We'll put in a syncopation...

Following the Austrian election is almost as depressing as following the American one.

(But I will be watching the VP debate tomorrow night with friends, and expect some sort of hilarity).

Recently my life has been full of work and procrastination of that work.  But weekends are fun.  This last one included a failed Welcome Back to Wonderland party by ELS and really only for ELS, because we forgot to invite anyone or tell anyone it was happening.  So...we were in the basement of ELS with very few other people, bar-tending for ourselves for a long time.  Saturday morning, graduated-friend Evan came to visit, and gave us an opportunity for a lot of trips out for food.  Also a trip to a place called Great Galaxy for ice cream, which might be the epitome of Central New York weirdness: large empty room, kind of gross old food, something called "Steakums", and an old woman with an unidentifiable accent.  I have not collapsed from food poisoning yet, so I think everything is okay.  Saturday night we had a bunch of people over to our suite, and some of us obnoxiously told abroad stories for awhile.  

Kayaking.  Yesterday I was not really in the mood to go since I was kind of exhausted, but we went to Delta Lake, which is some kind of state park.  Kayaking in the pouring rain is actually pretty fun though.  We saw herons and ospreys and played with mud.  But let's talk about last week.  We went to Nine Mile River, which is quiet and tiny and surrounded by forest.  It was the perfect day and we went for about 8 miles.  I'm pretty good at maneuvering the boat to do what I want it to now, and I really only crash because boys think they always get to go first and faster, even if I was already there.

I am working on a presentation for my Witchcraft class about the Witches' Sabbath, and it is research like this I will miss when I am no longer involved in medieval history things.  Where else do you get to learn about boiling babies at midnight in the forest?  I love that class.  And I am learning about the history of Divinations :)

Poetry class is a lot of work and a lot of crazy people.  Some people will never agree on how to write, some people will never understand what constitutes good or even passably good writing.  Creative writing workshops are always fun and involve a lot of almost-insults.  This is my super-long sestina, which my group actually liked.  But I need to take a lot of things out and make it shorter - I am aware of the overabundance of modifiers.  And a sestina is crazy hard: you use the same 6 end-words in a very specific pattern, and then use them all one more time at the end of the poem.  (Blogger has a layout that messes with the format of my poem, so the end words are not actually at the end here.  Anyway, hopefully it will still be obvious as to what the words are).

The Sea Turtle

This is a moonscape without the craters, an alien world crossed
with the familiar island scents of citrus and salt, this moist stretch of land
just hanging in the sultry air and unyielding dark. We can see back
only dimly to things familiar, to sound and speed, to filled spaces
where if we gaze long enough into the orange city, someone might wave,
we think, with connection, but this nighttime beach is miles on the swamp-brush trail.

Shuffling feet in shifting sand and knees that plunge leave a trail
of exhaustion as we hurtle forwards, balancing on a ground that shifts, footprints crossed
beneath us while we wind the beach, sand-covered eyes against wind in its waves.
Nearby, the sand drifts into the ocean, returns, sails, this ever-moving land.
Behind us there is the forest, where coarse plants crouch beneath the twisted trees, spaced
too close and breathing the musk of wet bark, pushing the branches that push back.

At the pointy end of the longest beach, we collapse, pushing our rigid backs
into sand that is at last forgiving. Look to the right, and there is the trail
imprinted fleetingly with our steps , already disappearing into water and space.
Here in front of the farthest tree we will sit, where the wind is quiet, where the cross
water finds serenity in distance. Eyes big in the darkness watch for a landing,
watch for the first black shape to manifest from black water, shoveling into waves.

A dinosaur emerges as slow as a dying geyser, kneading through wide waves.
Catching light like a dirty stained-glass window, she circles and backs
and sidesteps into this world, looking for a haven depth and warmth in which to land.
Leaving behind misshapen lumps of sand, dragging glowing bioluminescence that trails
silently into the sea, past the electrified squid and the transparent mysteries, across
from trees hiding in insect air. She slides, molds the liquid ground, makes space.

