Europe

On Friday Hannah and I went to the outskirts of the city out by the forest. We had coffee looking out on the Vienna vineyards and the city beyond. Quite lovely. Afterwards we went to the Prater, the city’s carnival park thing made famous by the Ferris wheel and it’s appearance in (surprise surprise) The Third Man. The steep ticket price combined with Hannah’s fear of heights deterred us from riding, but we did get some pictures from the ground.

After that we went home and watched “Sissi” a really cheesy movie about emperor Franz Josef’s wife which we had been inspired to watch after touring all the impressive palaces. Then it was off to the train station to pick up Tricky and another traditional dinner in a typical Heudinger- a wine house outside of the city.

After his four hour train ride from Innsbruck the previous day, Tricky wasn’t too keen on another long ride to Budapest, so we decided to stay a little closer to home. We got a day-pass train ticket and went to a couple cute little Austrian towns out west from Vienna. First was Melk with its impressive monastery and beautiful views and afterwards we took a one-car train out to the town of Krems (which sadly we didn’t get to until after dark but we could still tell it was a cute town). We went back to Vienna for dinner, where Tricky and I got our wing fix (he is my wingman after all). Our dinner here was colored by a man dressed like Santa Claus going from table to table trying to sell cards of himself in Hawaii.

On Sunday I took advantage of being in a city to get something St. Dié is completely lacking in: Chinese food! We went to lunch at an all you can eat Chinese buffet where we ate so much that it basically counted as our dinner as well. Afterwards, we strolled around, went to the Wien Museum which was free that day and went to yet another classical Viennese café. Later, while Hannah studied up on school shootings (not her choice of subject) for her lesson plan the next day, I decided last minute (which I could do amazingly) to see a concert by the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra. A standing seat was only 5 euro and I even had a pretty decent view! Here is what I heard:

Kodály: Tänze aus Galánta für Orchester

Liszt: Klavierkonzert Nr. 1 Es-Dur

Brahms: Symphonie Nr. 1 c-Moll, op. 68

Lovely.

On Monday, because I had my heart set on it, I went on a solo excursion to Budapest. I definitely made the right choice—it was super cool. I was expecting it to be more like Bratislava in size and feel, but it wasn’t, it was a real city! It was beautiful, with lots of history but also lively and funky and very livable it seemed. There’s the walled off “castle hill” which is the really touristy section because of the famous church and fisherman’s bastion pictured below but the rest of the city (separated into two parts by the Danube: Buda and Pest) was really nice as well. I drank coffee in the former AVH Headquarters, lunched on true Hungarian goulash and rode the metro which seemed like it was from a couple decades ago which was sort of cute, and which, unlike all other undergrounds which smell like urine, smelled deliciously of fresh pastries. Mmmmm…

Budapest!

My last day in Vienna, I went out to the Belvedere, a Hapsburg palace turned art museum which houses, among other things, Klimt’s “the Kiss”. After art, I strolled around the gardens which you can tell would be lovely if not for everything being dead or drained. That seems to have been a common theme on this trip. Oh well.

The Belvedere and one of it's works

entitled "the enraged and vengeful gypsy"

Other general observations:

-Soooooo many school groups. There was at least one group at every museum I went to on this trip. Austrian kids must never have to go to school!

-I may have already mentioned this in passing but everything is closed for renovations. In some cases, I’m convinced that it’s just a front and the museum or church never had an interior to begin with, like a movie set.

Getting home was a little stressful. The flight from Vienna to Belgium went off without a hitch, but the train from Brussels to Luxembourg was late which caused me to miss the next series of trains, including the last one to St. Dié for the night. I ended up having to find the cheapest (and seediest) hotel I could find in Metz and continued on the next morning. And now it’s back to work!

Brussels: Let's get (manneken) pissed!

