Our adventure in pictures

I finally uploaded our pictures to Picasa!

To view the album directly, check out the album online here.

Wien, take 4

Ana and I are finally in Vienna! We have met up with Tim Irving (a friend frOm home) and a korean girl we met on the train for an afternoon tour of downtown. Went out for a last sachertorte with viennese coffee and later a kebap... Can't beleive that tomOreos is our last day! I picked up my bags from the hostel, except for the one with my laptop and important documents... Hopefully it is found before we leave!

Travels so far (Paris-Basque Country)

That was getting a little long, so here is the second part of our week in overview

Bas took us to Hallum (where Opa's family came from) in the morning and then dropped us off at the train station in Leeuwarden. We spent the afternoon going to Paris, with a short layover in Brussels on our way.

Mylene and her friend Aman picked us up in Paris and treated us to a FANTASTIC 3 course French dinner (i ate frogs legs while sipping Bordeaux and watching the Eiffel tower sparkle) and a driving tour of Paris by night, complete with drop off service at our cute little hostel.

oh blast, I am out of time. More to come!

Hola from Barca! (Venice-Netherlands)

I am currently sitting on the computer at our hostel in Barcelona- we walked from the bus station last night between 11:00 and 12:00 through a still very busy La Rambla to this funky little place in the Gothic Quarter really close to the water end of Barcelona's busiest shopping street. The internet connection is decent and nobody is in line, so I will try to upload a few pictures and let you see our who/what/where of the last few days. Hard to believe that it has already been a week!

 First stop: Venice, where I ran around the city with George, Erin, and Mr Madden for a day and a half... (click read more)

Tolosa!

We just spent two days with the Amonarriz family celebrating Grandma´s birthday, visiting pre-historic caves, walking through Donostia/San Sebastian with ginormous ice cream cones, eating too much good food, driving through Basque villages, and taking evening bike rides through Tolosa- today, a visit to San Fermin in Pamplona/iruña (and giving mz flatmate Mikel back his contact lenses) and then to Barcelona for two days. Ana and I had so much fun in Paris and the Netherlands. She is a great travel buddy!

Much love from the Basque country, -becks (and ana)

Paris!

Mylene and a friend of hers picked us up at the train station last night and treated to an a,azing dinner and tour of the city... Ana and I just zoke up and are going to explore it on foot all day; tonight on to the Basque Country!
much love, drop us a note- wikes i need to figure out these French kewboqrds!
PS the Netherlands were FANTASTIC!

Hi from Fulda

Hi all- just a note to let you know that I am still alive and in Fulda with Anna Stein! I had a great time with half of the Madden family in Venice, can't wait to see Ana in a few days!

Goodbye Graz

I have not really had time to be sad about leaving Graz- everything is has happened so fast here that even sitting on the train (with a roller duffel, small duffel, and two large backpacks) on my way from Graz to Vienna for the last time still seems like just another part of my routine. 

Even though the last week has been "normal," there are so many moments that stand out as having been really exceptional. Like Monday night, when Ruth and I made a quick trip to meet some of our new Austrian friends at a pub and ended up hanging out and watching a movie for the entire evening. Or last night, when the same three guys (+Maria!) came over, and Basti made us Kaiserschmarrn. Christoph brought Maria and I "goodbye Austria survival" gifts of Manner Schnitte and Mozartkugeln. In Maria's words, "unglaublich," unbelievable! 

Basti, Maria, Peter, Christoph, and me- last goodbye!

I have also managed to say goodbye to so many friends, spend an entire day hiking in the Vorberge (foothills), fail my first university exam (and therefore the class), score an A on an oral history exam, 

sell my bicycle (for the same amount I bought it for!), go for one last coffee at Café Binder, and move out of my apartment.

On Tuesday I escaped to the edge of Graz and hiked up the castle ruins which have been tempting me since I first arrived in Graz.... (click Read more)

Mittlealterfest Oberkapfenberg

Today Bastian drove Ruth, his friend Peter, and myself to Kapfenberg (second largest city in the Steiermark) for their medieval festival. I felt like a kid in a candy shop!
The full album is in the Photo Gallery or on Picasa for your viewing pleasure.

Horns were blown, imaginary arrows were shot

Trumpets, drums, and flags spinners performed 

(click Read more)

a Midsummer Night's Dream

 Last night may have been one of the best Graz nights I have had.
It started out with a free moccachino at Parks (because my card was full) and then migrated to Stadtpark, where  some Swedish girls (Maria and Elena, the ones wearing wreathes in the picture right) planned a Svensk Midsommar festival/party. There was laughing, singing (in Swedish), a decorated Midsommar tree, eating of raw fish and Knackerbrod, drinking Radlers (while the Swedes drank schnapps... they have a lot of drinking songs), and dancing like crazy people in the circle around the tree.

Well, Maria invited two of her Austrian friends, and we got talking when they heard that I was from a place where there was fantastic backcountry skiing. I started to explain my "bucket list" for Graz, and a few hours later five of us (Christoph, Bastian, Ruth, Mikel, and I) were going up Schlossberg to see the stars and the city by night. There might have been some climbing of the Hacker Lion statue once we got to the top...

