An Austrian-style Thanksgiving and Venice

It's officially the holidays! Thanksgiving has come and gone. One of the professors at the university acts as a coordinator for the University of Northern Iowa (where Audrey and Sam study) and a few other US schools (not WU) and organized a Thanksgiving dinner for the three of us. Somehow, we are the only three American students studying at the university this semester!!

Gunhild had emailed us a week or so ago and told us she wanted to do a Thanksgiving meal with us. So we were aware of it.. but I wasn't sure how it would go. We were having a dinner since it's not a holiday and everyone still had work (so wrong!). I felt a bit lethargic last week... there was Mozartclub, as usual, on Tuesday. Audrey wasn't feeling up to going and I had no problem staying in with her watching movies. Wednesday there was a free Jameson event and I had to force myself into going. So Thursday was a struggle. I didn't want to do anything. I finally had to accept mid-day Wednesday that I was homesick. Apparently all of me but my conscience knew that. Luckily people were around to Skype with (mostly Mom!) and that helped a bunch. I geared myself up for Thanksgiving-- Austrian-style.

It's always hard knowing what to expect when going to someone else's for dinner. And I hate being underdressed. So the three of us decided that, even though at home Thanksgiving is super casual, we would dress up a bit for this. Gunhild sent her son to give us a ride to her house-- he showed up in jeans. Figures. We were greeted at her place by her husband, her older son, and herself-- also in jeans. Oh well. Better over- thank underdressed!

Instead of pumpkin pie, we started the meal off with pumpkin soup. Apparently it's not a traditional type of soup here but I've sure never heard of it at home! But it's soo good. Soup was followed by all the goodies-- turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, etc. etc. etc. SO good. There were a few Austrian-ish specialties mixed it. Some figs with bacon (actually really good) and little things like that. Instead of an entire spread of pies for dessert we had an authentic, home-made apple strudel. Mmmmmm! If that didn't get your mouth watering... you haven't had good apple strudel before. Don't get me wrong, I'm still craving a piece of pumpkin or chocolate pie, but apple strudel should probably be added to our repertoire of desserts more often at home! :)

Overall the dinner was very nice. Initially they spoke English with us but soon discovered we all studied German, so we quickly switched to German... which often switched between English and German! The vice-rector of the university joined us. He asked a lot of questions-- what we liked, what we didn't. Any specific complaints? How's Entree been? Well... a bit reluctantly (and a bit joyfully) we got to share our disappointing experiences with Entree and the Survey of Austrian culture course we are taking. Hopefully it helps but it very well could go unnoted. That's life, right?

When we returned from the dinner (by this point almost 10 pm), there was a dorm party in our dorm. Of course, the one night! Did I mention we had planned our trip to Venice for Friday? :) Amy, Sam, and I joined the party for a bit and tried to go to bed around 2 but the music was so loud, I'm not sure how much sleep any of us actually got. We woke up early and caught the train around 10. It's only a 4 hour train ride to Venice (crazy!) so we got in around 2.

We'd found this apartment-style accommodation that was cheap and centrally located. It offered a double/queen bed and 2 twin beds. Perfect! We followed the instructions and took a boat to Rialto's bridge and tried to call the owner. Instead of a person, there was an automated message, which seemed a lot like "the number you dialed..." GREAT! After a few attempts, we decided we'd have to find internet, double check the number, and go from there. Off to McDonald's we go (it's getting a bit sad, isn't it?). There's only one McD's in Venice but luckily, we found it and got online. But the number we'd dialed was correct. Why does the Broadbent travel curse follow me everywhere?! I apologized profusely to everyone... I had found this accommodation, I should have known, I felt awful! We decided to dial the number via Skype... and it worked! But halfway through Sam's conversation, the guy hung up on him. Oh, beautiful. I was having Florida flashbacks at this point.. we decided to look up the name of another hostel.

We waited a bit and headed back towards Rialto's bridge, found a pay phone, and, THANK GOD, got ahold of our *friendly* host. Although he and Sam had spoken some level of English on the phone, he refused to speak any English in person. It took about 3 times repeating the phrase for us to figure out he was going to lead us to the apartment. Once in the apartment, we realized this wasn't quite the apartment shown on their Web site. There were beds for 4 people but it was one queen and one *fold out* double in the middle of what should have been a living room/kitchen. We went sight-seeing and when we returned from dinner, the heater wasn't working in the main room. Audrey and I slept on the incredibly comfortable (ha!) fold out bed, which was about as cozy as sleeping on hardwood floor. We tried to make it an early night but in the end, I was awake until after 4.

If any of you have seen Just Married, insert any memory you have of their first night in Venice here. That's how I felt! Well, no giant cockroach (that we saw...) but still! It was beautiful. But we survived the accommodations (which were cheap), and the city was great. We really only saw Piazzo San Marco and the Basillica. Very pretty. I was surprised how much you can just walk around. It seemed like everywhere should be canals, not sidewalks! You could definitely tell you were surrounded by water though. Sometimes the smell was overwhelming, other times you barely noticed it.

This weekend Audrey, Amy, and I are staying in Klagenfurt. Hopefully we'll be venturing over to Villach (about 20 minutes by train) for the Krampus parade. Krampus is the opposite of St. Nicholas. He brings "gifts" for the bad kids. He looks like a demon. Klagenfurt had a parade this Saturday but we weren't back in time for it. Hopefully it's entertaining!

Few pics from our girls night and Thanksgiving: