Salzburg

This city is fabulous. Once out of the train station, we locked up our bags and headed for the city center to see some sights! We ended up in Mozart Platz (Mozart square). Turns out, Salzburg is Mozart's birthplace and I WAS THERE!!! Cool huh? We took some pictures with Mozart's statue...



and moved on using a Rick Steves' self-guided tour. On this tour were many, many, many famous Sound of Music stops because also in this city is where the SOUND OF MUSIC WAS FILMED...AND I WAS THERE!!! Cool huh?? There was the big place where the Von Trapps sang their song and then escaped, there was the sweet fountain Maria danced on (of course it was under construction and covered up-boo), and there was a gorgeous church called St. Peter's:



Just outside of the church is this cemetery, which was very interesting and beautiful.



Although, the cemetery in the movie was a constructed set, it was based off of this very cemetery. We continued further and climbed up a ton of stairs for an incredible view of the city. We saw quite a few more sites and then headed towards our couch surfer's flat for the night. Karin was incredible! We met her two GREAT kids and loved her awesome flat (which is above a shopping area that might be the equivalent of Rodeo Drive with some miscellaneous stores thrown in). She gave us advice in where to go, helped us with train schedules, and told us she dreamed of possibly starting a guest house one day. Cool! The next day we headed to a palace where they have the funniest trick fountains! So 400 years ago this archbishop guy was apparently bored with his regular yard, so he had constructed a couple hundred fountains that made people believe they were intricate fountains (which they are). This mesmerized the people as they watched the fountains and pieces go round and round and then...SPLASH!!!! They got water up their skirts or down their backs or what's funniest...IN THEIR FACES! All of the fountains are still working perfectly today! If I had a palace, I would TOTALLY do this.



Also, THEE gazebo (you know which one I'm talking about) was moved to the grounds of this palace, so we took a little walk across the "yard" and saw it!!!!!!



"I am 16 going on 17!!!!!" Darn thing was locked so we could NOT jump lightly from bench to bench singing a song with our letter-delivering secret boyfriend. :-(

On the way back to the city center we stopped to see the palace or building that was used as the BACK of the Von Trapps house. Did you know that they used two different houses for the front and the back? We weren't able to see the front of the house because we didn't have enough time (it's a little farther outside the city). Then we headed to a cafe, which Karin suggested called Cafe Tomaselli. It was LOVELY, and so was the Strawberry Torte. We each had our own desserts but couldn't pass up splitting a second!



That evening we got all dressed up in the least wrinkled, nicest looking, least smelly clothes we could find and went to a fancy Mozart Dinner! There was a stringed quartet that accompanied two incredible singers. There were four acts, and better yet three courses! haha. It was wonderful.



The next morning we woke up and treated ourselves to a FABULOUS breakfast of fruit, coffee, and SWEETS!! We also shared two cream puffs. I have to admit grandma, they do 'em a lot better here than they do at Meijer in Grand Rapids!



That was it for Salzburg! We headed to the train station and took off for Munich, our last stop...tear.

Halstatt

So Easter Sunday (April 12th) we were on the train on our way out of Vienna. Now Vienna is a big city and very beautiful for many different reasons. We didn't really see many mountains "up close and personal" in Vienna. From the internet we had seen that Halstatt was on a little lake, surrounded by mountains. We knew we were getting close when we started seeing THIS out the train window:



After a short bit of time, our train stopped and we took a boat across the lake to the tiny little town on the other side. Here is a picture from the boat on the way over:



Once we arrived, we walked through the town to find our guest house, which was small and perfect and had a BEAUTIFUL view of some mountains out the window. Then we decided to drop our stuff and explore the town of Halstatt. We walked for about 30 minutes realizing that our walk from the boat to our guest house, WAS the town. Haha. It was tiny! But perfect. Now that we had seen the town, we could relax and find some dinner for ourselves. I am happy to say that many of the things we accomplished on this trip had to do with food. This is the center of town where we ate both of our dinners for the two evenings we were there.



The food was great at this little cafe to the right of the picture. They had warm meals, good coffee, and GREAT DESSERT.

Monday (the next morning) we woke up AND BLOW DRIED OUR HAIR FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MONTHS, but then realized it was for naught because our plans for the day involved hiking up the side of a mountain. Bummer. Well, we hiked up to a water fall...



