Gingham und Lederhosen und Dirndl, Oh My!

Coming to Austria, we knew we weren't leaving before we bought some traditional clothes, and earlier this week, we made good on our promise.

The first time I saw Trachten (traditional clothing) was on a Sunday in September.  After visiting the Haus der Natur, we walked around the Alt Stadt where so many men, women, and children were dressed in Trachten.  Ben explained that people from villages surrounding Salzburg come into town to go to the markets on Sundays.  I was blown away that people actually wear Lederhosen and Dirndl in real life, not just in movies and in what I presumed were stereotypical advertisements and images of the German-speaking world. 

During this time of year, one doesn't see Dirndl and Lederhosen in town, but many older men and women in Salzburg wear traditional hats and jackets.  I have to say that I love it.  I love that people are proud to be Austrian, and, on a side note, I also love that 95.2% of people here dress nicely when they go out in public.  It's not that they all wear suits and dresses on the bus, but their clothing is more fitted.  Whereas some Americans drown in clothing two sizes too big, or squeeze into jeans and tops two sizes too small, Austrian men and women just wear more body-conscious clothing.  I've noticed that my style has shifted to be a bit more formal and I'm trying to do new things with my hair.  Sometimes it looks like I styled it with two chopsticks, but at least I'm trying. I'm a firm believer that when you dress up, you feel better and are more productive, so yeah, go put on some slacks.  Yes, slacks.

So, before I babble some more, I should start with a picture of Trachten, ja?

These felons are all wearing some form of traditional clothing.  Just kidding - these are Ben's students graciously accepting our applause at the holiday concert last month.  This is a little one-sided, yes, but the males generally tend to sit farther in the back and to play different instruments.

Well, we received recommendations from a few different sources to buy our Trachten at H. Moser in Eugendorf.  We caught the 8AM bus so we could be there when it opened, and away we went! 

It was absolutely miserable outside.  We arrived 30 minutes early, because as the saying goes, if you're early, then you're on time.  We shouldn't have listened that day.   

We took refuge in a cafe.

To say that we were disheveled would be an understatement.

A sound, healthy breakfast.  We ate a real breakfast probably an hour and a half before we left home, so that flaky, chocolate-filled wunder-pastry was just to smooth my hair.   

Finally, it was 9AM and we were ready to get suited up!

First, a very friendly saleslady helped Ben find his Lederhose.  He told her that he didn't quite know what size he needed, so she patted his hips a few times, asked me (not him) two quick questions about what I wanted to see him in, handed him two pairs, and promptly sent him to the dressing room.  I waited patiently, and no sooner had he opened the curtain to show me when the lady popped in and started patting him all over!  He looked pretty uncomfortable, but I just had to smile and nod that they looked sehr gut.  Needless to say, she got the fit dead-on and he was done after trying on one pair.  Go, efficiency!  

This left plenty of time for me to try on Dirndl.  So, you buy the dress and the blouse separately.  The blouses were kind of like 2002 music video wear: belly shirts, but with sleeves.  The Dirndl were all different color combinations, and one even had a rhinestone upside-down pretzel that Ben tried to make me try on.  Without saying too much, I tried on my first blouse and Dirndl; it felt good, but the consumer in me had to try on different combinations of blouses and Dirndl.  But, when the first is utter perfection, why bother? Just like Ben, I bought the first pieces I tried on.  

Sadly, there are no photos of the women's section of the store because I'm the resident family photographer and I was busy trying to mess with Dirndl perfection. 

The Gingham Sea.

Our bag filled with goodies!

I can't wait until we wear our Trachten!  Stay tuned for the debut! 

January Photo Share

Well, it's winter and there aren't as many adventures to be had, not that we don't try.  Here's some glimpses into what we've been doing this month.

On New Year's Day, we took a walk around our neighborhood and came upon this church.  I had only seen this tower from the bus, and when viewed from the side, the angels look like people climbing the tower.  I thought that it might have been some kind of industrial monument or some large-scale art project.  And, in a way, it is.

It bothers me when I try to contact businesses/museums to ask for information and permission to use the photos I've taken, and they don't reply.  I understand that it's important to give credit to the source, so when I ask and receive no reply, I'm left with hard feelings.  So, instead of hearing about this place in Salzburg (which would have been a cool post), enjoy my picture.

