Author: hillary

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Ouch

Well, all good stories have an element of suspense. I’ll have to employ this literary technique regarding my trip to Schloß Tirol, as I have managed to come down with the flu and can barely move or speak; writing intelligently is not in the cards tonight. (I’m reading all these books about using the beautiful energy that connects us all to heal ourselves, and I can’t even manage to will myself out of this massive headache. More practice needed I guess…bring on the Tylenol.)

I was completely brain dead in class today; obviously I can see now it was because of the onset of this illness. Hopefully my notes are sufficient to recall what we learned. We had a student teacher for a couple of hours this morning. It reminded me again how particular I am about how I learn things; I get stressed out when we jump into something that doesn’t build on what I already know. I like to learn things from the beginning, one step at a time, in a logical order. After a few deep breaths I managed to catch up though. Good practice for me to try to go with the flow…not my nature that is for sure. And in the end I did learn some interesting concepts and even a couple of tips on how to learn better. (Since it is so important in German to know whether a noun is masculine, feminine or neutral, I really need to start making some cue cards to help with the memorization.)

More pretty pictures tomorrow after (hopefully) a good sleep.

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Another Day, Another Castle…

I am a bit knackered after a long but lovely day. I don’t want to miss a post in November, so I’m going to make my adventure to Schloß Tirol a two-parter between tonight and tomorrow.

Another memorable travelling Wednesday for Markus and me. Today after dropping off the girl we headed out of Innsbruck to Italy. Our destination was the town of Tirol in Südtirol to see Schloß Tirol. (Not the world’s most original naming scheme, but whatever.)

The trip there was less than ideal. Markus, being the sweetie that he is, decided to take me up the mountain pass so I could see the amazing views. Unfortunately, I became desperately carsick from the switchbacks, and then once we reached the summit the fog was so thick we couldn’t see anything. Oh well. By the time we reached the town and parked to see the castle, my stomach had settled, thank goodness.

Although it was a warm and sunny day in Innsbruck, once we hit the border the weather changed, as is common. (The mountains really do a number on the area’s micro-climates.) But it was still wonderful autumn weather in its own way, with calm cool air, appropriately medieval-like fog, and of course the yellows and oranges of the leaves on the trees and vines.

The 15 minute walk from the car to the castle was amazing. The hike started in the lovely little town or Tirol with tourist-friendly but not too tacky shops. The church on the side of the road had a beautiful cemetery; I just had to shoot these incredibly well taken care of graves:

Because I have a thing for cemetaries
Because I have a thing for cemeteries

Once we passed the town we saw yet another castle which I still haven’t been able to identify. Here is the picture though:

Because one castle is never enough
Because one castle is never enough

The fog was too thick to capture an adequate shot of the Schloß Tirol’s exterior (all my exterior pictures are muted and orangy from the odd light), so here is one from the ever-handy wikipedia. (However, this picture was taken in the summer so you don’t get the awesome effect of the fall colours):

The first castle was built on the hill before 1100, with a second phase in 1139 and a third in the second half of the 13th century. Until 1420 the castle was the seat of Tirol’s royalty until Duke Frederick IV moved the seat to Innsbruck. (Südtirol was part of Austria until it was divided up after WWI, and German is still as common a language there as Italian.)

Here is the last picture on the path to the castle. More tomorrow about our visit.

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Oh That Money Thing

I think I’ve already discovered an interesting benefit of committing to posting everyday: I’m just not sure what I’m going to write about, so I have to look a bit deeper to find a topic. It is easy when I travel to Italy or visit a castle to know that is the next post whenever I finish writing it. But today was what has become a fairly standard day in my life in Innsbruck. Annie went off to daycare (although I usually take her, Markus did the honours today as I wanted to finish the page-turner I was almost done reading), I went to German class, spent the afternoon doing some chores, picked up Annie at 3:30 and then played with her for a bit. Not a bad life by any means, but not super blogworthy. But that opens me up to discuss other things that popped into my day.

Good friends Lori Stewart and Shawna Pachal (hi Lori and Shawna!), after listening to a presentation by Stephen Lewis, decided that all Christmas gifts this year for adults would be donations to the Stephen Lewis Foundation. I just love that. It is a wonderful way to honour friends in our lives. And I certainly know few people who need more things…certainly not me.