Afterwords, we sat on the wall near the Uhrturm (clocktower) and talked until it was time to go home (hiking plans for the morning... more on that to come). We all live in the same direction, so we walked home... and made a short detour for Kabap before finally coming home. Ruth and I gave Mikel hugs goodbye, and finally hit the hay. 

Mikel, Bastian, Christoph, and Ruth on the wall

Tomorrow, Bastian is taking me to a Mittelalterfest in a town just outside of Graz :) Another check off the list!

BTW, here is the link to the pension that Christoph's family owns/runs in St. Anton von Arlberg... Christoph designed the website http://www.gaestehaus-kolp.at

Processing...

Since coming back from Croatia I have been trying to deal with the fact that I am leaving Graz in a week. There are so many things that I will miss about Graz... here are ten of them, in no particular order...

1. 

   Taking down the maypole in Hauptplatz

    There are yogurt vending machines at the 
   university.
2. I am free to think critically about american culture, politics, and history and have opportunity to epress my thoughts 
3. I'm not fluent in German yet. I can't leave before I'm fluent, can I? now where i can generally understand people, and am starting to learn to express myself. And there are so many other languages around me! 
4. Transport- bike everywhere. public transportation rocks. and it's flippin easy here. 
5. it is hard to have a "buybuybuy" supermarket when you have to pay for every (resuable!) shopping bag and walk home with it 
6. distinct coffee culture, sweet lokals, and 300 types of bread...

Cooking Turkish

Petra, Mediha, and Ezgi invited me over last Friday (before I left for Croatia) for dinner and a lesson in how to make a delicious Turkish desert called Helva. Here is how Mediha made it:
Helva (from Istanbul)

• 1,5 cups flour into a pot on medium heat, stir continuously
• 1,5 cups sugar + 2,5 c water in a second pot
• When the flour starts to brown a little add ~ 200g butter and approx. the same amount of sunflower oil. It should  be about as thick as cream of wheat. Keep stirring until it boils.
• Drop a little batter into the sugar water. If it turns white quickly, you are ready for the next step.
• Pour the sugar water into the batter. Watch out- it is a little explosive! Stir rapidly until thick. 
• Cool, spoon onto a plate, and enjoy!

One note- the "cup" we used was just a regular cup. Mediha said that she has made it from many different recipes, and this time she didn't use one- so everything is approximate!
Our main dish was pasta- which, I learned, the Turks top with yogurt! Evidently my love of eating just about anything with yogurt would be quite at home in Istanbul :)

In other news, it is only two weeks until I leave Graz. At this time on July 1. I will be on a train somewhere in northern Italy, on my way to meet up with Erin and her dad and bro in Venice. Yikes! So much still to do... time for a list!

1. go up Schloßberg on a clear night
2. eat a Steirer Schnitzle
3. go to the RitterFest near Brück on der Mur
4. have coffee at the cute blue place near the Opera that I saw the first week here
5. finish my "regular's" card at the climbing gym 
6. ... Suggestions??

Hrvatska day 2 - Zagreb

Goodbye, Hostel Elena!

I left my four hostel-mates soundly sleeping when I rolled out at 7 am Sunday morning. It turned out that a slightly later bus was a bit cheaper and got me there only ten minutes later, so I bought my ticket and then walked across the street and got some breakfast at the supermarket. On the bus I had a chance to talk with a lady from London who was an expert in applied linguistics. I explained that I had found my lessons and discussions on language and culture more interesting than my civil engineering internships had been and asked what sorts of opportunities there were for linguists. She laughed and said there wasn't much, that most become teachers, the pay wasn't great but at least you got to travel (if you liked that sort of thing), and asked how the outlook was for civil engineers. It was little bit of a wake-up call for me. Yes, I am loving languages and cultures right now and could be perfectly happy living off of oatmeal for the rest of my life, but is that enough compared to the stability of a career position with a city or civil engineering firm? At the same time, I don't know whether having a desk job with my signature on legal design documents scares me more or the idea of being in one place for more than a year or two.

Best guides ever!

Ana was waiting for me at the bus station when we pulled in at 12:30. We drove to her house and she fed me cherries Turkish coffee (unfiltered caffeine) and then turned me loose to explore the city while she finished up a German report. Zagreb was not what I had expected. Sunday afternoon and about half of the shops were closed, but all of the restaurants were open and the streets were full of people and a soap box derby and a 3-on-3 basketball tournament. There was music and laughing and the buzzing of mopeds- so much more lively than Sunday in Graz!
Ana met up with me at later in the afternoon and we had dinner at one of the restaurants just up the hill from the main square. A little while later we met her boyfriend and the two of them gave me a walking tour of downtown, complete with a lesson in recent history, from the breakup of Yugoslavia to the acceptance of Croatia into the EU which had been announced two days before. When it started to get dark we walked down to a pub on one of the streets that were filled with them and spent the rest of the evening swapping stories over Croatian beers.
It was the first time that I had talked with people my own age who had experienced their country at war, and one of Ana's boyfriend's stories made me smile. He was staying at the home of a Serbian for a debate tournament in high school and went to brush his teeth. As he pulled out his toothpaste his host came in with a machete and asked "what, is our toothpaste not good enough for you?" - and then they both started laughing. "It is so great to be able to joke like that with a Serbian," he said.
If you get a chance, I definitely recommend a trip to Croatia. You will be stunned by how clear the waters are, warmed by how friendly, welcoming, and quick to laugh the people are, and drowned in the thousands of years of history.

