Neuschwanstein Castle

Posted on October 17, 2012 by admin

When we decided to move to Europe, we made a wish list of places we wanted to visit while we were here. At the top of my list was Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps. It was “Mad King Ludwig’s” castle, and the inspiration for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. It was a large part of our motivation for planning this trip to Bavaria and Tirol in the first place.

We went to see it today! And it was truly beautiful. It fits with its surroundings so perfectly, and is absolutely a romantic inspiration. It is nestled high on the mountainside and surrounded by golden-green foliage. The air was cool and crisp today, and perfect for a walk in the woods. It was exactly what I’d imagined it would be.

We had reserved our tickets for an English tour ahead of time. When we arrived, the signs weren’t particularly clear, but we figured it out (parking lot 3 is closest to the ticket office, but that isn’t where we parked). I’d heard that they’re very strict about arrival times for the tour, so we were feeling a bit rushed as we made our way up the mountain. Strollers aren’t allowed in the castle, so we left ours in the car, but since we didn’t want to exhaust the boys by hiking up the mountain before the tour, we opted to take the bus up the hill. (The buses only run every 20 minutes, but we were lucky and got one at just the right time.)

I’d heard that the views from Marienbrücke (Mary’s Bridge) are fantastic, but the bridge was closed, so we had to skip that. That turned out to be for the best, though, because even though the bus dropped us off with 25 minutes to spare, after stopping for a few pictures, we almost didn’t make it — it was a surprisingly long walk from the bus stop.

The tour itself was pretty unsatisfying. The castle is beautiful, and very interesting, but the tour is rushed, done by audio guide, and the tour guide (more like a chaperone) was completely disinterested and uninvolved. Trying to do the tour, with the audio guide in one hand and a child in the other, while climbing tons of stairs and trying to keep the kids from touching anything was a disaster. It wasn’t worth the effort.

The views from the castle grounds, and of the castle itself, though, were fantastic. The boys were mostly bored (a little post-tour ice cream helped) but we all enjoyed the walk back down the mountain through the lovely autumn woods.

We had a good day, and we got to experience a beautiful castle. I’m very glad we went, but next time I’d certainly skip the tour.

Audi Factory tour

Posted on October 16, 2012 by admin

Mostly, I plan our vacations. Generally, Dan helps me pick where in the world we go, but once the destination is selected, I pretty much decide which towns we’re going to go to, which sights we’re going to see, and how long we’ll stay in each place.

There’s usually one thing Dan wants to see on each trip — when we went to Paris, it was the Eiffel Tower; in England he wanted to “see a castle”. For this trip, our barely-Germany trip, Dan requested a stop at the Audi Factory in Ingolstadt.

Today, that’s what we did. We had to hustle to get out of snow-covered St. Koloman in order to get into Germany (yay!) and up past Munich in time for the once-weekly English language tours.

I went into this mostly to indulge Dan — it was not expensive and only about an hour out of our way — but I really enjoyed it. We saw the press shop (where they use massive machines to stamp metal sheets into parts of cars), the assembly line (which is partly automated with cool robots and partly run by people with a lot of well thought out mechanical assistance) and watched a video on the painting process (the cars get flipped — albeit very slowly — through the paint to ensure that no bubbles form).

It was really cool.

The entire process of manufacturing the cars is incredibly precise and yet completely flexible. They make different types of cars on a single assembly line, and a computer system ensures that the right parts and tools are available when and where they’re needed. Efficiency and ergonomics are the priority, and every little detail has been well thought out. Where heavy lifting is required, robots do or assist in the work. Where a human eye or touch is needed, that’s who they use, and no one has to bend or stretch or lift very far. The cars are lifted up and transported overhead to allow the floor to be open for people and machines to move the parts. The facility is massive (larger than the country of Monaco) and they employ over 30,000 people. It was impressive.