Here is the ritual balance, the squat and the sink, the rumbled claim of space,
of a territory, a nursery, a cradle to rock gently under the mothering waves.
We burrow into our own sand, palms up and waiting for life, legs crossed
and caressing the beach ceaselessly shifting new pictures beneath us, backs
whipped softly by the wind, a warning. She is ready, and while serpent-seaweed trails
treacherously nearby, her eggs like the pearls of giants nestle into the land.

Flippers fling sand, blanketing the diamond-eggs in their crowded cave, quaking the land
to wait for birth. The retreating turtle reflects navy-streaked sky, ceaseless space
spelled perfectly on a compact shell, a gash where the violet galaxy trails,
dirt and barnacles for flickering stars. Engulfed like a blackened sun in the waves,
floating deeper until our tiny eyes can no longer grasp, the Leatherback
is gone. We are left with the sand and the sky, lined with the Southern Cross.

Swallowing damp air, cross-eyed, we look behind to the forest land,
we strain up to the sleeping city, back away from infinite space,
spy the sunrise in waves of color, think of hatching and the sky, find the trail.

(see: sea turtle adventure of two summers ago in beautiful St. Croix!)

Alle sind auf der Flucht.

Today I was workshopped in Poetry class for my memory poem, "Rioting".  The workshop went well and I agree with almost everything that was said.  I knew the problems when I was writing it, just didn't put in the time or the effort to fix them then.  

Rioting

“Wear three socks! Striped and thick and everything” and dance
then tomorrow we won’t be here pick a spot and jump
and watch the window for sticky snow watch the roads
and make sure you chant quickly on your tiny bed
glancing all the while for morning.

I danced. Gradual. Be quiet. Alright, but be quiet.
In a hospital you just lie. Light that stills, waiting, thinking
of everything. Nighttime dark of these rooms, old and sick
walls that stink of fight surrendered. But then I danced -
riot of a thin, happy body on a cold, tiny bed.

I am five, and the wind carries drafty perfumes
of someone’s distant cooking. Cherries have painted
my hands, while the luminous evening hooks colors like the sweet
branches of the summer trees. I am weak from memory and dancing,
and with an easy, “It’s late, come back in,” I’m inside again and leaping,
consumed by a bed still much too big for me.

Today I gave my group copies of my thing poem, "Advanced Songs for the Beginner", which, Dear Family Members, is not actually how I feel about the situation and is really a giant exaggeration, so don't worry.  But it's here.

Advanced Songs for the Beginner

Your darkened tones with fire-threaded wood
look fragile in the blindness of my room.
That casual lean, your every measured angle,
returns silence with silence, this cold inception.

Your spindled fingers stretch, long as your body.
You fret and frown, you loose your meager hair.
They say you sound sweetly if you sound at all,
dulce, so dulce, but a part is lost in translation.

He’s worked so hard, I’ve heard and it’s such a nice gift -
In recent days I’ve held a tougher violin.
It fits neatly between chin and shoulder,
and needs no coddling on any softened lap.

You’re a part of the man, I consider this over and over,
but the creeping weeds that overgrow my dreams
sing I could never play such an Appalachian
dulcimer, without sunrises and slow talks.

So I imagine an uncle, old and tired,
a carpenter creating soft music from yesterday.
To rise with the sun and conduct the purple mountains –
to honor family, they ask for strings of connection.

Poetry is so much harder than fiction.  I miss fiction.