Then we hiked down a little ways to the town's catholic church. It had this incredible cemetery just outside:



This cemetery also had a tiny little building filled with a bunch of bones and skulls with the people's names painted on them. A little creepy huh?? I've seen one too many horror films to have the thought cross my mind that this might be what they do to their tourists...ahh!



Haha, thankfully all the names seemed to be Austrian...or maybe German?

We finished off the afternoon with a little bit of window shopping and ended up reading in the sun, sitting on the stairs to the monument in the middle of the square. This was our relaxing city. We had been going and would be going nonstop for the rest of the trip, so we sucked in all the rest we could.

We woke up early the next morning to eat breakfast, pack, Amanda and I got hair cuts, and then we had a small lunch, some ice cream, and headed towards the boat. It took off the MINUTE it was scheduled to (soooo refreshing).



We were sad to leave Halstatt, but excited for our next city, SALZBURG!!! This blog will also be coming soon, until then, I'll remind you that I have two photo albums you are welcome to look at if you just paste either of the links below into your browser window, you'll get a nice European treat!

Yer-Up:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025518&id=178200121&l=cb3d2ace78

Food and Drink:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025540&id=178200121&l=7e97bb7cb1

Thanks for reading! :)

Vienna

I can't believe it's already April 25th. This means a few things...

1. X-Men Origins comes out in 4 days in Ghana.
2. There are only 28 more school days and then I'm home to Michigan
3. My trip to Austria and Germany has already ended! :'(
4. It's HIGH time to post about the completed European trip!!

As you saw in the last posting, our sending off was done by Kellie (KJ) and Darrel. They ended up staying a few more days in our house, seeing the Ghanaian sites while we took off to Vienna on Thursday night! Yikes!

Friday Morning 9am-ish:
The VERY first thing we did (which was most important) was the following...



Starrrrrrrbuuuuccckkkkkssssss....mmmmmmmmm

Although it may not be specifically Viennese, it was necessary for my happiness. We made a fool out of ourselves by taking a few cheezy American pictures and headed for the ATM and train station. The ATM took lots of money from our account and the train took us to the main part of town where we could lock up our bags and see the sites! Our first stop? A sausage stand with INCREDIBLE sausage just RIGHT THERE in the middle of the sidewalk! mmmm
Second stop?

H & M!!!!!

This is my ultimate favorite store in the U.S. and you KNOW they've gotta be better in Europe! Turns out, they are! We were in there for 2 hours. The plan was to find an outfit for the opera that evening. We spent as little money as POSSIBLE then hopped over to a McDonalds (our first one in months) just to hang out for a few minutes, change into some new clothes and get back to ACTUALLY touring the city of Vienna. We made our way towards the center where we found some palaces and museums and a bunch of people laying around on the greenest grass I've ever seen in my LIFE! We took a few minutes to lay down in the grass too. It was glorious. Then we trudged on (remember we arrived that MORNING-we were tired) to find ourselves the opera house to buy some tickets. All the doors had a white sign that said "Geschlossen". We weren't sure what this phrase meant so we kept searching for a main door where we could buy tickets for the evening. Finally we ran into a guy in Mozart clothes and we asked him about the opera. He said, "Of course the opera is not selling tickets this evening, it's CLOSED. See? Geschlossen." Haha, thanks Mozart guy. Apparently, our internet information was wrong. As it was already 6pm we decided to head to the house of our first couch surfer, Doris.

For those of you who do not know about couchsurfing.com, I suggest you get to know the website and maybe register yourself! It's a great opportunity to meet new people and see new places for FREE!

Now something we had planned to do but deemed impossible was to see a wine garden. Wine gardens in Vienna, as far as we know, are up the mountains from the city, and therefore hard to reach (as a tourist with no car). However, when we showed up at Doris', she asked if she could take us somewhere that serves local wine and a bit of food and it's farther away from the city that not many tourists get to see. YES!!!!! We would LOVE TO GO!!!!! So we did! You could see the entire city, full of lights from up there. It was fabulous.