Moving to Austria has provided this family with a much, much needed re-evaluation of our finances and how we spend and (don’t) save money. We have scaled back significantly here, and are managing much better than before even though I’m not working.

And part of my reflections on finances is that I just really don’t need stuff as much as I used to think. I like to spend money on experiences like travel or excursions, materials for crafts, (which makes me very, very happy), books and reading material, and eating out a bit (although I haven’t minded cutting that down either). Annie wears beautiful hand-me-downs from her cousins, and Christmas and birthdays are sufficient for adding to the toy pile. I’m still figuring out the clothes thing; I want to update my sad little conservative wardrobe with some European style, but I don’t want to spend much doing it. For example, we are going to a very formal Viennese ball in the middle of November, and I just couldn’t bring myself to buy a new dress so am recycling one that is 8 years old. I compromised with new shoes ordered online from Ireland. I’m not sure what we are going to do when we have a new apartment, as I have absolutely no desire to spend a bunch of money on furniture. We’ll have to take that one as it comes I guess.

In addition to these personal musings, much of my downtime these days is spent viewing educational, fascinating, inspirational and motivational speeches on www.ted.com (waaaay more addictive than TV, let me tell you.) And these brilliant minds of our time are certainly not talking about how we can consume more or save up for a 4,000 sq ft home. Giving and helping and putting your love and energy out into the world to make it a better place is the message over and over again.

So will one gift to one organization change the world? I think maybe it will.

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English Only, Only English

I have discovered I LOVE learning another language. It is like this massive puzzle (infinite, really) where you are doled out a few pieces each day and try to fit them together. To make it more exciting, you can earn additional pieces by reading books or magazine, watching movies or TV, or speaking with the locals. (Although in the last case, if the locals are drunk they might give you a piece that belongs to an entirely different puzzle which you aren’t necessarily interested in constructing. You won’t know this until you try to use the piece and someone laughs at you. Good times.)

A group of us were chatting at the break from German class about languages, and Bernhard, our teacher, commented on how people from the UK or NA frequently only speak English. Oh, I am well aware, and I think it is a complete travesty, as well as being fairly embarrassing. Bernhard made a good point that you really learn the grammar in your own language only when you study another language. Which is why some schools still teach Latin. And of course there is the whole narrow-focused perspective thing. Discussions about the language inevitably lead to topics about different countries’ culture, people, food, clothing and customs. Of course, I am additionally blessed in this course, as everyone else is from a different continent from me so I am pushed even further to think outside the tiny North American box (or I should say cube, this being the high-tech generation.)

Whenever I have this English-only discussion, it always reminds of my favourite post on Stuff White People Like: #78 on the list: Multilingual Children. It starts out:

All white people want their children to speak another language. There are no exceptions. They dream about the children drifting in between French and English sentences as they bustle about the kitchen while they read the New York Times and listen to Jazz.

As white people age, they start to feel more and more angry with their parents for raising them in a monolingual home. At some point in their lives, most white people attempt to learn a second language and are generally unable to get past ordering in a restaurant or over-pronouncing a few key words. This failure is not attributed to their lack of effort, but rather their parents who didn’t teach them a new language during their formative years.

White people believe that if they had been given French language instruction when they were younger, their lives would have turned out very differently. Instead of living in the US, they would be living and working abroad for the United Nations or some other organization with a headquarters in Switzerland or The Hague.

Sometimes I swear these people have a wire tap directly into my brain (see Grammar, Bad Memories of High School and Apologies), which would be deeply disturbing if it wasn’t so hilarious. And I should point out that this website is specifically referring to American White People, which can usually be transferred pretty easily to Canadian White People. Being a European White Person is the end goal…so in effect, by moving to Austria and learning German I have hit the jackpot in terms of white person ideology, as long as I get passed ordering in a restaurant that is.

Tschüss!

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Welcome to the Aqua Dome

First, let me say that my friend Sue has inspired me to join the National Blog Posting Month in November (Hi Sue! I admire your intention to have a goal for this…I’ll be lucky if I just remember to post everyday. Lots of content, poor memory.) So hopefully you’ll see a post every day on this site. If not, well, there is always next year. I’m not sure if every day will be something earth shattering, but I’m going to try to put something, hopefully something readable, up daily.