Yesterday I kayaked for a few hours with my class, on a lake near Colgate.  About halfway through, I finally mastered going in a straight line.  It was a problem before.  I also mastered quick turning and finally figured out how to move the boat sideways.  And I'm getting better with leaning when turning to make the turn faster.  At the end we practiced wet exits, or getting out of the boat when capsized.  It sounds difficult, it's not.  But the moment before making myself roll over was intimidating though, thinking about being upside down under water strapped onto your boat because of gear is intimidating.  Removing said gear and pushing yourself out correctly is actually not difficult, but thinking about it is.  Anyway, I did it, even if I was the least graceful of the whole group.  Having long hair that is still too short for a ponytail doesn't help when your life-vest forces you immediately to the surface, and you wind up with a face full of hair and more disoriented than you were when you were upside down and stuck in your boat.  Andrew said something about, "Well, it wasn't pretty, but it was correct."  I think flailing awkwardly trying to get back into my boat (which actually is really difficult) and sort of falling onto his was more embarrassing.  But now I know I can do it, should I ever need to.  And I love kayaking, even if I was completely worn out by the end and not sure how I was going to make it back to the dock.  I am obsessed with boats, and being on your own in the middle of a body of water feels so free.

That being said, the Chinese boys in my class have absolutely no idea of what to do in a kayak and continue to crash into me and everything else.

Last weekend Hayley, Jenn and I toured the Saranac brewery in Utica.  It was similar to touring the Haller Lowenbräu one in Germany, except this one was more focused on history, like what happened during the prohibition era.  That was interesting, the Utica townies were interesting, and the two beers at the end were fun.  I had a Black and Tan, which is chocolatey and dark and I love, and an IPA from the "High Peaks" series, high percentage of alcohol and scary and not-pleasant tasting, at least at first.  

Acoustic Coffee House also happened, and a giant dance party broke out to the Ryan Montbleau band.  First, Ryan is incredible and performs my favorite styles of music wrapped into one, and second, it was basically my friends and I and half of Utica.  Apparently, he's very popular there, even though he's from Boston.  

This weekend I am hopefully going to a Rusted Root concert.  And in November I am definitely going to Jon Stewart's performance, no matter how early I may have to line up.

Hogwarts at Hamilton is officially cast.  The rest of the E-board and I stayed up late Sunday night casting all 51 people.  We are technically over the fire-safety limit (shh, don't tell campus safety), but I am so excited for such a big cast.  I can't wait for Divinations to be completely bizarre and hopefully hilarious again.

ELS got together on Friday and watched Clue, which is so much fun to watch with a lot of people who love it, and which I continue to find absolutely hysterical, no matter how many times I've seen it.  It's also rather genius, and I am still working out most of the explanations at the end.  After all, communism is just a red herring.

(And I am keeping my fingers crossed that choir actually gets to go abroad, and that Rob chooses China).

Ich fuehle mich wie ein Dino.

I am sitting here staring into my fan, not moving far from the aloe gel, and sunburnt all for Harry Potter.  I feel reptilian, not enough skin and weirdly stretched.  Today was the Activities Fair/every possible organization that no one really cares about gets a table out on Martin's Way to advertise to unsuspecting freshmen who will write their names down and receive unending emails.  It also happened to be the hottest day since I've been back, and I wasn't well prepared for being in the direct sun.  Jen Strater and I took the first two hours, bravely manning our table next to the College Democrats and the EMTs, trying to keep everything from blowing away with all the random, strong wind gusts.  We did manage to get a lot of people to sign up, though no male people, which continues to be a bit of a problem.  But I think more people will show up at our interest meeting on Sunday.  

When I finished frying myself, I repeated the first hour of my morning and yelled at my computer again for not connecting to the internet.  I realized how pathetically dependent I am on being able to go online, but that realization did not stop me from calling ITS three times and eventually taking my ailing computer to the Help Desk and just making them do it there.  Of course, only one thing had to be clicked, not that I had any idea what it was.  But it is healed now, yay.

