België, part.....XII???

Previously, in Meg's blog....*cue culturally relevant music in the background* I suggest "The Brabançonne"

EVERY DAY SIGHTING

There were many a delicious, uniquely-shaped easter candy!

I decided to "tan" on one of those rare sunny Belgian afternoons. By the way, I do not tan, I only burn. If I do manage to pick up some more melanin and look tan, it goes away if I'm not consistently outdoors, workin' on it.

Visiting the Vanderbauwhede family and riding their little mare, Naveena. Darlien Schaubroeck, Hans' wife, is a descendant of my great grandma's brother. Put more simply, my dad and Darlien are second cousins.

Forgive the time warp, but I never really wrote about the second half of my trip to Belgium since I went on that long tangent about my Belgian ancestry. Woops.
(Insert whatever phrase the Flemish say here for "let's start!" ...)

FRIDAY (part 2)

It looks like I have yet to describe the rest of the day when I went to Kortrijk with Stephanie and Sophie. We went back to their parents' home and I got to see Stephanie's little kids, twins Victor and Marie. They saw me earlier that day before we left, but they were a bit apprehensive about getting to know me. I asked if I could get a picture with Marie and Stephanie went to get her and she started crying! Poor thing...I guess I'm scary? She changed her mind later, though (all little kids like me, generally). After that, Stephanie and the kids were off back to Huise.
After we ate lunch, Sophie left, too, and then I went with Marlene and Dirk to Deinze to see my grandma's cousins hosted at Albina's home.

Sisters, Albina and Christiana Adam, and Christiana's husband Daniel

She's so funny - I was so looking forward to seeing her again



A bit elaborate, I think...and that's not even all of it!

Albina's granddaughters (they would be my 3rd cousins), Delphine and Lesley showed up, too. Lesley and I used to be pen pals after we first met in Belgium in 1997 and we hadn't seen each other since then. I last saw Delphine in 2000

While we were at Albina's doing some chatting about a little of this/that (and Dirk translating like a madman), I told Albina how much I admire her decorating. So, she decided she HAD to take me to her bedroom to show me her handmade bedspread and curtains and everything else. And she showed us all how she puts on -- get this -- white satin gloves when she makes the bed, so the sheets say nice...which made me ask if she also wears special pajamas ???
Lesley and her husband Pascal and I went out after that to their house and then to an Italian restaurant. I looked at the pictures from their wedding from a few years back and their vacation pictures from Istanbul, which seemed pretty cool.
After dinner, we headed to an outdoor bar/music place called Het Gouden Hof and chatted with their friends, and Lesley's mom and stepdad showed up after that. Lesley's stepdad is Albina's son, Mark (my dad's second cousin).

Holding a Kriek, a fruity (bitch) beer

Me and Mark and a drummer named Kwinten

While I was there, I managed to arrange yet another meeting with a Belgian cousin, Louis, who is actually biologically related to Lesley on her dad's side. Interesting. So anyway, we planned on meeting on Easter Sunday in Gent. Louis speaks perfect English since he lived in the USA for a year, in Colorado. All Belgians speak at least 3 languages, or at least the younger crowd does.
Keep in mind that Belgium is the size of Vermont, only there are 8 million people in the country and various languages and dialects (Dutch, Flemish, French, German). Also, Spaniards occupied Belgium several hundred years ago, and that's where Flamenco dancing originated -- "flamenco" also means "Flemish" in Spanish...also "flamingo."

SATURDAY

Sophie showed up at the VanLancker house on Saturday morning, and we were going to go to Bruge, but it turned out that there was a train strike, so we just decided to go to Gent, instead. The weather was very not Belgian, meaning it was hot hot hot. I was wearing a sweater that has some wool in it, or something, so I was a bit roasty toasty, but oh well. Meanwhile, Sylvie was rocking a skirt, tank and heels...
Sidenote: I just recently decided to break my no heels in Spain rule, by the way, because even though I'm in the 95th-ish percentile of female height among the Spanish shorties (I'm 5'9" and change), I don't care anymore. It's an immediate posture corrector + leg + booty boost. /girly tangent

She is pretty

After eating some panini al fresco by the water, doing a bit of shopping (new swim suit, so excited!) and planning a potential trip for Sylvie to visit me in Spain, we were off to Eveleen's house - her older sister.