This post will be easy, as yesterday we went to Längenfeld to visit the wondrous swimming complex, the Aqua Dome, as well as to connect with a family of a school acquaintance of mine. We have been a few times to this, well, I would call it a pool but it is oh so much more, and so we knew that we would have a good time. When you have a family, it probably is one of the easiest places to spend the day and keep everyone entertained. There was only the 3 of us, as Rebecca balked at the thought of leaving the house at 9:00 in the morning on a Saturday. As if!

The complex is about 40 minutes drive from Innsbruck. It was All Saints’ Day, where all good Catholics spend the entire day at the cemetery visiting departed relatives. As no one would confuse this family of being practicing Christians of any denomination, we just appreciated the empty roads and easy drive. The Aqua Dome is a series of pools fed by a hot spring. There are adult areas, kids areas, and 3 outdoor pods that each have a wellness theme: light and sound therapy, massage and whirlpool. There is also a restaurant where you can dine in your bathrobe. Everything is accessed and paid for by an electronic wristband, so it is easy to spend way too much money without noticing. Brilliant from a business perspective. Last time we were here, Markus and I also went to the spa, which was very brave of me as those crazy Europeans walk around without any clothes on. Not even a towel around the waist. That sure pushed the limits of my North American puritanism, let me tell you.

But as we were with Annie and only had about 3 hours, we just stayed in the pool areas. The setting is stunning with mountains close enough to touch and the trees showing off their blazing fall fashions. Here are some pictures of the morning.

Annie and Markus enjoy the indoor pools...
Annie and Markus enjoy the indoor pools...
...and the outdoor pools
...and the outdoor pools
One of the swimming pods in a stunning Austrian autumn setting
One of the swimming pods in a stunning Austrian autumn setting

After our morning activities, we headed over to a different kind of adventure: having lunch with someone we had never met. A high school friend of mine, Erla, reconnected with me on Facebook a few months back. When she read that I was moving to Innsbruck, she offered to forward me the email address of her husband’s cousin. I’m up for any opportunity to meet more people at this point, so Drifa and I exchanged notes and agreed that we would come over to her place for lunch after our swim. Längenfeld has about 4,000 people living there full-time (with 10,000 visitors a year for skiing), and so pretty much everyone can see the Aqua Dome from their living room. After a very short drive, we arrived at the apartment of Drifa Radiskovic and her 3 children, Alexander, David and Sara. As you can tell by her name, Drifa has an interesting story. She is Icelandic and her husband, Zoran, is a Bosnian Serb. They met one summer working at a ski resort near Lägenfeld and never moved back. They speak Icelandic and Serbian at home, and the children are learning German and English in school. (That will be a whole other post about the travesty of our mainly uni-lingual existence in N.A.) All 3 children have blond hair and blue eyes, so the Icelandic influences clearly dominated in the gene pool. Zoran’s uncle moved to Canada and settled in Manitoba with the large migration of Icelanders to Gimil, which is where Erla’s and mine connection kicks in. Whew, this is complicated!

But in any case, we had delicious homemade pizza and Annie played a little bit with the kids until she conked out with fatigue from her morning activities. I found it fascinating to hear about their background and how they made the transition to a little dorf in Austria. I guess there is both some historic and more recent stereotyping of Serbians here, so she has experienced some discrimination. But of course has also experienced many wonderful things about living in Austria, and overall I think she is happy to raise her family here.

And so the adventure continues for all of us.

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Birthdays and Fingerprints and Angels, Oh My

A bit of this and a bit of that in this post today.

Birthday Wishes

On the 28th was Rebecca’s 15th birthday. 15!!!! Who can believe it? We had a family dinner and gift presentation, with Markus cooking Rebecca’s request for a traditional Canadian turkey dinner. Turkey, mashed potatoes, carrots and stuffing.

Rebecca did well in the ski clothes department and we bought her a mountain pass for the winter. All of her friends ski, so this should be an excellent activity. Rebecca had several gifts as well from Canada from all sides of the family . Very nice, but it did make her a bit homesick. Understandable given how far she is from Victoria. My friend from school, Ana, even remembered and gave her a lovely gift of a Russian stacking doll. So sweet.