All of that, Iron Man again, and my Witchcraft class built my day today.  Witchcraft might be my favorite class, because again, best professor ever, little work, and also it's about witchcraft.  We are always talking about the line between magic and religion.  BUT IS THERE ONE?  IS THERE?  And about how all these things got added the Judeo/Christian traditions and texts but now almost no one knows what they started out as.  Who knows the difference between Satan, Lucifer, Beezlebub, and Belial, hmmm?  (On another note, we are reading The Pilgrim's Progress in my Print Culture class and it features another pagan god that got rewritten as the devil, Apollyon, and this book is INSANE.  There's a board game of it.  Where is it?  Can I play it?)  

In other important news, Jon Stewart is performing at Hamilton on November 14.  He's the next in the Great Names series.  This is after the election so it is bound to be interesting anyway.  I'm so excited.

Last night I drove my friends to get sushi in another attempt to increase my awareness of where I am and how to travel like a normal person.  And we got to eat at a good Japanese restaurant too.  We returned, went to the Kooks concert for maybe 10 minutes, it was a billion degrees in there and gross, we left, went to the choir concert in the crazy Buffers suite, it was even more degrees and smelly, and we left again.  Somewhere in there was some time at the Pub.

Speaking of the Pub, three friends and I have officially formed a trivia team.  We did well last week.  Not well enough to place, but well above a lot of the other teams.  We are Here for the Beer, and I can say I proudly contributed the Stephen Colbert answer, the tuberculosis answer, and half of the failed 2004 conventions answer.  All we really want are the winners' t-shirts at the end.

Next Tuesday I start kayaking, but am a little worried now after my bizarre dream in which my instructor, Andrew Jillings, had actually been dead for many years and had been replaced by a British author who hated his life and the spotlight - a secret only a few friends and the officers of HOC knew about.  Weird.

Gute Nacht, bis spaeter.

DIE SCHOENSTE STADT!

Having returned from many European adventures, saved the animals, and not applied to Colgate, I am now back at Hamilton here in the states.  I moved in Tuesday morning, and have been fairly busy ever since.  

Tuesday night I united two of my best friends here with a best friend from abroad, and while maybe I just felt awkward at first, they all liked each other in the end.  I drove us all to dinner (!!! sometimes I can drive!) at The Only, where Old Hippie Guy missed us and gave us some delicious food.  We then exercised some of the privileges of being old people at a liquor store, and headed back to hang out for the night.  Then Wednesday saw the annual Target trip for things we forgot or want in a suite, where I mostly just bought food.  I went to the Hypnotist performance that night and he was as entertaining as I remembered from Freshman year.  I almost got trampled at the end by the guy who was convinced he'd left his kid somewhere the second he set foot out of the auditorium.  Afterwards I went to a Hogwarts at Hamilton e-board meeting (we are too excited and want to kick things off early) in the brand shiny new Kirkland loft.  There is so much space.  I actually don't even know what I would do with all that space, with just two people living there.  But it's pretty nice.  I stopped by in Kirkland to say hello to some other people first and had a nice time continuing the reunions.

Today classes began.  I started with a bright and early 9 AM The Rise of Print Culture starring my second favorite professor, Margie Thickstun.  I am mostly excited for this class because we get to use a printing press and learn to MAKE BOOKS.  I mean, that is what Creative Writing majors get excited about.  We looked at medieval books from the rare books collection, which I did in a class last year but they still amaze me.  I have a bunch of friends in that class so it should be good anyway.

I went to scary Modern German Literature after that, with Prof. Edith Toegel who has not lost any of her ability to intimidate.  It is me and five other people, all of whom I am still convinced are better at German than me, but all of whom I also (mostly) like a lot.  It turns out we have to write TWO 8-PAGE PAPERS for this class, and I am not even a German major so I am trying to justify to myself that this class is worth it.  It better be.  I don't really feel like dropping it, and I do feel like speaking German this semester, but I think my brain might explode with umlauts and the DDR and plusquamperfekt before December.  Toegel is having me come talk to her at 8:30 tomorrow morning (why do Austrians have to be functional so early?) so she can convince me I can do it and also help me figure out getting a minor.  I think I'm just going to throw out a lot of, "Wien ist die schoenste Stadt in der ganze Welt!"