Me, Warre (her 2-year old son -- ridiculously adorable) and Eveleen

We had just played together in the sandbox and I felt like an idiot because a 2 year old can say more words (in Flemish) than I can!!! I would say certain words and he would repeat me, which was really amusing...things like "woo" and "no," "yes," and such. I can say here, there, where, the numbers 1-10, hello, bye, how are you, papa, mama, grandpa, grandma, working, is, Dutch, English, Flemish...I think that's about it. Oh, and I learned "beautiful," and sand and hand, which was extremely helpful.

We went to Sylvie's apartment afterwards and she made us dinner, which was some kind of Japanese noodles and a ton of veggies - yum yum in the tum tum. We were planning to go together to a concert that night, but it was sold out so she wasn't able to get another ticket for me, unfortunately. So we just decided to go out for beers and I made the decision to try a Duvel (which means Devil) just to say I'd done it. It's suuuuper strong, probably one Duvel is the equivalent of 3 or 4 American beers. I only had one, after eating, and I was prettttty buzzed.

yum

SUNDAY

Last full day in Belgium, and Dirk drove me to Gent in the morning after meeting up with Marlene's parents, in Nazareth. Her mother, Madeleine, is my grandma's first cousin and the oldest sibling to Albina and Christiana -- also Julian, who passed away, and another sibling named Andre. And surprisingly for me, Marlene's sister Rita was also there.

While we were there, we looked through a lot of old photos and Madeleine's scrapbook. It's funny to see Madeleine, for me, because she has an uncanny resemblance to my grandma (Adams) Boberg.

That's my grandma -- pushing 84 and still tearing it up on the golf course and beating everybody in the over 65 female competitions!

...Back to our regular programming.

Dirk and Marlene drove me into Gent after that to meet up with Louis and his girlfriend, Barbara and some other people. It was pretty amusing to see Barbara speak with her brother at his restaurant, because she would speak English to him and he would usually reply in Flemish, and it wasn't even awkward for them. Barbara has a Swedish roommate, so I guess that's the story there.

We talked about their 90s music quiz that they were planning on taking that night, had some pastries and coffee, I bought chocolate while Barbara helped me decide, we went to Louis' place and listened to music, we went to the flower market where I got a cute little bouquet for my lovely hosts...that was about it for that trip, relaxing and fun. Louis is "awesome," as my brother says. Louis actually seems really similar to Pat in a lot of ways, minus the accent and different sense of style (read: any style at all...no offense, P@).

Louis, Barbara and I headed back to Nazareth, to the VanLancker house, and then we started the afternoon-evening-night party shortly after I got there, complete with their daughters + significant others + the twins - it was a lot of fun. I told Sophie's boyfriend Anthony that I really wanted to hear him play keyboard (he's a pro musician), so after dinner he went to get his equipment and we spent most of the rest of the night listening to him, doing some karaoke, and I sang a bit for them. I used to think I wanted to pursue some sort of career in vocal performance, but my music theory is pretty bare bones -- I can read music fairly well, but the nitty gritty is over my head. Frown town. Plus, it's too volatile a career, so I'd much rather write, instead.

Anyway ~ here's some pic's of that night:

No trip to Belgium is complete without frittes! I also really want one of those fry shovels.

Marie decided I was the Devil, after all (but I was the only person present who was refused a kiss when she went to bed...sad times!)

Marlene, Anthony, Marieke, Sophie

Victor and Anthony -- is that not the most AWWWWW worthy picture in the history of time?

Victor looks like a cartoon character!

I got some gifts! Too generous, as usual

The twins

Me and the girls :) There's a picture of me and the boys, but it's on Sophie's camera, I think

Sven and Marie -- Marie is a total daddy's girl!

It looks like I've wrapped up all my Belgium trip. Whew! Tonsssss of relatives there, seriously. Good records, I suppose, since my grandma was essentially a first generation immigrant, more or less, even though she wasn't born in Belgium... her siblings were.