The part of my mind that loves order, organization and efficiency was thrilled, and the part of me that likes to see cool engineering was very satisfied. I’d love to see a more detailed tour of another part of the factory (I’d also love to see how a different company, like Honda, addresses the same processes.)

The kids did great. Audi provides strollers for the tour (it was a long walk, and also not the kind of place that kids should run around). The boys loved it — the robots were fascinating and seeing a car come from a stack of metal sheets was pretty neat.

Also, to get there, we drove on the autobahn, which was an interesting experience. Most cars drive at pretty normal speeds, but every so often we had a car (or a short line of cars) blow past us like we were standing still. There really is no speed limit, except where the electronic sign slows everyone down to 120 or 130 km/h (75 or 80 mph). It works because everyone strictly follows the rules. We finished our day with a drive south, back to Austria. We had a great day. It was a pleasantly unexpected surprise.

Milk with snow

Posted on October 15, 2012 by admin

Today dawned chilly and rainy, and, looking out the window, it appeared that someone had stolen all of the neighboring mountain peaks during the night — only the ridge opposite us, the closest one, was still fully visible through the mist.

Hiking didn’t seem like the right choice for today, given the weather, so we climbed into the car instead for some “car hiking” on and around the mountains near where we’re staying.

We first started choosing turns at random, and found ourselves on the Trattberg mountain, climbing up a winding, switchback filled road. We would have been treated to some great views as we climbed up to about 5000 feet of elevation, but as it was, the vistas in front of us were just mountain, edge, and then gray, mist-filled nothingness. When it started to snow, we turned around and headed back down the hill. It wasn’t much snow, but at nearly 1 mile up, in a rented car without winter tires, it was enough to send us back down to the valleys.

We journeyed back, past our hotel, and down into the valley in search of something to eat. We found a snack and fixed a blown fuse in the car, all in the town where Silent Night was written — pretty cool. And then we continued exploring.

We investigated Gasteig, a teeny town pressed right up against the sheer mountain face. And, long after we ran out of roads recognized by our GPS, we found ourselves staring up at some massive mountains only about 2 miles from the German border (but a significant portion of that straight up).

We wandered further down the valley to cute Golling, and back through the winding streets beyond, lured by signs for a waterfall. When we finally arrived, B had fallen asleep, so Liam and I hiked through the woods to see the beautiful waterfall. The path was steep, rocky and slippery in the rain, but we didn’t have any trouble until it was time to head back. Liam didn’t want to go back — he kept trying to clamber further up the hill, and attempted to convince me several times to go “That way!” even though “that way” was up the mountain or across a swift river. We made it back to the car, wet and tired but happy, and then drove home to dry off and enjoy a relaxing amend to the afternoon.

Dan went out later to pick up pizza for dinner, and came back with a report of falling snow. We’d seen little bits of spitting snow earlier, and that was what I imagined . . . until the thunder started. We looked out across the balcony to see lightning crackling and heavy, wet snowflakes pouring down. The thunder rolled and echoed for long moments across the mountain ridges.

When Dan went to ask our hostess for some fresh milk for morning, she hiked out to the barn and brought us “milk with snow” (her words — extra impressive because she doesn’t really speak much English). (We didn’t realize we were sending her out into the snow to get it!)

The snow fell for a few hours. The two boys who live here (6 and 10) played enthusiastically in it as it fell. We went outside later to find roads, grass and cars lightly coated in wet slushy snow (B made some serious snowballs from the stuff). Our host poked his head out to tell say, “It’s wonderful!” as we played in the falling snow. We came back in to find the skylight in Liam’s room completely coated. (We’re not sure yet, but if this keeps up, we may have to rethink some of our travel plans for tomorrow.)

We could not have asked for a better day or a more wonderful experience here. I was so pleasantly surprised to see everyone here celebrate and enjoy the first snow of the season — here, where snow is so common that you might expect it to seem tedious or mundane. It was really special for us, too.