Speaking of speaking German, I saw my number one favorite Professor this morning, Chris Hill, and spoke to him in German briefly of my crazy wild absolutely insane and cultural semester abroad.  (Or, I told him where I was and that it was nice we agreed neither of us could understand Schwaebisch).  I'm in his Witches and Witch-hunting class tomorrow at 10 and I'm very excited.  

And now I'm excited to watch Obama's speech with friends and possibly drink anytime anyone says the words "hope" or "change"?  We also thought anytime the Clintons looked falsely happy, but apparently they aren't there.

Okay, several hours later, the convention was very impressive.  And Al Gore alone certainly fulfilled our expectations for overuse of those words.  But look at the Obama family!  How could you not elect this family?  Mrs. Biden looks disturbingly like Mr. Biden, was the other main conclusion drawn from this.  And how did they get Stevie Wonder?  Anyway, we're planning a completely over-the-top RNC party next.

We have plans to make a team for trivia night and to join the wine club since we're finally eligible.  I have plans to go to the fellowship meeting tomorrow and try to figure out my life.  

In conclusion (wow, two words that should never be in a paper), coming back to Hamilton felt almost completely natural and my room is back to feeling like my own little world.  Being a senior is disturbing but also fun in ways I didn't think about, and even though I really, really miss people, it's not messing up my time here.

The person we're looking at is Annie Gilliland, 21 years old, surviving in Vienna, Austria for two more weeks...

Recently The Twilight Zone has made its way back into my life, and my friends and I watch episodes online and wish that Rod Serling was narrating our lives.  I'm trying to memorize his long monologue from "It's a Good Life", one of the best episodes, just so I can appear at a startling place in someone's life and start saying it, and they would know some freaky stuff was about to happen.

Speaking of happenings, I just saw The Happening, and my main question is, what horrible event occurred in M. Night Shyamalan's life between The Village and Lady in the Water that killed his ability to write a script?  Because the premise was pretty good, but the dialogue and acting were terrible.  Anyway, plants made people kill themselves.  I thought a good title would have been PLANTS!  (But aha, I was dorky enough to spot Victoria Clark of The Light in the Piazza fame, a wonderful actress).  The X-Files trailer was the most exciting part of the movie.

Then afterwards Tommy and I went to the Cafe Mozart, and I got some kind of dessert which involved strawberries and mousse inside a giant chocolate cone.  I was a fan.  They were showing the France vs. Netherlands game, and clearly everyone that worked there was for the Netherlands (actually, I think everyone in Austria is for anyone that is not Germany, France, or possibly Turkey).  The Netherlands were winning while we there, and we left before it ended to avoid insanity on the U-Bahn, but I'm assuming they won and cheering for them.  Yesterday Croatia beat Germany and nobody expected it because apparently Germany always wins.  But they are saving their best players for last, and for teams better than Croatia.

Anyway, it is kind of fun and fascinating seeing people running around the streets draped in their country's flag and face-painted appropriately.  I've witnessed lots of showdowns, mostly between Croatia and Austria, for who can be loudest.  Austria is fun because I'm pretty sure they don't expect to win anything (apparently their team is pretty bad), but they are going to scream about how great Österreich is at every possible opportunity anyway.  

Yesterday we had a tour of Parlament, which is completely beautiful inside.  We got to sit in the seat of the President and pretend to be powerful, and try to understand the party-system here, which is definitely more complicated than anything America has ever had.  Getting there was interesting, though.  I luckily ended up on the same U-Bahn as Ruth, otherwise I'm not sure I would have figured it out.  The Fanzone is blocking everything, and we had to take some weird route that involved her talking to a lot of security guards to get us in.  And then I set off the metal detector anyway.