With my wildly (yet predictably) unruly family, the pictures of them sitting at the table are crap: Rebecca with a napkin over her face, Lili completely ignoring the camera, eyes closed, mouths full…you get the non-postable picture. So here is a slightly better one of Aunt Susi, Oma Renata and Rebecca modeling her new winter vest:

Fingerprints

This week we also crossed off a few more of the long, bureaucratic tasks to finalizing residency for Rebecca, Annie and me. The one interesting event in the whole process was getting my fingerprints taken at the police station. This is a requirement of the Canadian RCMP office in order to issue an official criminal check for me. As almost no Canadians move to Austria (something like 46 North Americans moved to Innsbruck in 2007), the Politzei were a little unsure how the process worked. After we were taken under wing by an officer who was curious how this would all unfold (obviously a slow day in the policing world), we found a detective who could help us.

After checking the requirements, they determined that we would have to actually take old-school ink fingerprints instead of the digital scans I was expecting. So I was brought into this very stark white back room complete with a chair set up to take mug shots with the prisoner number. Excellent. The detective had to keep asking me to keep my hand relaxed so the prints would work properly. Not sure how someone being arrested would stay relaxed, but oh well. Here are the results, just like on Columbo:

Angels

Staying on the detective theme…On Saturday when I was at the wedding, Markus took the girls to Arzler Alm. On the gondola on the way up I guess they had a Charlie’s Angels moment. Markus didn’t have the camera so snapped this one with the cell phone. I had to include it…can’t believe that this worked out with an often camera-resistant teenager, an energetic 7 year old and a ‘not-quite-sure-what-is-going-on-but-it-looks-like-fun’ toddler. Apparently they had a fantastic time hanging out together. That makes me so happy to know that the family connections are strengthening.

Does that make Markus Bosley?
Does that make Markus Bosley?

Hilarious!

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Eine Einladung

On Friday Rukiye invited the class to her wedding reception. It was a bit tricky to piece together with the language issues, but I think she was married in Turkey but is having the reception in Innsbruck. Lauriane from class (hope I am spelling your name correctly L!) and I, both displaced Moms in need of excitement, decided to venture out for a bit. It was certainly an interesting cultural experience. Lauriane’s partner was out of town so we brought her sweet 4-month old baby girl, Juar Jua. (Now I’m pretty sure I am not spelling that correctly, so I’ll fix it up on Monday. All fixed up. Jua, I believe, is an African word for the Sun. How beautiful. Lauriane also calls her by her middle French name, Lizon, which is also très belle.)

We arrived at about 5:30 to a big hall that reminded me of a Winnipeg social (1), complete with pretzels and pop on the table, minus the alcohol of course. It looked like we were the only non-Turkish people in the hall of about 300. There was a band playing what I guess was contemporary Turkish music.

At 6:30 Rukiye and her husband arrived. Friends and family held up rose-garlanded arches and there were sparklers lining their path. Rukiye’s dress was a strapless white traditional cut with a full, multi-tiered skirt. She looked stunningly beautiful. When she walked in she had a red sheer scarf or veil covering her entire head and face. When the couple arrived at the stage, the veil was lifted with great cheers and then the couple kissed and started the first dance.

I particularly noted how the women danced to the faster music. I would have had no idea how to negotiate dancing to the strong, regular Turkish beat (Lauriane and I kept joking about asking each other if we wanted to dance. As if I would subject my very North American self into all this ceremony!), but noticed that all the women moved similarly. It is a fairly contained dance, with slight movements of shoulders, hips and feet, small isolated movements of the ribcage, in perfect rhythm to the music. Very self confident and suggestive and leave-you-wanting-more rather than overt.

Her friend and another of our classmates, Canan, was what I would call her maid-of-honour, but I’m not sure exactly how this plays out in the Turkish tradition. She was also gorgeous in an satin red dress with her thick black hair twisted up.

We decided to leave around 7:30 to get Jua home for her bottle and bed. (Lauriane has what must be the world’s best baby. She sleeps 12 hours a night without waking, naps during the day and hardly ever cries. I’m not jealous. No. No envy here. Hmph.) So I’m afraid I can’t report on the remainder of the evening. I know that after the dancing there was a gift presentation, but I’m not sure of the rest. If I’m ever invited to such an event again, I’ll have to brave the rest of the evening.

