Our Front Window

I thought before I show you the view from "our front window" I should show you the building we live in. Our address is Spittelauer Platz 7/8
1090 Wien
Austria
We have loved the area we are living in. It is very convient to grocery stores, u-bahn stop, resturants, Franz Joseph train station and lets not forget the Euro Shop (dollar store) and Billig und Gut (Cheap and Good). If we wanted to, we could walk to the middle of Vienna in about 20-25 minutes, but who would want to when we are so close to the u-bahn and can get down town in 10 minutes!

This is a picture of our building taken from the park below. The little tree on the left is "dissecting" our front window on the 2nd floor.

I made Tom go out on our balcony and point to "our front window". The window to the left of our front window is our office/guest bedroom and the two windows behind Tom are our bedroom windows.

The "view out my front window" includes these beautiful trees. My view also includes the little playground. How lucky are we to be able to have a view like this despite the fact we are living in a city of 3 million people.

Our November picture out "our front window". The trees have lost most of their leaves. It was fun watching the Vienna cleaning crew rake them all up. There must of been truck loads of leaves!

This is what our front window looks like tonight. Christmas lights hung with "great care" and snowflakes made by some of our students. I love my front window.

Matt, Jenny and Family in Vienna

In the fourth week of October our students got a week break. They all headed out of town to various destinations, which gave Tom and me a week break from them! So to fill our week Matt, Jenny, Amy, Blake, Cade and Oliver came to visit. It was fun to show them the city we have grown to appreciate and love. Of course what is a trip to Vienna without eating schnitzel and apple strudel?! Here are the Matt Holmans in one of our favorite eat spots...The Twelve Apostles. After eating a full meal, Blake wanted apple strudel...I didn't order anything because I knew he would never finish his...wrong! Blake ordered the apple strudel with warm vanilla sauce and all I got was the opportunity of watching him eat every last morsel!

One of Vienna's most famous landmarks is the giant Ferris Wheel. It was built in 1896, which really didn't instill a lot of confidence for me...how could something that old spinning around high in the air be safe. Apparently Oliver shares my feelings. It was perfectly safe and we had great views of Vienna. You ride in "little box car" shaped cars and they rock back and forth. I am just glad I had Matt's family and not a bunch of teenagers in there with me. I can only imagine how they could get it rocking!

I think the morning spent at Schonbrunn Palace was one of the kids and Tom's favorite. They have a fun area for children and adults...the first stop was the maze. This was a typical element of many European stately gardens. Blake and Grandpa Tom couldn't find their way out and you will see Matt and Cade directing them from above.

Matt and Cade looking for Blake and Grandpa Tom in the maze.

Does it look like fun on the merry-go-round? No one "lost their cookies", so I assume it was!

Matt training his boys on the digger. Cade the operator and Blake the observer.

Blake loved this toy. It was a big bird that you could climb in and then bounce in and the wings would flap. This playground was quite amazing.

Not the best picture, but the kids loved climbing all over the playground toys.

Missing in the playground pictures was Oliver. While the rest of the family played, Oliver and grandma Linda walked the grounds of Schonbrunn Palace. There is a zoo on the grounds and we thought our "little bear" should have his picture taken there. (In case you can't see it, look a little closer and notice the ears on his hat.)

One of the "visitor highlights" is the Opera Toilet. At the bottom of the escalator that takes you up out of our U-bahn stop to the State Opera House is this musical toilet. It blares the Strauss melody "The Blue Danube Waltz". I have heard it's not worth the price to actually use the toilet but it does make a good picture.

This was about the cutest thing ever...One day these pieces of paper appeared on our baseboard. Cade had decided that we needed mice holes in case a mouse came to live in our apartment...they needed a home. *Note: We do not have mice!

Blake worked on this tooth almost the whole time they were in Vienna and finally met success. Despite the fact he was in Vienna the tooth fairy found his tooth...a happy boy!

Sharing our apartment with these four was an absolute pleasure and it looks like they were having fun too!

Time to leave Vienna and I don't think Oliver wanted to leave....I know we didn't want him to leave!

A very thoughtful grandaughter, Amy, left this thank you note for us, with Mozartkugl chocolate included. Mozartkugl is probably the quintessential Austrian souvenir. They are small balls of marzipan coated in a praline cream and then dipped in chocolate....yum! They are wrapped in foil decorated with a picture of Mozart. A sweet ending to Matt, Jenny and family's visit to Vienna.