Twinkle twinkle

Posted on October 14, 2012 by admin

Yesterday, in the evening, after dinner but before bath time, we took the kids out for some stargazing. It was chilly, and my poor little city boys were a little freaked out by the depth of the darkness (Liam said, “I scared!”, and when I asked why, he said, “Dark!”). We didn’t stay out long, but even on a partly cloudy evening, we could tell the sky was full of more visible stars than we are used to. B was even able to pick out a few stars that shone with a slightly different color than their neighbors.

But then, later in the evening, after the kids were asleep, Dan and I stepped out onto the balcony to a clear sky absolutely full of bright, twinkling points of light. I was awed by the number of stars, their clarity, and the extent to which they twinkled. It was pretty amazing. We were even treated to a shooting star in the first few moments we were out there.

I bundled up in my heavy coat and stayed out until I got too cold. I’m hoping for another clear night tonight, because I hope to get to sit out and stare at the stars again. (And this time, we’re making hot chocolate.)

Well, I think we found autumn

Posted on October 13, 2012 by admin

We left Vienna today on our way to Salzburg. What a beautiful train ride! I really like traveling with the kids by train. Austria has a great rail system which allows us a ton of flexibility in scheduling, and we can get up, move around, eat, use the bathroom and enjoy the scenery during the entire trip.

And for this trip, the scenery was particularly lovely. We got to take in all the beauty of the rolling hills, the cuteness of the Austrian villages, the yellows and golds of autumn and the stark slopes of the Alps, all on a trip that took less than 3 hours.

And things only got better once we arrived. We’re staying in the mountains outside of Salzburg, on a working, organic farm. We’re situated most of the way up a mountain, looking across a little valley at some very large, snow-dusted peaks, surrounded by the colors of fall as well as chickens, cats, cows and tons of rabbits. Our entertainment this afternoon consisted of watching our hostess milk the cows — and later, enjoying the resultant milk as a snack.

After dark, we took a short walk to gaze at the stars (which were brighter and more numerous than I’ve seen in a long while, even on a cloudy night) and then took a short drive (Benjamin’s idea) to peer down at the sprinkle of lights that mark the town down in the valley.

It’s chilly out here. I felt silly for packing parkas, boots and hats when we left a reasonably warm Vienna (60 degrees) this morning. But being out here, where autumn has definitely arrived, it makes sense.

So far, I am loving this trip. And we haven’t even seen anything of Salzburg but the train station.

Applying for a visa for Austria

Posted on October 12, 2012 by admin

My sister, Jo, is going to be coming to stay with us for a while. She was originally supposed to come this week, but it took much longer than we expected to get her visa sorted out, so now the plan is for her to come over in a few weeks.

The whole visa process was more complicated and significantly less clear than we anticipated, and it has ended up costing us more (through change fees to the airlines) than we expected. We were surprised at how hard it was to get correct answers to important, straightforward questions as we went through the process.

Here’s what we’ve learned so far, in the hopes it might save someone else a headache. As a note, I think a lot of this is true for all of the Schengen Agreement countries, but I only know that it’s true for Austria, and, actually, I can’t even swear to that — Jo’s visa hasn’t been approved yet.

You only need a visa if you are staying more than 3 months but less than 6 months, or if you intend to work while you’re here. For stays of less than 3 months, no visa is needed (again, unless you want to work while you’re here). For stays of over 6 months, you need a residence permit. (I can’t speak to the process of acquiring one, although I have one — the IAEA handled it for us. I have heard it is “more expensive” to get than a visa, and can take up to 6 months to acquire. Ours did not take that long.) If you come without a visa, you are limited to a 3 month stay in ALL of the Schengen Agreement countries, and then you have to stay out of all of those countries for at least 3 months before coming back in.

For the “D” visa (which is the one Jo got — not a work visa, not a student visa, just a tourist visa) the paperwork must be done in person at an Austrian embassy or consulate and must be approved and issued BEFORE coming to Austria. It cannot be completed here. (Residence permits can be applied for while in Austria. This is one of the distinctions we misunderstood — we thought she could start the paperwork in the US and finish it while she was here, as long as it was done before her 3 month long non-visa period ended. Nope — that’s ok for residence permits, but not for visas.)