Looks like that's it for this installment of my expatriated adventures. Vaarwel!

Ho acceduto nel mio acconto di google.

It's a bit amusing to see yahoo and google change to Italian on my laptop....

Right now is my last pomeriggio in Firenze, at least for this trip.


That's the duomo/skyline. Florence is also known for being the capital of Italian Renaissance art, with artists like Raphael, Michelangelo, Giotto, Fra Angelico, da Vinci, Botticelli, etcetera. I took an art history class while I was here so I'd have more opportunities to travel and get to know some stuff about art, since I'm pretty ignorant about it in all aspects. It was difficult - for exams, you had to know the year something was done within 3 years, who made it, the artistic aspects of it, where it is/was, what it's made of, and what it represents. I seriously hate rote memorization, but the class was still cool, and I got a chance to write in it, which I, of course, love.

I got here a few nights ago and went over to Gianna's, my ex host mom's house. She and her appartamento are essatamente how I remembered, i.e. bravissime. She gushed for about 5 minutes about how I was "molto bella!" and "come sta la tua famiglia??" and all of that stuff. It was pretty difficile for me to use Italian for the first hour or so, but then it all came back really naturally, as though all my Italian was stored in some encrypted hardrive of my brain. Strangely enough, my Italian has improved dramatically, which I definitely have to thank for living in Spain for the past 7 months. I can understand everything I hear, too, which I was about cinquanta-cinquanta (50-50) the last time. It's pretty exciting.

Anyway -- Gianna had made me and the other girl who is still at her house, Sarah, some yummy pasta with spinach and then chicken. They always eat two courses here for dinner, and the Italians load your plate with stuff unless you flat out refuse to eat it. I only ate about a third of what she offered me, I restrained myself after my 10-15 pound weight gain from when I studied here! It's hard to resist though...and this time I had her teach me how to make some of her food. After dinner, she showed me how to make espresso and apple streudel while we chatted and watched Italian game shows (a game show she was actually on, a few years ago, called L'eredità). Yesterday I learned how to make some more stuff, including this meat dish wrapped around cheese with artichokes and her fruit salad. She doesn't have any of the recipes, so I just had to watch it and write it down and translate it in my head. Pretty cool.

...I should probably save the rest of my Italy stuff until I get back to Spain. As it is, I still have to post about the rest of my trip to Belgium. Woops.

I'll put up my pictures ASAP. :-D I have some pictures of Cortona, too, which is the city in the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. Yesterday I bought the book translated in Italian, Sotto il Sole della Toscana (which I hope is better than the movie, which is one of the corniest chick flicks of all time).

OK that's it...the girl sitting next to me on Skype in this internet caffè is driving me crazy, so I'm off like a prom dress. Ciao!

Some more Belgian family background

Since my last post, I've done some more research about my great grandma + g'pa Adams and when they came over to the US. I thought they came over in 1918, but it turns out it was 1920. They got married a week before they left Belgium for the USA.

Here's a picture of the boat that took them to the USA, courtesy of Ellis Island's website:
The boat was called "Lapland," and it started in Antwerp, Belgium and it carried 1835 passengers - 4 of those being my great grandma, then 29 year-old Martha (née Noppe) DeFauw Adam(s) and 32 year-old Adolph Adam(s) and 5 year-old Rene and 2 year-old Irene DeFauw.
According to what my grandma has said, their plan was to make a bajillion dollars and then take it all back to Belgium with them...typical ignorant perspective of the turn of the century immigrants, I suppose? Needless to say, that never happened, in no small part because Adolph developed ALS and the medical bills were sky high.
Another fun fact -- Adolph actually had moved to the USA before Martha. The story goes (from my grandma) that Adolph proposed to Martha before her first husband did, and she rejected him, so he went off to war and then decided to go to the USA, all lovesick. I'm not sure if the proposal or lovesickness is 100% true, but it is true that he left for the USA and then went back to Belgium when he was contacted by Martha with the news that her first husband, Michele DeFauw, had died, at the tail-end of World War One.

How is that for a soap opera??