I’m sure Rukiye will never read this (I don’t think she speaks any English), but I am so grateful for the invitation. Living in another country certainly puts you in the path of the unexpected. I’m glad we came.

(1) Ahh, the Winnipeg Social…or I guess I should say the Manitoba Social, as the tradition certainly extends beyond city boundaries. With no Wikipedia entry, I found an accurate and amusing definition on a blog for my non-Prairie readers:

A local tradition that [probably came] originally from Manitoba’s large Polish/Ukrainian immigrant community, a social is when the friends and family of a to-be-married couple (or a sports team, or a Ukrainian dance troupe, or a singles group or whatever like-minded group of people) rent a hall (often in a community centre, a curling club, or a church basement) and throw a [party.]

They rent a social hall for 100-300 people (most Catholic church basements/bingo halls or community clubs will accommodate) , where they hire a D.J. to spin CDs or records, get a one-night-only liquor license from the provincial government, and throw a party (or, to be more accurate, a thrown-together one-night-only bar) as a fund-raiser. Around midnight, a bread-and-cold-cuts buffet is put out (food must be served as one of the conditions of the liquor license).

People sell social tickets ahead of time to their coworkers, friends and relatives, and whoever else wants to go out dancing and drinking on a Friday or Saturday night. You can often get a really bizarre/interesting mix of people you know (uncles and cousins and aunts) and complete strangers who heard about the social second- or even third-hand and buy tickets at the door, if there are any left.

The music is always a real mix too… not just contemporary pop/rock stuff either. We may have a snowball dance to start (especially if it was a singles social), and a couple of spot dances during the evening to give away door prizes. The music ranges from the latest dance pop and country two-step to waltzes, polkas, and the schottise (butterfly)… everything from conga lines to the macarena (in my opinion, the only dance that straight people do better than queer people). I have fond memories of one particular Transcona social where the conga line went in and out of the men’s and women’s washrooms, outside the social hall, around the block, and back inside again.

That is a great description that sure brings back visions of trekking out on freezing Winnipeg nights in tight jeans and asymmetrically cropped hair. Thanks for the memories, Mr. Rilke, whoever you are.

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Schloß Neuschwanstein

Yesterday Markus and I dropped Annie off and drove for an hour and a half to Bavaria in Germany. It was a beautiful Autumn morning and it was great to get out of Innsbruck for the day. Our destination was a castle called Neuschwanstein. It is a 19th Century palace near a small, pretty town called Füssen. It is a bit of a tourist machine, (apparently over a million visitors annually), so I was very glad we went in off-season, as we all know how much I love hanging out with pushy crowds.

The brief history we were told was very interesting. Commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria, construction of the building lasted from 1869 to 1886. The castle still is not finished, because in 1886 Ludwig was officially declared insane and then died shortly after; all work stopped when he died. After all those years of work and planning, he lived in the castle for only 4 months. My pictures of the front were a bit wonky, so here is one from wikipedia.

Only guided tours were allowed, so we didn’t get as much time to study the paintings and woodwork as I usually like. But it was beautiful nonetheless. The paintings are mainly depictions of the works of Wagner, a favourite of Ludwig’s. The intricate woodwork in the king’s bedroom was incredible; it took five workers four years to complete.

We also went for a walk to the Marienbrücke (Mary’s Bridge); here are pictures from the bridge and then one of the bridge from the castle.

The valley below
The valley below
Marienbrück seen from the castle.
Marienbrücke seen from the castle.

As you can see, the fog was already rolling in and by the time we left it was thick and spooky. Very appropriate for our castle tour.

After a traditional lunch in Füssen, where Markus was able to have a tasty Bavarian beer, we drove back to the warmth and sunshine of Innsbruck (the micro-climates here are crazy!)

We bought a book of castles in the area, so more to come I’m sure.

Cute Kid Update for the Grandparents

Thought it was time for some cute toddler updates for the grandparents. You might want to skip this one if you are feeling anti-cute-kid or have had enough of your own cute child at the moment.

This was the conversation in the kitchen the other night.

A: I want some pasta

H: Wie bitter?

A: Bitter?

H: O.K.

A: First you have to cook it. I’ll get you a pot.

H: That’s right Annie!

A: Here you go (handing me a strainer when she couldn’t find a pot as they were all in the dishwasher.) It is a green one! (Everything is green or orange right now, even though the strainer was silver)

H: Thanks!