Travel to and from Austria has to be booked before you can apply for the visa (but you can’t actually travel without the visa).

The hosts in Austria have to fill out paperwork showing their ability to take financial responsibility for the person getting the visa, and this has to be done BEFORE the application can be put together. (Otherwise, I believe, the applicant has to show evidence of financial means to support themselves.) To turn in that paperwork, the hosts have to make an appointment with the correct person at the Austrian police department, during very limited hours (all of which are during business hours). We were really surprised to have to wait almost 2 weeks for an appointment. This paperwork has to be filed and approved before the applicant can even make their appointment in the US to apply for their visa. (This is why we had to reschedule Jo’s flight. We did not count on such a long wait for an appointment.)

Applicant has to show proof of health insurance that will cover them in Austria.

After weeks of trying to get the right answers from the right people, one (expensively) changed plane ticket, a few woefully incorrect answers from Austrian officials, and at least two trips to the Austrian embassy in DC (that was my sister, though, not me) Jo finally got to turn her application in yesterday. Whew.

After all of this, we’ve come to one conclusion: they don’t really seem to want tourists here longer than 3 months. Unless you have a pressing need (or infinite patience) just come and stay for 3 months. However, if you do decide to apply, keep these things in mind:

Do the Austrian paperwork first, before buying your ticket (or buy your ticket months in advance and start the paperwork immediately).
Remember that you must have both directions of travel booked before applying, but that it can take up to 2 weeks for the visa to be approved, so allow at least that long between application and your departure date.
The visa has to be approved and issued before you leave the US, so if it isn’t, you’ll have to delay your trip or limit yourself to a 3 month stay.

I hope that helps. I wish we’d known all of those things before we started this process. Fingers crossed that it all actually works out!

Arts & crafts

Posted on October 11, 2012 by admin

I am not a “crafty” mom. I have friends who do daily arts & crafts projects with their kids and who have closets overflowing with glue, stencils, glitter and construction paper. I mostly get it together enough to do art projects with the kids only around holidays. Today, we did a Halloween project. Although I do this rarely, and it almost never goes how I expect, I’m almost always optimistic and enthusiastic. I started out, after nap time, assembling paper, crayons, scissors and glue to make pumpkins, bats and ghosts to decorate our windows.

And, when B got up, he was excited to get started, so we commenced with cutting out the shapes, since that was a task I was only planning for B & I, anyway. We started, and the frustration set in almost immediately. B uses scissors at school “all the time”, but we’d never done it together before. The scissors were (by necessity) pretty dull, the paper was a little floppy, and he kept turning the scissors sideways, so I would turn the paper, and it ended (after about 2 minutes) with my fingers pinched a few times and B grumpy and unwilling to continue. Oops. Fail.

No question, I had asked him to do too much. And this point, i looked up “how to help your child learn to use scissors” and realized I was WAY off on what was reasonable. I tried again, with simpler, smaller tasks, but the “I can’t do it” mentality had already set in, and, regardless of the fact that I’m the adult and I even realized that I had created the frustration in the first place, his unwillingness to “just try again” started to really irritate me. So, I got snippy, and unsurprisingly, this did not motivate him to want to continue.

So, I switched into pitiful mom mode — “ok, fine, if you don’t want to help me, I guess I’ll just do it all myself . . .”. At this point, unable to tell which of us was the four year old, Liam woke up and groggily joined our merry crew.

I was able to salvage my mood, hoping that maybe Liam’s general enthusiasm for art projects would inspire B. I got B started on an age-appropriate scissor task (which he could do, and which seemed to buoy his confidence) and set up Liam with some coloring. I just *knew* we were going to have a great time at this point!