Our Home Away From Home

Welcome to our home in Vienna. My family has requested pictures and here they are. This is our entry. You come in the door you can barely see on the right hand side. The entry is big enough to put another bedroom and it is kinda wasted space but that is how it is. We are on the "M" level in our apt. building and actually have a really nice elevator right outside our door. Matt's kids loved it and it is handy when we have our little grocery carts filled. (those are our grocery carts you can see on the right by the front door). We have loved our little apartment and I hope it shows as well as it really looks.

View of my sweet little kitchen looking into the entry and on through to the living room. This kitchen has enough dishes and silverware etc.to feed up to at least 50 people. The knives are sharper than the ones in my kitchen in Utah...thats really pathetic!

View into our kitchen from the entry hall. Back in the corner on the right is our washer and dryer. We are very fortunate to have both. Usually you only have a washer...a dryer is luxury. There is a drying rack out on our deck, and I have used it, but I love my dryer.

A view of the livingroom, I am standing by the front window and looking into the entry. On the right is our piano that kept Matt's kids entertained and on the left we have about 40 folding chairs. Our students come over on Sunday for dinner and then again on Wednesday for class.

View of our livingroom from the entry hall. Our front window overlooks a small park and playground. To the left where you see a round clock on the wall is a door that leads out to a small deck.

A couple of different views of our "master" bedroom. I am converted to the comforters over here. They are warm and no one can steal all the covers because we each have our own!

Our guest room. This room has the two beds you can see but there are also two hide-away beds the are used as chairs at other times in this room.

This is our office and guest bedroom. There is a trundle bed under the bed you can see...with this comes my sincere apology to anyone that has slept on it...the trundle is comfortable enough but trying to get out of it in the morning is a trick. I did not know this until I slept on it when Matt and Jenny and family were here!

Our "big" bathroom, which is connected from the master bedroom and the entry hall.

Our "small" bathroom.

Budapest

There is so much I did not know about Budapest before we knew we were coming on this trip. I did not realize it is actually two cities divided by the Danube River. Pest, seen here from the Buda side, is on the plain. The Buda side is the "hilly" side. Now, of course, the two cities are combined to be the Budapest we know. Lots of history here, both golden and sad.

Buda is the "hilly" side of the Danube.

On our way over the bridge into Pest....Tom is really little compared to the lion he is standing by.

This is one of the bridges that connects Buda with Pest. It is called the Chain Bridge. If you see a book about bridges, this one will be mentioned.

Our first stop on the first day of our trip to Budapest was a little history lesson given at this monument called "Hero Square". All of these bronze statues are of leaders and heros of Budapest/Hungary.

This is the Budapest Parliment Building. It is on the Pest side but this picture is taken across the Danube on the Buda side. Kinda impressive isn't it. Our guide told us that the wing on the left side is not used at all. The building was built when Budapest had more politicians!

Probably my favorite part of our trip to Budapest...the Dohany Synagogue. It was designed by a Catholic, therefore it looks more like a Catholic church than a Jewish Synagogue...they even make jokes about it being a "Catholic Synagogue".

Out behind the Dohany Synagogue is this weeping willow tree made out of stainless steel and silver. It is called the Holocaust Memorial Tree. The shape of the tree symbolizes a reversed menorah. Each leaf has a name of someone that died during the Holocaust. Tony Curtis, the actor, gave the money to have this tree put up in memory of his Hungarian father that perished. This picture does not do it justice...take my word that it is breath-taking.

The Nazi soldiers took the Jews down to the Danube River and had them take off their clothes and either shot them and then pushed them into the river or they just pushed them into the icy river. This memorial is made up of bronze shoes of all sizes and shapes to remind us of this awful time in the history of the Jewish people in WWII.

This is the market in Pest. If you want meat or fresh veggies, this is the place to go. Upstairs there are places to eat and a bazillion craft shops selling Hungarian crafts largely made in China. It was still fun to walk through, or at least I thought it was!

On the Buda side is this building. It was the Dept. of Defense building during WWII. It was heavily damaged and there was no money to repair it...so it just sits there with its plywood roof. Only the first floor survived and it still shows bullet holes from the war.

This is the palace on the Buda side. It was built by the Hungarian people for Maria Teresia, their ruler, but she lived in Vienna and never moved to Buda. It was never lived in and had very little use. It was bombed in WWII and repaired but still is not used.

Here is the whole gang we are traveling with. We have 16 students, 15 girls and 1 boy...Eric "stands out" where ever we go!

Of course how could I have a blog post without telling you what we ate?! Well here it is...happy little me and my vegetable strudel and Tom with his paprika chicken.