And, yes, for the record, I sent my request in both English and German, so there!

Another day, another walk to Hellbrunn.

We saw Enten (ducks!), and Schwäne (swans) and a Krähe (crow).

I find that with the absence of a dog in my life, pretty much any animal can substitute.  Cats.  Birds.  And of course, I'm a fan of the dogs we see in our neighborhood.  There's an older woman with a chocolate Poodle mix (swoon), and an older man with a Scottie (swoon swoon), and the other day, I saw a little grey Poodle from the bus (swoon swoon swoon).  When we come home, I'm hugging all of the fur-babies in my family and then Ben and I need to work on getting to the point where we can have a dog of our own.  

Have you ever heard of Sacher Torte?  It's a delicious chocolate cake with apricot jam made famous in Vienna.  Vienna has the Hotel Sacher, serving the original Sacher Torte, but Salzburg has its own Hotel Sacher, and at around five o'clock, the hotel and the Salzach look quite enchanting.         

If you want a holiday present to be delivered one month after sending it from the United States, live in Austria.  It's bad enough that some people hear Austria and think "kangaroos," but it's worse when a package in a cute Snoopy box from your mother-in-law goes missing for a month.  We hypothesized that the package was in some sort of Castaway situation in which it would eventually come in a few months if we kept the faith.  These things happen.  So, the day after we decided to stop worrying about the location of our package, we got a notice that it finally arrived.  So, from New York to Australia to Austria - once we take our presents  back to New York, they'll have gone around the world!  So very international.    

Five random points of interest are enough for today!   Stay warm! 

Wanderings around Kapuzinerberg

Kapuzinerberg, oh, how elusive you've been the past few days, but here we go! 

Not only is Steingasse home to the birth-house of the man who wrote "Silent Night," but also Shrimps Restaurant!

Taking a right after the crustacean, we climbed stairs until my muscles ached and I felt a little woozy.  Suddenly, we beheld a sight: a mini-kitty sat on a step and peered down at us.  Ben thought that the mini-kitty would be hostile, but I saw a gentle creature. 

After seriously considering whether we could tuck the mini-kitty under an arm and whisk her away to our room, we tore ourselves away, discussing the pets that we would have one-day when we return home and live somewhere that allows animal-friends. 

More climbing

No caption needed

Remember when I wrote about the take-care-of-yourself mentality of Austrians.  Here's another example.   No guard rail, no problems?

It did offer a great view with no protective barrier to ruin the picture.  

Ben thought that some mythical creatures were living in the hole under the stump - maybe just some rot and sludge?

On Devising Something of Your Own

So, I'm sensing a trend here on the blog.

When I sat down to write yesterday's post, I didn't intend for it to be another post about the dark history here.  It was going to be about our walk down Steingasse and then our walk around Kapuzinerberg.   Then, I started writing and that's what I came up with.

As an English major in college, the number of essays I had to write was seemingly endless, and although I tried my best to plan out what I wanted to prove to the reader, sometimes I would get stuck.  Like in this essay prompt for my pre-17th century British literature class:

5. How is our understanding of Ferdinand’s murderousness and madness with regard to his sister colored by our understanding that they were born twins? In what ways are they metaphoric twins? How does thinking about this issue color your overall understanding of the psychological issues that shape the tragedy?   

As you can see,  this was the fifth prompt.  I could choose it or I could let some of my classmates tackle it instead.  

But, the most beautiful choice came in the directions before the list of essay topics:

"Choose one of the following topics or devise one of your own." 

Sadly, I didn't devise my own topic for this particular assignment and I wrote about the difference between praise and flattery in Ben Jonson's poetry. 

.

.

.

My thoughts exactly.

Then, student teaching happened and I gave students choices in what they could write about, and knowing that I had the power to free students from topics they weren't inspired by inspired me to devise my own topics when I returned to college for my last semester before graduation.  And, academically, it was my best semester.

We write better when we like what we're writing about.  

We write better when we don't force it.  

We write better when we start writing and then try to mold what we have into coherent, grammatically correct, and organized ideas.  

Despite your good intentions, what you really want to say will come out in the end.   

So let it.  

Stolpersteine and a Walk Back

It's difficult to imagine what life was like years ago.  

