On the Road to Spain

We left hot, tropical Wien Saturday morning for Salzburg. Unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worse. Rain and wind all day. A steady rain in Salzburg - we got soaked walking around. We don't have proper rain attire. I grew up in California, so o.k. I'm not up on the latest rain gear. Nonetheless, today we could've used some proper gear.

We finally found a cafe/restaurant (almost all the cafes were full 'cause everyone was hiding out from the rain) and the kids took some black&white pix of each other.

The plan is to wake up early tomorrow and head straight off to Lausanne.

Pascal: I like the rain 'cause if I get my hair wet I don't have to take a bath and wash my hair.

Dean: I thought snow was bad, but rain is way worse.

Anika: The weather was bad, but therefore I had a good time.

Tessa: But I don't have any shoes.

Sabine: Today is today, but tomorrow will be different.

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We made it to Lindau on the Boden See today. Nice weather, nice lake, sunshine, pretty town and sailboats all around. Smells like vacation.

Lindau has a re-ocurring symbol of a tree with oversize leaves (sometimes with roots). Don't know what it means. Of course I couldn't say what the picture of the oak tree meant in Oakland, except that the city's name is Oakland so... get it: therefore a picture of an oak tree. Maybe it's the same thing for Lindau.

That's a model of Lindau, Pascal the giant is attacking.

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Next day, on to France. We stopped in a little town (Clemont-Ferrand) that had the name of Pascal all over it!! Was Pascal the mathematician born here? Don't know. But we ate at Cafe Pascal, and found a Rue Pascal.

The huge Michelin factory, or its decaying remains is near by "Town du Pascal."

Around Town

Pictures from around town. It snowed again. The kids played in the snow in front of the Kunsthistorische Museum. They 'skated' on a puddle of ice. Ani tried on my glasses. We found a walrus and a sun bear in the Naturhistorische Museum. I light my hand on fire. Isn't vacation nice?

Urlaub im Bauernhof

Vacation!! Spent three nights on a farm in the southern mountains (Steiermarkt) from Wien. Boy was it a relaxing change from the hustle and bustle of the city. We helped the farmers with the cows, kittens, goats, bunnies, chickens and dog. Anika loved chasing the kittens around the barn, petting the calves, feeding the cows, collecting eggs, and generally running around the barn, hopping in the hay, and getting really, really dirty. There was also an 8 year old girl (sarah, the farmers daughter) for Ani to play with. They had lots of fun. The farmers, themselves were really, really nice, down to earth, not complicated, and intelligent too. We learned a lot about what it takes to run a dairy farm. It's not such bad work taking care of the animals, except you have to do it everyday, once around 5:30am and again around 4:30pm. Everything else around the farms gets done in between. We even got to watch one of the cows get "artificially inseminated." Not a sight for the squeamish, but the cow didn't seem to be bothered at all by the whole procedure.

The other crazy thing about a farm is the smell. Just walking around the barn your clothes and hair get impregnated with the cow/chicken/hay smell. You need a separate set of clothes for the barn, and thankfully the farmers had extra jackets and boots for Anika and Pascal.

We had so much fun, we're pretty sure we'll go there again in the summer or fall, then we can take the cows out to the pasture, and maybe even ride some horses or ponies.

Zell am See Vacation!!

Finally a vacation! We went for 3 nights to Zell am See, about 1 1/2 hour by train south from Salzburg. It was nice to get out of the hot city and into the green cool mountains. We had a nice room overlooking the lake with the mountains behind. The first day we hiked the Schmitten Hohe. We took the cable tram up the mountain and hiked downhill. Along the way Sabine spotted blueberry bushes and showed Ani and Pascal how to pick the berries. The two of them picked and ate like little bears. If you look closely in some of the photos you can see that Ani and Pascal's lips turned blue from all the berries they ate. Funny thing....about 45minutes down the blueberry trail Sabine finds a sign showing the difference between blueberries you can eat, and their close cousin blueberries that will give you a stomach ache. We were picking the right ones!!

The following days we took less adventurous hikes because our (my) calves were sooo sore from our 4 hour downhill hike the first day. We visited a huge waterfall an hours busride from Zell am See, and the day after that a narrow canyon, or Schlucht, or Shoot, with raging water below. All in all it was nice to leave the city for awhile and enjoy the cool mountain airs.

Pictures from top to bottom: 1. from Schmitten Hohe with the Glacier in the distance 2. Ani with a handfull of blueberries 3. Ani scratching a drawing into a rock 4. View from top of Schmitten Hohe looking toward the Tauern region 5. Pascal playing in the sparkly glacier sand 6. Pascal, Sabine and Ani half way through the first days hike 7. Ani in the boulders 8. Pascal in the boulders 9. Sabine swinging Pascal down the hill 10. A view of the Tauern mountains 11. Coffee and Water, MMMmmmm 12. Ani and Pascal the little blueberry pickin bear cubs 13. Ani with pre-blue lips 14. The top of Schmitten Hohe looking at the glacier 15. Looking down from Schmitten Hohe at Zell am See 16. The view from our balcony