A few years after they moved and settled in their new home (without speaking a word of English, I might add), my great uncle Aime was born, then my grandma. Here's a picture of all the children and my great grandma from the early 1930s:
Back row has Rene DeFauw (1914-1996) and Irene (née DeFauw) (1917-1998) and the front is Aime (1923-2008) and Darlene Adams (1925 - ). My grandma told me that she didn't know why she and her oldest siblings had different last names until she saw their names written and she finally asked what that meant, later.

And here are the siblings again, minus Aime (maybe he wasn't home on leave like Rene was, at that point?) in 1945:
From left to right: Darlene (née Adams) Boberg, Rene DeFauw with daughter Marilyn, Martha Adams, Irene (neé DeFauw) Gruszeczki.

Once again, the pictures came from my dad's cousin, Marilyn. Thanks for your help! ;-)

Going to wait before I write the rest about my vacation in Belgium. Right now I'm just enjoying digging up some of this info about that side of my family!

België!

Only 6 weeks left in Spain, wooooah. The time has really gone super fast, it's crazy. Packing my life up for 8 months last September seemed kind of daunting, but I'm glad that I went to talk to one of my Spanish professors on a whim and ended up applying and getting my position here. It's been a "trip" ...hardy har.

Speaking of trips, I spent half of my spring break in Belgium. The last time I was there was for a week and I came over while I was doing my study abroad in Italy.

First, let's do a little more background story about my Belgian ancestors (I already did a bit in an earlier post, but now I have pictures of them):
Those are my great grandma and great grandpa Adam(s) with my great uncle Rene and great Aunt Irene, circa 1918. How cool is that? My dad's cousin Marilyn DeFauw Digdo, Rene's daughter, just uploaded that picture online and I just saw it for the first time the other day. Sidenote: my great grandma Martha Adams married my great grandpa Adolph Adams after her first husband, Michele DeFauw, died at the end of World War I, so the kids in the picture are actually his stepchildren. So it turns out that if Martha DeFauw Adams' first husband survived, I would never have been born, not to mention my grandma or my dad or everybody else. Which also means Rene and Irene were half siblings of my grandma, even though she never referred to them as half siblings since she grew up with them from the beginning, along with her "full" sibling, my great uncle Aime, who was born in 1923. My grandma was born in 1925, by the way, in Illinois. My grandma is the member of the Adams/DeFauw family still alive -- Rene died about 10 years ago, Irene died about 5 years ago, and Aime just died in the past year. Another factoid: The Adams family had the "s" added to their name when they emigrated to the US, for reasons I don't really know.
Here's a picture of my grandma Darlene Adams Boberg in the early '40s, with my great grandparents:
My great g'pa developed ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) later in life, so that's why he's in the wheelchair in the picture.

My grandma, great grandfather and great aunt Irene

Anyway, I'm a bit foggy about why Martha and Adolph decided to leave Belgium. I wonder how their siblings reacted, too, when they must have known they would never see them again after they took the long boatride over to the states.

OK, now that I got the little snippet of history out of the way, onto the story about my last trip to Flanders (fields, where the poppies blow)...!

I arrived at the Brussels Airport during the evening of Wednesday, April 8th and was picked up by my dad's second cousin, Marlene DeClercq, and her husband Dirk VanLancker and their daughter Sophie. During my trip, I stayed at the VanLancker's home in Nazareth. Here I am with Marlene and Dirk:
My dad and Marlenes' mothers are first cousins, and my dad's grandfather and Marlene's grandfather were brothers, so the common ancestor is their great grandparents...whew, that's weird to explain. Anyway, we were off Dirk and Marlene's home in Nazareth in East Flanders for a low-key evening in. I tried a new Belgian beer -- Leffe. Oh so yummy, oh so potent. I'm sure the Belgians think I'm a cheap date what with my getting tipsy after a few beers.

The next morning, I went off to the Vanderbauwhede home. Darlien, Hans' Vanderbauwhede's wife, is my dad's second cousin, too. While I was there, I got to hang out with the kids -- their names are Bert, Anneleen and Lotte. They are 17, 15 and 13, respectively.

