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!