A: You’re really welcome. (How cute is that!? I love the ‘really’ in there. And with a slight lisp thrown in to shoot it over the cuteness scale…”you’re rweally welcome.”)

Annie’s Germ-glish is coming along nicely. The latest is “I’m too schwer!” said with a big family pout on her lips. Schwer is heavy or difficult, so she really means whatever she is trying to move, usually to somewhere she shouldn’t be going, is too heavy. But we get the point.

I tried to take a good picture the last couple of days, but Annie has discovered saying ‘cheese’ and makes a very hilarious face like this:

Annie saying Cheeeese. Will I ever take another good picture again?
Annie saying Cheeeese. Will I ever take another good picture again?

So here is a cute one from the summer which I don’t think I’ve posted before:

Andy took this one at a playground in Victoria this summer (Hi Andy!)
Andy took this one at a playground in Victoria this summer (Hi Andy!)
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Small Steps in the Right Direction

It was a good day today. Markus woke up with Annie, which is always a delicious way to start the day…for me at least. (Geneva could confirm the time by that girl’s internal clock!)

And it was the start of the second 4-week course at school. (Hard to believe I have only been in Innsbruck for 7 weeks. Feels like much longer.) We had treats on Friday to celebrate the end of the first session and had some German-learnin’ fun playing games. Here is a picture of the class in action and one of the group. Not everyone finished up the course for one reason or another so the class is a bit small in the pics.

This morning two new students joined us, one woman also from Turkey (that makes 8,) and one woman from France. I find it so fascinating to learn what compels someone to move to another country where they don’t speak the language. Stories of work and love and hardship. Old family businesses, upcoming marriages and new babies. This is an adventure-spirited bunch for sure. Our teacher, Bernhard (hi Bernhard!), does a wonderful job of using our stories and experiences to make the learning applicable. Because really, connecting with people is the most important thing for most, if not all, of us right now in this new home.

And I am feeling that I am making some progress. Ana (from Serbia/Russia) and Amal (Egypt) and I finished our exercies and so were chatting in German. I learned a sad story about Amal losing her husband to a heart attack 11 years ago when her youngest of three children was only 3 months old. She made light of it in the end…kein Mann ist gut! and we laughed. It felt lovely to connect with someone about something real while speaking German. Markus commented that sometimes I will feel like I am moving ahead and other times feel like I know nothing. That sounds about right. I’ll just appreciate this ‘moving ahead’ day and enjoy.

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Love, Schmuv. All You Need is Friends.

I love my friends. Really, really adore them. I must have done something very lovely in a past life, because I’m pretty sure I’m not deserving in this go around to have such amazing people in my world.

You know what else I love? The Internet. Here I was at 6:00 in the evening after a tough day and my beautiful friend, Stacey (see picture below), pops up a chat on gmail to say hi. Amazing and magical thing, that Internet. During our chat Stacey reminded me that I need to appreciate whatever comes to me this year, and not expect it to be a Perfectly Charming Year in Europe with no problems or rough patches. She also reminded me that when I was pregnant, my attitude was basically: I have no idea what this is going to be like, so I’ll just take it as it comes and appreciate all facets of motherhood, good and bad. Good advice for this year as well. I guess I’ve talked myself into the myth of, “How can a year (or two) in Europe not be amazing?” Well, I think it can be amazing, just not Pollyanna-perfect every second. And there are incredible things to be learned from the tough times, as we all know.

Here is a picture from the summer of Stacey and Annie feeding the ducks in Government House in Victoria.

Overall, I feel like I’m on the upswing again. I have done an excellent job of getting out of shape in the last decade (hard to believe I used to be an elite athlete), and have vowed to try to recapture a little of my lung capacity while in the Alps. I made the first start with a 2-hour walk on Wednesday along the river and then up to Hungerburg, a residential area in Innsbruck. It was fairly steep and it certainly got me breathing.

Then today Markus and I biked to Shloß Ambras for lunch. Those royals sure knew how to live (no camera with me, so I swiped this from a tourist page.) You can actually see the table we sat at for lunch at the bottom of the picture.

Hopefully after a relaxing weekend, I’ll be feeling even more like myself. Thanks for all the support, my friends.