Feb/march break is upon us and it started with a great big Belgian Beer Summit bang! Erik and I met up with Hannah, Tricky and Kevin in Brussels on Friday. It was a great couple of days. While we were able to fit in some other things, our cultural exploration of the city consisted primarily of food and beer.

Day 1:

The first afternoon we had some lunch and promptly set out to find the best French fries in Brussels, based on a tip Kevin had picked up from a friend. When we got off at the bus stop where it was supposed to be, we were a little confused and disappointed since there didn’t seem to be any beacon of French-fried goodness to be seen. Then we realized that what we thought was a public restroom in the middle of the open square with a long line trailing behind it was what we were looking for. We each picked our sauce and were handed a giant (small and large seemed to be the same size: huge) paper cone of fries. As we reveled in our delicious find, we were entertained by a girl playing soccer with a stick.

Having downed a huge cone of fries each, we decided to bypass dinner and go straight to beer. We headed over to a bar Tricky had heard about which serves 2004 kinds of beer BUT couldn’t actually get into that part as it was super crowded. Though there was a section right above it that had an impressive-enough collection of Belgian beers on tap. We each had a couple of rounds and thoughtfully rated each one. Hannah kept a list of all the beers we had (not a single repeat!) over the course of the weekend and I think at some point I’ll add it to the ones I’ve tried at the Darou and publish it.

After beer it was back to our über classy hotel for socktoberfest festivities. We had bought a can of chickpeas and some salad dressing at the supermarket earlier on, and for our traditional Socktoberfest meal we combined the two to make a surprisingly delicious (and more surprisingly tunafish-tasting) snack. We drank a little more beer, watched a little Russia Today on the TV (apparently Russians are really into sushi these days) and went to bed.

Day 2:

The next day there were waffles (sadly not as good as the ones I’d had with the family on my last trip to Belgium, but certainly tasty) and we saw the city’s famous peeing boy who was decked out in his carnivale costume.

Manneken Pis--Brussel's BELOVED ode to public urination.

We checked out the Magritte museum and then had lunch at a delicious asian noodle house complete with a noodle-making/pulling girl in the window who we watched for several mesmerizing minutes while waiting for a table.

Then we set out for “the Beer Museum” which we were a little skeptical about but figured couldn’t pass up seeing as it was beer summit and all. This turned out to be more of an adventure than we thought since apparently there were two people with the last name Bertrand important enough to name a street after in Brussels. So we took the metro out to the first Bertrand street which was a pretty residential/sketchy area, only to discover that the address didn’t exist and we actually wanted to be at the other Bertrand. We got our bearings, had a tasty little ice cream break at a cute little place back in civilization, and then continued on our way. The Beer Museum was basically just an enormous room filled with beer bottles and a little fake-saloon.

Tricky playing along at the Beer Museum's bar facade

It did however come with a very informative pamphlet of all the different kinds of Belgian beers and a free glass of their special brew. The best part though, was the adorable wait staff who were all over the age of 70. The man who helped us was particularly cute. ( At a vote later on in the trip, he was named “person of the trip”. Second place went to a tall guy we’d seen in the metro station.)

After that we went back to the fry place and shared a little pre-beer appetizer and headed off to a bar Tricky Hannah and Kevin had found earlier and where the wait staff was super eager to advise us on our beer selections. One particularly enthusiastic waiter, when serving us a round, proclaimed “welcome to my paradise!” The beer was drunk and the votes were tallied. (That night we also spotted the person who would be voted “most sculpted beard of the trip”.)

And that was it. Short but sweet. We got up at four in the morning so Tricky Hannah and I could catch our flight to Vienna and Kevin and Erik could get their early trains to their respective homes.

As soon as we arrived, Hannah and Tricky went right to work showing me around Vienna. We had delicious falafel, Vienna’s famous sachetorte (a tasty chocolate-apricot cake), and I learned to avoid tourist traps like the guys dressed like motzart who roam the streets of Vienna looking for victims to pay exorbitant amounts for shitty concerts and tours.

I think it’s going to be a great week!