In towns that we've visited, we've come across Stolpersteine.  It translates as "stumbling stones" because when you least expect it, you just might stumble over one.  They're small, golden squares embedded into cobblestones or concrete that commemorate victims of the Holocaust.  When you find one, you'll read the name of a person or of a family, and learn of their fate.  They're placed in front of the buildings in which the victim or victims lived.  Sometimes you will find one, look up, and see a building standing there, a building like any other.  It doesn't cry out of the pain and confusion its occupants felt when they were deported.  Without the Stolperstein, you would have walked by without taking a moment to stop and reflect.

Even more unsettling is when you find a Stolperstein and no building exists.  In Wiener Neustadt, we came across one and when we looked up, there was a parking garage.  No amount of squinting could bring the home of the victims into focus.  But, we paused and then moved on.  I guess that's the point of Stolpersteine.  

What all of this is introducing is a walk down Steingasse.  Steingasse runs parallel to a major road on the eastern side of Salzburg's old city.  We got off the bus, and in one minute, we were walking down this street.  And, it was eerily quiet.  We encountered very few people, and for a little while, it felt like we stepped back in time.  The buildings towered overhead and I could imagine people opening their windows to shake out a rug or to say hallo to a neighbor across the street.  

It's usually so hard to imagine what the world used to look like in days gone by, but on this street, somehow, I could.

             

The Inner Stone Gate from 1634.

 

Then, we came upon this building and plaque.  "'Silent Night, Holy Night' Joseph Mohr was born in this house on December 11, 1792.  The words that he wrote in 1818 are sung today by people all over the world."

We didn't find any Stolpersteine on Steingasse, but wandering a bit farther, we found a couple.

Steingasse links to Kapuzinerberg, and I'll write about our little jaunt there soon.

We ended our outing by crossing the bridge to the Alt Stadt and I finally took pictures of the memorial of the bridge that we cross nearly every day.  

This is just to say

I just tried to create this post as a poem using this as my inspiration.  While William Carlos Williams says so much so succinctly, I find that the limited number of syllables just wasn't working with my brain this morning. 

So, long version:

You can now follow my blog by typing in your email address in the rectangular box on the right-hand column.  Read and follow the instructions that pop up, and every time I post, you will receive it in your inbox!

I also added a Search feature, so you can search my blog by typing in a keyword.

Pretty elementary stuff, but it was lacking before.

And, because I don't believe in any blog post without visuals, here's a picture of someone else trying to use something popular as inspiration and then failing.

 

Wiener Neustadt and the Inescapable Past

When we visited our friends in Wiener Neustadt over the holiday break, they gave us a tour of the town.  The weather was absolutely miserable; the rain fell at such a pace that my glasses could not be kept dry despite my hood or my annoyance.  That easily has to be one of my biggest pet peeves.  Why hasn't someone invented a solution to this yet?  (And don't just say contacts.) 

We didn't see the town on one of her better days, but we were left with impressions that are worth sharing.

In the Stadtpark (city park), Johannes and Amy pointed out that the city of Wiener Neustadt had been fortified several times and they showed us portions of the different city walls within the Stadtpark.  Then, we came upon these gravestones from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that were displayed in front of one of the walls.  As the story goes, there used to be a bustling Jewish community in Wiener Neustadt until the reign of Emperor Maximillian in the fifteenth century when he ordered Jews out of the city and converted their synagogue into a Catholic church.  In 1846, city workers who were digging around the city walls uncovered these tombstones, evidence of a more tolerant past toward Jews in the city.     

We passed this building as we exited the Stadtpark.  Remember when I wrote about the Altes Rathaus in Munich, the setting for a hate-filled speech by Goebbels that led to Kristallnacht that has been transformed into a safe, innocent toy museum?  Well, this building shares a similar fate.

Beginning in 1938, this building was used as an office for the Gestapo.  It belonged to Jewish people, and was seized as were many other Jewish-owned properties in Austria and elsewhere in Europe.  Soon after establishing themselves in Wiener Neustadt, around ninety Jews and other political opponents of the Nazis were arrested over the course of two days.  Many of these people were later transported to Dachau (next to Munich) and other concentration camps after being tortured and abused here first.   