Liam, shockingly, showed no interest in coloring, but he did decide to try to eat the glow-in-the-dark crayons. Sigh. B ran out of paper to cut up, Liam ran off, crayon in hand, giggling, and I decided I had had it, and we were just going to give up and put everything away if no one cared. Fine. (Hmph!) So, I scooped up all the paper, the scissors, the glue and the crayons, and started to put everything away.

And, the kids didn’t care one bit. They didn’t want to do this project anyway, and they had no interest. But, truthfully, I did. So, I took a few breaths, and thought about it. Who is it I want to be in this moment? What do I really want to get out of this? Do I really not care? If we don’t do it, will I be disappointed? And, I realized, I *do* want to do it, even if they don’t. In a perfect world, they’d be excited to join me, and we’d all do it together, smiling and happy. In a less than perfect world, we’d all do it together, less than perfectly, but it’d be fun anyway. And in this world, the one I had in front of me today, I wanted to color pumpkins and bats and ghosts. And I wanted my kids to want to do it, but they didn’t. And I would have been disappointed if I hadn’t done it — especially if I had quit in an effort to guilt them into wanting to do it. I don’t want to be morose, I don’t want to be angry, and I certainly don’t want to be a martyr, glumly cutting out pumpkins all by myself.

So, I chose not to be any of those people. I sat down, got out the crayons, told Liam he could color if he wanted, but he couldn’t eat the crayons, invited B to join us, and I started coloring — all by myself. It took half a ghost before Liam sat down to help me, and by the time we’d finished a ghost, two bats and a pumpkin, B had joined us, too. (Although, admittedly, I think part of B’s enthusiasm came from the fact that when he asked, I told him we were doing an art project, and that therefore the Wii, the iPhone and the iPad were not coming out until it was finished.) B modelled a few of his grumpier “I can’t do the scissors” faces as inspiration for the jack-o-lantern designs, and he did the glue for the pumpkin stems entirely on his own. Both boys were giggling and jumping up and down with enthusiasm when the time came to actually put our work up on the windows. (At which point, Dan came home, and I looked like super mom with happy kids and pumpkins for the windows.)

It was a good day. I’m not a crafty mom, but I really wanted to decorate for Halloween, and I wanted the kids to join me. I’m embarrassed to admit how hard it was for me to avoid being dramatic, irritated or manipulatively emotional — all for the sake of paper pumpkins. But, even though we took some detours down those paths, I’m glad I was able to get it together, and focus on what I really wanted. We all benefitted, and, I was surprised to discover, it actually got us where I wanted to go.

I too!

Posted on October 10, 2012 by admin

Liam is at the age where his vocabulary and his ability to communicate are exploding. He adds new words and phrases to his repertoire every single day, and it can be hard to keep up. It often happens that we suddenly understand something he says, and realize that he’s been saying that same thing for days, with an increasing level of frustration on his part, since he’s talking and we’re not getting it.

Today, we had another one of those. The boys were playing together this afternoon, and Benjamin looked over and said, “Liam, I love you”, to which Liam replied, “I too!” Oh my goodness. I was in mommy swoon overdrive when I realized he was saying, “I love you, too” in Liam-ese (and that I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him say it before, I just hadn’t made the connection). I wanted to be sure, though, so (good scientist that I am) I tested it — I asked B to say it again. Same response. We did this a few times (B loved it) and it worked, every time. By the time we’d been through this a few times, we were all giggling, smiling and hugging. It was super awesome.

And, of course, I wanted to hear it for myself, too! So, I tried: “Liam, I love you”. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Hmm.

B wanted to help, so he said, “Liam, do you love Mommy?” No response. Hmm. Ok, no problem. Part of me selfishly wanted my own expression of Liam love, but I can’t deny that it’s pretty darn sweet that his first dozen or so declarations of “I love you, too!” were set aside solely for Benjamin. So, it was ok.

But then, B tried, “Liam, do you love Daddy?” to which we got an enthusiastic nod. Hey! Wait a minute! He wasn’t even THERE. He was at work, being all productive and stuff. And there I was, sitting on the floor, trying to not be jealous and failing miserably (and feeling pretty silly and selfish for actually feeling jealous, which I was . . . a little).