Anneleen and Lotte with the horse

There was a pretty somber mood in their house, because their grandfather had passed away from cancer only 2 days earlier, so the timing was really bad, but it still ended up being not a totally doom and gloom visit. We watched some movies and played with their horse, a 3 year old haflinger mare named Naveena. I got to ride her, and it was the first time I'd been on a horse with virtually no training whatsoever, so that was interesting.
How cute is Naveena? She would never be used for the kind of riding I did/do (show jumping), but riding is riding. I'd love to have a project horse like that that I could train and maybe use for showing. The bonus to buying young, untrained horses is that they are much cheaper than the ones who have already been trained and won crazy championships and such, already. Horse tangent....Moving on!
Later in the day, I headed over to another relatives' house, the Schaubroeck home (also a second cousin of my dad's -- sensing a pattern here?). They invited over a friend of theirs to translate, since Christian and his wife don't speak English. The funny part is that their friend was a Economics professor at Iowa State a few years back. Small world, y'know? After we ate dinner and talking with the Schaubroeck's daughters, I went to Ghent with everybody for a little bit. We went around the city and had some Genever at a famous little bar.

The next morning -- we're up to Friday, now -- I went out with the VanLancker girls, Stephanie and Sophie. They are a bit older than my brothers, about 6 and 8 years older than I am. We went to Kortrijk for the morning + afternoon and walked around, got coffee, shopped, and looked at the sights. Kortrijk is one of those little, well-preserved medieval towns.

Stephanie and Sophie

Me and Stephanie

Me, by a famous bridge, Broeltorens, + towers in Kortrijk

That's what it looks like at night...thank you Wikipedia, for the picture.

Beguinage, which is protected by UNESCO

OK I am going to leave this post at that, seeing how it's already pretty long. Also, I'm feeling like death with my cold + ear infection, so I'm looking forward to faceplanting in my pillows. I'll write about the rest of it in the next post!

Actually, before I go faceplant, I want to post a list of the books I've read since September. I have become a reading machine, no foolin':

• When You are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
• The Almost Moon, Alice Sebold
• An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison
  
• Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
  
• Dry, Augusten Burroughs
• Frankly, My Dear, Molly Haskell
• Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
• The Gravedigger's Daughter, Joyce Carol Oates
• Rape: A Love Story, Joyce Carole Oates
• Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell
  
• The Pact, Jodi Picoult
• Keeping Faith, Jodi Picoult
• On the Road, Jack Kerouac
  
• Salem Falls, Jodi Picoult
• Change of Heart, Jodi Picoult
  
• My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult
  
• Lucky, Alice Sebold
• My Sister, My Love, Joyce Carole Oates
• The Witch of Portobello, Paulo Coehlo
• The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver

...I think that's it, but I'm just listing them from what I remember reading month by month, so there might be another one or two I'm forgetting. Right now I'm starting to read The Laws of the Spirit by Daniel Millman.
So, 21 books in 6.5 months = a little over 3 books a month, so I average a little over a week for all my books. Go me.

Hooray for meeeeee

Just got some good news -- my application to renew my job in Spain was accepted. Yay! I don't think I'm going to come back here, but at least it's an option for me, now. Also, I requested to teach at an official language academy for adults, which would more enjoyable for me. And if I were to come back to Spain, I would definitely look for Spanish roommates so I could go to the next level of really solidifying my Spanish -- even though I've really enjoyed living with my American roommates, I still feel like I missed out on that particular opportunity. I don't know yet where the Spanish Education Ministery will/would be placing me, so when I know I'll let everybody else know.

Right now, one of my biggest concerns is impending unemployment. And getting a writing gig is especially hard to come by right now, so I've been really anxious about going back home. Frown town. Worst case scenario, I'd go back to Victoria's Secret and work there until I find another "real" job.

Soon I'll be posting about Belgium. In the meantime, I'm still enjoying/savoring every morsel of Belgian chocolate I brought back...yummmm!

spring break account, part one

Ever heard of reverse culture shock? It´s what happens when you go back to where you live from another place and it seems foreign. That´s how I feel returning from Belgium -- I knew it would happen, so I braced myself for the constant ¡¡¡HOLA WAPA QUE TAL UN BESITO Y TUS VACACCIONES DIME TODO!!! ...No punctuation necessary.