Saturday, the next day, we headed to a big fat palace named Schonbrunn. We were there for most of the day, walking around the grounds, touring 40 of the rooms, and of course taking pictures. This is JUST the side view of this castle:



I wish we could have taken pictures of the inside because it was gorgeous. This castle is said to be the only thing close enough to rival Versailles. This was followed by a self-guided tour of Vienna, which helped us to learn a great deal about the city's history. After a long day of walking and touring and snapping pictures, we decided to settle in for a night on Doris' balcony, playing cards while drinking wine and eating crackers and....CHEESE! It was a wonderful night.

Sunday we woke up with smiles on our faces, for two reasons. The first because it was Easter and we get to have treats after 40 days of Lent with no treats. The second reason was because for 20 years of our lives we've woken up on Easter ready to search for the painted eggs and rip through our Easter baskets for the Resees Peanut Butter Eggs and Egg-shaped malt-balls. UNFORTUNATELY, we're dumb grown-ups and have to bring our own happiness to ourselves. So we did. We got up early enough before church to stop at a bakery and get three different kinds of strudel. MMMMMMMMM. It's no PB egg, but it will do! Happy-day-Jesus-Rose-From-the-dead!!!! Church this Easter morning was at the one and only St. Stephen's Cathedral. This little picture doesn't do it justice, the place was gorgeous. Sadly we did not understand the service with our minimal German knowledge, but it was still an experience I will not be quick to forget.



After church and a McDonalds quick lunch, we headed straight back to Doris' to pack and get ready for the train to Halstatt!

The next blogs about Halstatt, Salzburg, and Munich will follow shortly, but I did include the links to my 60-photo photo albums on facebook. There are two photo albums, one is a photo summary entitled "Yer-Up" and the next is an entire album devoted to the food and drink we were able to experience in these four fabulous cities.


Yer-Up:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025518&id=178200121&l=cb3d2ace78

Food and Drink:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025540&id=178200121&l=7e97bb7cb1

Alright, talk to you soon! Thanks for reading! :)

Kellie and Darrel

So I've had a good night's sleep, left work at school for the weekend, watched a movie, did grocery shopping, and ate a bunch of junk food. NOW I'm finally ready to settle down and blog. I will start from the beginning....

It all started just before my Freshman year of college...haha just kidding, we don't have to go back THAT far, but that IS when my GREAT friendship with Kellie Jackson (who is now Malloch) began. She was a senior on my soccer team and I came in as a wide eyed freshman who just learned how to socially cope with people my age, haha. She taught me many things. Some were procrastinating and staying up way too late in the library with friends, but the more important ones, that stuck with me, were a sweet ab workout, a love for the inner city, mad soccer skills, and how to have an actual relationship with Christ. She is an incredible friend to have and I'm so grateful that we still stay in touch. When we met she had a passion to move to the inner city (which she has been successful in doing and is currently kicking the crap out of whatever black force is trying to bring down kids from 14-21ish and getting them G.E.D.s and job opportunities). Another of her passions was to somehow get to Africa and bring her fervor for Christ and volunteer heart. This is also part of the reason she married Darrel who also shared these passions. When I met her, I sucked in the inner city passion which scared my mother just a bit, and left the "Africa thing" alone. Looks like that came back to bite me, but GOOD THING, because Kellie and Darrel were able to come visit! Once they heard I was living in Ghana they tried with all their might to get here as soon as they could and they did! The bummer of it was, the time that they were able to come was just 4 short days before I was supposed to leave for Europe with the girls.

So even though we had a tiny amount of time together we were able to do quite a bit:

Chill out time at our local spot
Trashy Bags (a company that is working on cleaning up Ghana and producing fashion pieces at the same time! Please click the link to find out more information in my "Good Links" section on the right side of my blog)
Here we are in the taxi on the way...


Had dinner with one of my adopted families :)
While I was at school they visited the orphanage
Went to an art market for local carvings and paintings
Had dinner at a restaurant that sells typical Ghanaian dishes
They spoke to my students about what they do in Chicago
Our final night was spent at one of my FAVORITE restaurants where the losers treated me to dinner, and the owner gave us drinks on the house!

I love them both sooooo much and was so so so so so sad that I had to leave them.
Here's a picture of all of us before we left for the airport:



After I left, they spent time chilling, going to the beach, out for dinner, and much more! :) They both said they really enjoyed their time here and they can't wait to come back!!! This was just a little preview because I decided that they're going to come work at my school yay! I hope they're okay with that! :) Love you guys!!!! :)

Alright, so the blogs to follow will be about Europe!