Hi from Zadar!

The last 12 hours have been CRAZY! I learned how to make Helva from Mediha, had some fun conversations with little old Austrian ladies while we waited for our 40 minute late bus, got my passport stamped by the Slovenians while the Croatians only glanced at it, and stumbled off of said bus at 5 am this morning in time to hike into town and see the sun rise on the islands near Zadar. So lovely here!
More to come- Ana has invited me to stay with her in Zagreb tomorrow night!
Miss you all, leave me a comment!

Vienna III: Van Geest Edition

   I have been avoiding blogging all of this because every time I sit down at my computer I feel guilty for not working on my history paper... but that is in the final stages, so here is the week's news from Graz in summary.
   Monday afternoon I jumped on a train to go meet two very special girls who were passing through Austria on their way from Prague to Venice. Erika was my roommate for a year and a half, but studied abroad my last semester at Calvin. She and her sister Marijke are currently in the middle of a month backpacking around Europe. Wien Meidlung train station was the first time we had seen each other in two and a half years. There was much screaming and hugging :) (click Read More)

Vacation!

   This travelling and semester abroad stuff is hard work- so what better way to escape it all than with a vacation! The Fakultäten (departments) at TU Graz have a tradition of taking interested students on Excursions during the semester to show them applications of what they are learning. I signed up for the Wasserbau (Hydraulic/civil Engineering, paid €25, and was swept off on a 2 day, all inclusive tour of water projects:
Montag, 23.05.2011 (click read more)

Pancake breakfast

Sunday brunch in Top 24

Click on the slideshow to go to the album.

101 days of Europe

   The highlight of my 100th day in Graz was Marietje's birthday party. Marietjen (middle in the photo) taught us all a series of traditional Belgian dances, complete with live music! The first two of were in a circle and we rotated partners so that all the girls danced with all of the guys- I can now say that I have danced with a dude wearing Lederhosen, lol. 

Kaixo, Euskal Herria!

What a whirlwind of a week! Let me see if I can put together what happened, more or less...

   My second day in the Basque Country, Gurutze, Kike, and Jone took me on a driving tour of their part of the Basque Country. The car ride alone was worth flying across Europe- the roads wound around, over, and through mountains as green as I have ever seen and along a shoreline that made Chukanut look tame. Our first stops were Zarautz and Zumaia, two picture-perfect coastal towns in Gipuzkoa. We walked along the harbors and climbed the steep stone streets to enjoy stunning views over the Bay of Biscay and the coast. Each town has a stone harbor filled with Txalupak (small work boats) and a dockside that reminded me a bit of home. The cool, breezy weather meant that the sandy beaches were nearly deserted- they will be packed as the weather warms up! 

   Our drive back to Tolosa took us through Asteasu, which Kike explained to me was the home town of author Bernardo Atxaga. Part of his book Obabakoak (which Kike was surprised to hear that I had read- thanks, Em!) takes place driving to the fictional town of Obaba on the non-fictional mountain road to Asteasu. The journey and stone town were even better in reality than imagined from the story. Absolutely lovely!

When we arrived back in Tolosa Jone and I were dropped off at a favorite kafétegia (café)/hang out spot for young people in Tolosa, where I learned a new version of BC from Jone and her friends before we walked over to their garage to hang out until dinner. (Click "read more"...)

Sunny Salzburg

   Only one week into Easter break and I am ready for it to slow down a little bit! I got home at 8:30 pm last night after three fantastic days in Salzburg with Petra, Pavel (Russ.), Gabriel (Deu.), and Marietje (Belg.). After spending the first afternoon wandering around the city, we decided to buy a 24 hour "Salzburg card" for the next two days, which gave us access to more than we could possibly see in that amount of time...
   In lieu of a long-winded, blow by blow account of our adventures, here is a summary and I'll let the pictures fill in the rest (If the slideshow does not start, click here to go to the photo album)

(Thanks to Petra for sharing her photos with me! The album will be expanded when I swap with Marietje, Pavel, and Gabriel)
Day 1:

• 4.5 hrs on the train from Graz to Salzburg, met Gabriel there, found hostel.
• Lunch at a really nice place on the east side of the river
• Wandered around town, over the Mönschburg, along the river
• Bought bread, cheese, olives, and wine for a picknic-style dinner at the hostel
• Evening walk through town...