Mis vacacciones were excelente. I went with my roommates Becca, Claire and Michelle to Germany and Austria for 4 days (actually Michelle is a former roommate, but yeah), then I broke off from the group and went to Belgium to see family. I´ll start from the very beginning (a very good place to start):

FRANKFURT
The girls and I got into Frankfurt late on Friday the 3rd, from Seville. We started off the day, early, and took a bus to Seville in order to make our early afternoon flight to Germany. This may be too much info, but whatever: the bus always makes me feel queasy, and it was especially aggravating because I was getting over the worst of my stomach flu. The first few days in Germany were hell, and I stuck to eating pretzels (but I did cave and get some Starbucks, too, which I later regretted, that day). Anyway, we got into our Frankfurt hostel pretty late at night and just chilled in the main lobby room with people from all over the globe -- there was even an American guy there, so I chatted with him, a British guy, a German guy, and a whole bunch of Croatians...it was a total sausage fest, there was not one other girl apart from me and my roommates, so we got a ton of attention by default. I think some of those guys were on their 5th or 6th German beer and were definitely feeling it. So we just chatted with them, and the Croatian guys playing us some music and we sang with them. Becca and I took the main singing parts, since we´re constantly singing at ¨home.¨ It was fun. The not fun part was the mosquito infestation in our room. Claire and I were attacked with bugs, and I seriously looked like I had chicken pox on my arms and legs for the rest of the trip. I´m still completely red and scratching them, I think I must be allergic to the German bugs, or something. Anyway...

MUNICH

We left for Munich on Saturday morning, and I did my usual sleeping on the train thing, for probably 3 of the 4 hours on the trip. I possess the happy skill of being able to sleep anywhere in any configuration. We arrived in the early afternoon and settled into our hostel and went to get Starbucks. Being a former Starbucks employee, I had to impress my roommates with the complexity of my drink order (Iced triple grande caramel soy latte, please). I was so extremely caffeinated after that, I thought my already naturally jumpy legs would fall off from over exertion. I would say I have that weird ¨disease¨ restless leg syndrome, but it´s never bothered me. So...the Germans. I was immediately struck by how many blondes are in Germany and how tall everybody is. For the first time since I´ve been here, I felt like I fit in, height-wise (Spaniards, overall, are really short). German sounds really, really weird to my ear, so that was an adjustment. Lots of ¨k¨ sounds and such.
First, we went to an outdoor market and checked out enormous pickles and schnitzel and frankfurters and the like.

This was right after I had left my coat in a McDonald´s bathroom after being sick and forgetting to take it with me (woops). I was a bit upset, because it turns out it was stolen - I went back to the hostel to rest for a while and try not to yak while Becca kindly went back to ask for it. Frown Town. Anyway, once I felt a bit better, we went out again. We went to the Munich Olympic park, where the Olympics were held in 1972. Pretty awesome.

And the German police are total BAMF´s, as expected. They charged the girls and I 40€ fees for having the incorrect ticket on the train without any sympathy whatsoever that we´re tourists and don´t speak German. Fork over the money, ladies, was the vibe we got. Ironically, that was when we were on the way to check out the Dachau Concentration camp, so the image of nazis was fresh in our minds.

Dachau, as you´d imagine, was a rather intense way to start off the day. We got one of the audio guides, which I was responsible for holding and telling the girls about (being the journalist that I am, I´m always eager to know everything possible about a new place, not to mention I´m very interested in the history of the Holocaust). The atmosphere of Dachau is stark and creepy. We went into the rooms where the cremation ovens and poison gas were and we saw the bunkers where they slept. The audio guide had info about every area of the camp, including first person accounts from camp survivors and American camp liberators. Some of the info was told by a narrator, about people who were killed. Sad.

After that, we got back on the train (with the correct ticket) and we set off for a 4 hour bike tour around Munich....it was a great way of seeing all the key sites of the city in a relatively short period of time.