Later Rachel and I went to the Museum Moderne Kunst - the modern art museum.  They had a huge exhibit called "Bad Painting, Good Art", about painters who deliberately use techniques considered bad in the art world, and create paintings that I generally thought were interesting.  The bottom floor was the performance art floor, bizarre as usual.  There were a lot of videos ofpeople injuring themselves, or doing various other vile things to make some kind of statement.  But it's a little hard to focus on a statement when you're distracted by the blood gushing out of the naked guy's head.

And last weekend was the Wachau trip.  Wachau is a valley region of Austria, along a river and full of old medieval towns with wineries, or Heurigen.  We went to Melk and Durmstein, with a boat taking us from one to the next.  In Melk we saw a huge old abbey, up high on a hill overlooking the valley.  We had a tour of it, complete with the church and the royal hallway and all.  The library possibly made some of us think we were in Beauty and the Beast.  And we arrived in the church in time to hear the monks doing their midday prayer.

We then took the boat to Durmstein, a beautiful trip complete with ice cream and drunk Austrians yelling at us in an unintelligible dialect.  In Durmstein, since it looked like a storm was approaching, we went straight to the winery.  We were treated to a plate of various sausages and cheeses (and hey, I ate blood sausage before I knew what it was, but it actually was kind of good), and a spritzer.  Some of us stayed afterwards to try the apricot schnapps the area is famous for, and I was definitely a fan.  We took a tiny little train back to Vienna.

This past week I also saw The Sound of Music at the Volksoper in German.  I loved it, and loved the translations, some of which were more amusing than anything else.  But it still worked really well, perhaps better because they were all speaking the language they were supposed to be.  The changes we all noticed are actually only different from the movie, but were always present in the stage version, apparently.  It was interesting and a little uncomfortable to be sitting next to some old Austrians who might have been old enough to remember the German annexation, especially during the concert hall scene when giant swastikas were flying onstage and Nazis were marching through the audience.  Anyway, the cast was perfect.

The roommate has gone to bed (and so must I).

So in conclusion, 

"Tonight's story on The Twilight Zone is rather unique, and calls for a different sort of introduction.  This, as you may recognize, is a map of the United States, and there's a little town called Peaksville.  On a given morning not too long ago, the rest of the world disappeared and Peaksville was left all alone.  Its inhabitants were never sure whether the world was destroyed and only Peaksville left untouched, or whether the village had somehow been taken away.  They were, on the other hand, sure of one thing: the cause.  A monster had arrived in the village..."

(and the Netherlands won 4-1) 

geh mal tanzen ja ja!

Another successful weekend of Get to Know Vienna.  Things I did, probably out of order:

Found the Kriminalmuseum, basically a large, graphic archive of Vienna's worst crimes and methods of punishments for them.  It began with the usual displays of torture instruments from the Middle Ages complete with complex German descriptions we could not understand (The Sacher Stuhl - we swear they made witches sit on the chair and then force-fed them Sachertorte).  But then it went on to the truly disgusting/morbidly fascinating collection of information and pictures about all the worst murders that have taken place here.  Why did so many crazy men own hatchets in the first place?  Also, why did so many people have completely creepy death masks made of family members?  Anyway, the museum was in a medieval buildings, which was pretty cool itself.

Saw Indiana Jones 4.  Assumed that Stephen Spielberg has not lost his talent, and therefore blamed George Lucas for all that was wrong with it.  ("Hey Stephen, your dialogue is looking a little too decent here, let me make a few edits.  Hey Stephen, we should create scenes that make it appear that Harrison Ford can't act anymore at all.  Also, Indy should fight ALIENS!")  Ugh.

Night at the Zwölf Apostelkeller, good as always.  Dealt reasonably well with a possibly-insane waiter.  

Night of Creative Writing Majors Talking About Things They Can't Talk About With Anyone Else Because No One Else will Understand was also great, and lasted for about 3 hours in a bar somewhere.