Now, it's called the Europahaus and it houses a kindergarten and a youth hostel. 

I'm torn when thinking about this.  No amount of remodeling or renaming can hide history.  I don't think that buildings such as the Altes Rathaus in Munich or the Europahaus in Wiener Neustadt should be torn down.  That would be a denial of history.  At the same time, we can't expect Germans and Austrians to keep the buildings as they were in the '30s and '40s.  That would make it seem like the people haven't moved on, and from what I know, most people here want to leave that history far behind them.  But, repurposing these buildings into innocuous establishments, like toy museums and kindergartens, also feels like a slap in the face.

The United States isn't exempt from this: plantations, Native American villages and burial grounds, lynching trees, the fence where Matthew Shepard was left to die, a movie theater in Colorado, an elementary school in Connecticut.  The list goes on.  What should be done with these places?

How do we successfully acknowledge the past as well as heal and grow as time goes on?

Munich: Science, History, and Horse Butchery

Earlier this week, we spent the day in München, known to us English speakers as Munich.  It was my first time in Germany, and hopefully not my last.

First up - the train ride.

Sidenote:  Austrians are known for being a little bit pushy when it comes to public transportation.  Whether it's a bus or a train, you need to fight your way on and off.  If you think that you're standing close enough to the door to be the first person on, think again.  In my experience, the personal space that we enjoy in the US is non-existent here.  People will get extremely close to you to be closer to the door.  That's just the way it is.

Well, Ben and I brought food for the train ride, and we wanted to score a table so we could have room to eat it.  I was determined to get a table so when the train arrived, I thought to myself, When in Austria, do as the Austrians do.   And you know what?  I got it.  I shouldn't brag too much; there were certainly enough seats and we didn't displace a family that wanted to sit together.  But, it was nice to travel with room to spare.   

Here's a good time to point out how we bought our train tickets.  For the first time, we used L'TUR, a discount website for last-minute travelers booking their tickets shortly before their journeys.  The discounts are quite amazing, so if you find yourself in Europe, check it out!  They send you your ticket as a PDF and after printing it, you're ready to go!

And, we'd like to give a special thanks to my dad who funded our train ride.   Thanks, Dad!

We navigated the subway system and arrived at the Deutsches Museum.  The Deutsches Museum focuses on all things science-related.  From aeronautics and astronautics to ceramics and print-making, this museum was filled to the brim with exhibits.  I kept thinking that if I were a science teacher, this would be a golden field trip location.

Amerikanischer Hubschrauber  

I'll admit that when I saw this, I thought that it was a model of a space shuttle.  Instead, it's a V2 rocket used during combat by Nazi Germany in World War II.  It was the first long-range missile created, and it would enter space before descending on its target.  From a positive perspective, it inspired the design of space shuttles.  I was absolutely stunned by its size.     

Okay, you get one guess as to the purpose of the yellow undergarment with the plastic tubing.  We watched this video about the International Space Station last night, and it seems like they figured out a more Earth-like way to deal with this problem.  Space sure is funny. 

This is a photo for Ben's grandfather who worked on the lunar module.   Hi, grandpa!

A display of a monk making a handwritten copy - the beginnings of literacy!  

I can see myself showing this photo to my future students.  

Another obligatory recycling photo.

Pretzel in the subway.

Here's a side view of the Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall) in Marienplatz.  The first town hall on this site dates back to the 14th century.  It was remodeled a few times in different styles.  After being heavily damaged in World War II, it was restored.

A speech that Goebbels gave at the Altes Rathaus in 1938 led to Kristallnacht.   

Now, the building hosts a toy museum. 

 

We spent some time at the Viktualienmarkt.  The Maibaum was decked out in Christmas gear.  We picked up a delicious loaf of ciabatta bread and some mead for later.  Then, we came across this establishment.  Metzgerei means butchery and pferd means horse.  I guessed that this butcher sells horse meat and Ben guessed that the horse is just an unfortunate choice for a mascot.  What do you think?   

 Notice the bike lane.

The Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) in Marienplatz - Wow.  As you can see, it was built in the Gothic Revival Style during the 19th century.  Besides its impressive appearance, the Neues Rathaus is known for its daily glockenspiel shows.  Figures in the tower spin around and the bells chime, of course.  Check this out.