We got to stop in some of the main plazas and see a whole bunch of statues representing Bavaria with lions and the like. Our tour guide was this Hawaiian guy who was extremely funny and had us ring our bells and shout ¨mullet¨ every time we saw one. Unfortunately for Claire, who gave us the idea of going on the tour, a guy got a flat tire and we had to make an unexpected stop. The guide couldn´t fix it, so the guy ended up taking Claire´s bike, and Claire (being just over a hundred pounds and pretty short) was the unlucky one to have to sit on the front of the guide´s bike. ¨Is it too hard?¨ *wink* ...So ridiculous. We kept on keeping on and we went to an enormous beer garden where the beers and pretzels are bigger than your head.

When the tour was over, the girls and I went out with some people we had met on the tour to Hofbräuhaus, a famous beer house. I only had one more, and not even the entire thing, since I was pretty dehydrated, but fortunately, almost over my stomach flu.

Moving on...

SALZBURG
We set off for Austria the next morning, which was a short train ride just over the German border.

Salzburg is stunning -- the Alps, the chalets, the water, the snow, the buildings, the music...I love it all. I really want to go back and see more of Austria, especially Vienna.

The first day, after settling into our hostel, we were off on a tour of the sites in The Sound of Music film. I was in the musical in high school, so for me, it was pretty cool, if really cheesy. At least we got to see the great views of the city and hear more about the story of the real Von Trapp family rather than the syrupy sweet story you hear in the cheesy, cheesy musical.

The house used in the movie

An accurate depiction of both my feelings about The Sound of Music and how I was feeling when spring break started.

We met up with 2 guys from our hostel, and we went off on a self guided tour of the Salzburg to see the salt fortress and other sites around the city. The salt fortress was quite a hike, but the view made it all worth it, especially with the sunset.

The next morning, we went with those two guys (an American and an Australian) to see the Alps. We took a gondola up to the summit and hiked around. Stupid me, I wore the worst possible hiking shoes, so I had to hold hands with Zach and Russ, our two new friends, so I wouldn´t plummet to my death off the side of the guiderail-free Alps. I´m not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of being in traction-less shoes in hard snow when a cliff is involved. Way to go, Meg...

After that, we went on a mini boat tour that was included in our ¨Salzburg card¨ purchase which also had taken us up to the Alps. We went on the main river of Salzburg in a little motor boat and saw some awesome houses, narrated by some creepy recorded voice both in German and then played in English.

We went out for some drinks by the water after that. So pretty.

We also went to Mozart´s birthplace (also on the Salzburg card list of attractions). Ever since I saw the movie Amadeus, I was really interested in Mozart. The movie isn´t a completely accurate representation of his life, but it´s still really well done -- probably why it won best picture in 1984 and was nominated for a bazillion other awards. I love the villain in the movie, Salieri. Ironic they made him the villain, seeing how I´m pretty sure Mozart and Salieri didn´t interact, at all, in real life. Also, the movie showed that Mozart didn´t have siblings and that he only had 1 child, himself, when in reality, he had 6 (even though only 2 survived to adulthood).
Unfortunately, we weren´t allowed to take any photos of the house, which was so lame. There were tons of things I wanted photos of, including weird things like locks of Mozart´s hair. They also had his first violin as a little boy, and it was so small. There were lots of commissioned paintings of him and his family and examples of his own handwriting and the original copies of his music. I love Mozart operas, especially Le Nozze di Figaro and The Magic Flute. My dream would be to sing the Queen of the Night aria, someday -- I already practice it a lot, haha...

VIENNA
The next day was my last day -- I took the train to Vienna with the girls, and all I did there was take a short walk around the center, eat pizza, and go check out the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, with all the Lippazaner horses. Unfortunately, the tour the girls and I wanted to take was completely booked until 4 pm, which was too late for me to go to in order to make my flight to Brussels. Boo :-(. I´ll just have to go back someday, I guess.

Some nice Viennese lady took that picture for us.

OK, that´s about it for part one of my spring break...Belgium deserves its own post, especially since this one is already so long. Hasta ahora...