Yesterday Rob, Rachel and I went to a church from the Jugendstil, which was beautiful outside but costs to get into, so we just walked in circles around it.  It also happened to be on the edge of the Wienerwald, which we proceeded to romp through.  We found fields, tai chi, awkward old women, and ticks.  There was a cafe back at the edge of town where we dined on soup and wurst.  

I gathered with fellow American friends to be American and eat delicious sloppy joes (seriously Suzanne, how was that possible, I never even liked them before but they were so good), and watch kind of bad yet entertaining TV.  Eurovision, Europe's answer to American Idol, except not and way more legitimate since it's been on since the 1950s.  Every country enters one singing act to compete, and they only show the semifinals and the final.  I only saw the final, and concluded that Europe, on the whole, has horrible taste in music.  That Russian guy should not have won.  Greece should definitely not have come in anywhere near the top.  Bosnia and Spain were possibly actually good songs though, so of course no one liked that.  And what was not to like about Croatia, which featured old men dressed like the mafia singing old jazzy tunes, or Latvia, which had everyone dress as pirates?!  (Not to mention Finland, which was a screaming metal Finnish band).  But I was very entertained by the guy from Sweden trying to announce his country's results who was either just very drunk, couldn't speak English, or both.  And now I'm looking up that Bosnian song.  We spent an hour afterwards looking up early 90s German rap.

Rachel and I went to the crypt where Maria Theresia and crew are buried.  Basically all of the Hapsburgs are down there.  All the Franz Josephs and such.  Question: why did they use to make tombs so creepy?  What was with all the skulls?  We know they're dead!  But it was interesting to see all of that, especially Maria Theresia's enormous tomb, 20 billion times the size of everyone else's.

I saw Der Besuch der Alten Dame at Volkstheater, and understood it way better than when I had to read it in German class sophomore year.  It was so, so much more frightening onstage though.  I didn't understand that it was actually that scary.  But they did it with an amazing set, complete with a portrait that bled when chopped with an axe, and lots of lawnmowers to represent the collective mind.  And real gun shots, apparently.

Also saw a ballet at the Staatsoper.  Onegin from Tchaikovsky.  I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, and wished I could dance.  Also wished Onegin was not such a stupid man and felt sorry for all the characters.  And dealt with Italian tourists being far more obnoxious than us.

Today we were back in the Wald again, starting at the Lainzier Tiergarten, an old hunting ground for some rich guy who built a house for Sisi there, who, as predicted, hated it and continued to be stupid and spoiled.  There were rams and deer frequenting the place, but none of the promised wild boar (and we looked).  There were also many small children, including the bilingual family consisting of a very annoyed father, and Martin, who just would not get his shoes.  We ended up walking/hiking forever today, got up to the top of a foothill that overlooked all of Vienna, and went down the long way.  We covered a lot of ground.  Fortunately there was a cafe with some Spargelcremesuppe and Sachertorte to keep us all happy.  It is beautiful.  I want to live/camp in the Wienerwald.  

Wenn wir uns kennen...

Let's talk about Innsbruck/the best place I have ever been.

Friday morning Rob, Rachel S, Kevin, and I left on a train at 9:30 out of Wien Westbahnhof, headed for Innsbruck.  It was a crowded train, and mostly reserved, but after some searching we found four seats together.  It also became a boiling hot train as noon approached and there was no air.  But it was a beautiful ride through the countryside of Austria, with the hills getting bigger and bigger until they finally became mountains.  We hopped off at Salzburg to get some air for about five minutes, and just stood pointing at the mountains yelling "BERGEN!"  (Sometimes, when you know a word in Deutsch, you simply begin to loudly name everything around you, forgetting that everyone else there most likely has known that word for quite a long time).  We arrived in Innsbruck about five hours after we left.