It was ok, though — throughout the rest of the afternoon, I was treated to the, “Liam, I love you” from Benjamin followed by, “I too!” which certainly made my day about 1,000,000 times over.

Then Dan got home, and he tried. “Liam, I love you!” “I too!” Hey!!!

But then, this evening, after dinner, I tried again, and finally got my own, “I too!” (Happy mommy.)

Autumn in Vienna

Posted on October 9, 2012 by admin

Autumn has always been my favorite season. Here in Vienna, we’re being treated to crisp air, with cool mornings, chilly evenings, and pleasantly warm days. It’s one of the things I really like about living here — we have a nice, long fall season. Back home, everyone loves spring and fall, but although we do truly get four seasons in the DC area, sometimes fall and spring pass by in the space of just a few weeks.

Fall in Vienna is full of the smells of roasting chestnuts and wood fires burning. We get lots of drizzly days just damp and cool enough to make you want to be cosy inside, but even more days just right for being out and enjoying the season. I feel like Vienna hits all the points that make this time of year so wonderful. I am absolutely loving it.

To Germany . . . kind of

Posted on October 8, 2012 by admin

Our next vacation is coming up already — we have a trip planned to Germany next week. Actually . . . it was SUPPOSED to be to Germany, but it turns out it’s going to nearly all be in Austria, oddly enough.

I truly do understand that Austria and Germany are two whole different places — Germany is bigger, and I would guess it likely that most Americans could more accurately identify the German flag and find Germany more easily on a map, but, Austria has been around a lot longer and was the seat of massive amounts of power in Europe for nearly 1000 years. I think the common language and the closely interwoven history (especially during World War II) throws people off. (Well, that, and the fact that there are people — and I am not kidding — who ask what we think of living near kangaroos in a place where the seasons are opposite when we say we live in Austria.)

But, of course, when we decided to move here, we knew Germany would be a place we’d want to visit, which poses a challenge in itself — Germany is massive in size and encompasses a wide variety of places and sights. Of all of Germany, Bavaria is the part that seemed the most alluring to us — the most “German” — so that was the place we chose to see first. We didn’t even know it at the time, but Bavaria sits right on the Austrian border, which makes it convenient, too. And, since our train route to Bavaria would require us to stop in Salzburg, which we have yet to see, we decided to make that one of the stops on our trip.

Then, we started looking into which places we most wanted to see in Bavaria. Neuschwanstein Castle (Mad King Ludwig’s Castle) was highest on our list, as well as a few small Bavarian towns and some hiking destinations in the German mountains. And, Dan wanted to stop for a tour of the Audi factory (outside of Munich). So, after some planning and discussing, we came up with a fantastic itinerary — 3 nights in Salzburg and 4 nights in Germany. Perfect!

Except . . . the parts of Bavaria we want to see (other than the Audi factory) are immediately in the vicinity of the Austrian border . . . and, the best places we found to stay (also the best values) turned out to be on the Austrian side of the border.

So, we’re “going on a week’s vacation to Germany” and spending every single night in Austria.

Honestly, I’m very excited about this vacation. It’s going to be much more laid back than our recent trip to the British Isles, with a lot more opportunity to take our time and relax, plus a chance to see some places we’ve wanted to visit since we moved to Europe. We’ll be staying in the mountains just outside of Salzburg, on a working organic farm (where they bring eggs and fresh milk every morning), seeing some of the “Sound of Music” places in Salzburg, spending some time hiking in the mountains in both Austria and Germany (including a visit to Germany’s highest peak), seeing one of the most famous castles in the world, and taking a tour of the place where they make and design Dan’s favorite cars. But, it’s a little strange to be sleeping in Austria the entire time — it feels kind of like camping in your own backyard.

A Mommy Abroad

Our big adventure, as a family of three.

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