Fortunately, walking with my backpack and bag in pants under the intense sun in Innsbruck was not too bad because the mountains visible around every corner were so beautiful.  Our hostel was fairly close to the train station, and probably the best place I have stayed yet while abroad.  It was more like a bed and breakfast, the only real difference being the hostel thing of you have to take care of yourself, which none of us minded.  The room was very nice, they gave us pasta to make for dinner, and we got an included breakfast in the cafe below every morning.  We probably annoyed the older Australian couple staying next door (there was hardly anyone else there) by singing loudly and I'm sure attractively late into the night, but oh well.

Friday evening was spent just wondering around town.  We found das goldenes Dachl, built in the early days of Tyrol.  We walked along the river as the sky was darkening.  We sat outside with ice creams, and made ourselves a nice feast for dinner back at the hostel.  Bizarrely-named cocktails at a bar later completed the evening.

The next day we got up (somewhat) early to go hiking.  We took a tram up into the mountains, into an outer village of Innsbruck that was in the fields.  It looked just like how I have always pictured Alpine culture and homes, and was gorgeous.  From there we took random paths, ending up running through fields below giant mountains, finding a lake that we couldn't really approach but could look at, and picnicking in the flowers.  We spent a lot of time traipsing around singing The Lord of the Rings theme because everything was so epic.  It was then unfortunately stuck in everybody's head the whole weekend, and if there were ever a few moments of silence, someone would inevitably begin to hum "da da dadada..."  I couldn't suppress the urge to run through the fields.  It was not possible to stand still.  I stared up at the mountains a lot, wondering about how they could possibly be snow-covered when it was so warm below, and wanting to be on a summit.  Ah well, for another trip.

We spent that evening again wandering around Innsbruck, and eventually sitting in the (admittedly lame and lacking-in-grass) Stadtpark, looking at the stars.  Everybody was tired and sore, and in my case a little sunburnt.

On Sunday we decided to hike up to the Bergisel, the giant ski jump used in the winter olympics in 1970-something.  It is pretty intimidating to look at, but very impressive to stand on top of.  The hike up took a lot of uphill, but was followed by a nice (although unnecessarily expensive) cable car up to the top.  We could see all of Innsbruck and all of the surrounding mountains.  

We found a path back down that began at a palace, inhabited apparently mostly by peacocks, which made strange noises at us and went into places labeled "private" like they owned the whole place.  Rob and I stopped there for a snack, and then we all continued back down.  The path we randomly chose was gorgeous, taking us along the river through the mountains for awhile, then back up over more hills to offer spectacular views.  I found a lot of places I wish I could have a house.  It began to rain a little, but unfortunately never got too bad, and really just made the forest smell good and the air a little cooler.  We found strange houses and dogs that appeared to bark at us, as well as a man in full business-clothes that seemed to be completely misplaced.  

Sunday evening we got standing-room (and then stealing-empty-seats-room) to The King and I in German at a local theatre.  I loved it, and was proud I could understand a good portion of it.  Again, some of the song translation were interesting.  "Getting to Know You" was more like "when we are all friends", or something.  The man who played the king was the best.  As per the theme of the weekend, we all noticed that it was very much The Sound of Music set in Bangkok.  

Speaking of the hills being alive, the next morning we found ourselves in Salzburg.  It was naturally also beautiful, but in a very different way from Innsbruck.  Salzburg looks very, very old and is full of palaces (but in a different style than those in Vienna).  We spent a lot of time figuring out where the movie was filmed and found the fountain, the steps, possibly the von Trapp house, and the mountain they escape on at the end.  The best/hottest part of the day was hiking up to a castle which we did not actually go in, but which was on a hill that offered views over all of Innsbruck and the mountains in the distance.  We came back down again on gorgeous wooded paths that lead through the backstreets by people's homes where I yet again wanted to live.  After dinner with an unhappy Italian waiter and time spent sitting by the banks of the river, we went back to the train station to go home.

And after a somewhat insane train ride on which we turned all the seats in our little compartments into beds and made everyone walking by uncomfortable, I am back in Vienna.  I miss the mountains.