Meerrry Christmas!



Against all odds due to this time of year being the busiest for the tourism industry Maciek managed to get both Christmas Day and Boxing Day off work!  We were very grateful for this.  Our friends Peach, Monika and their little boy arrived Christmas Eve in the afternoon, and after collecting Maciek from work in the evening we enjoyed a meal together and a few drinks.  The evening of the 24th is when Austrians celebrate Christmas (we were used to this as this is also tradition in Poland, and our friends also celebrate this way too), and Christkind comes to decorate the tree (oops – we did ours a month too early!) and leave presents for the children.  We know he’s been as he tinkles a bell as he leaves to let you know you can bring the children in from their “evening stroll” or in our case “little play in the playroom with the door closed”!  Amelia and Noah are especially lucky as they get Christkind AND Santa!  Apparently there is a bit of debate going on here at the moment as things are becoming more commercialized and Santa is making more of an appearance, about who brings the best gifts – Christkind or Santa? – and not many an Austrian is too happy about it!  Not really sure who Christkind is actually (apart from translating to Christ Child), my questions have been met with looks of confusion and shrugging of shoulders and ums and ahhs.  A star or an angel maybe?  But nevertheless I think this is where our Kris Kringle/Kriss Kindle/Kiss Kringle/Secret Santa comes from!!

Christmas morning, after a delicious omelette courtesy of the Lady of the Manor (me) we took to the beginner slopes for some sledding and mucking about with the kids, and then Maciek and Peach took off for a long awaited (11 years) snowboarding session together. 

The Grander Schupf

I need a weeee!!!..Sam

In the evening we took the advice of a friend and had dinner at a beautiful place on the mountain called the Grander Shupf, a traditional Austrian chalet style restaurant, even more magical with Christmas decorations and lights.  Situated 1km up the mountain, it made for a scary drive up especially since the snow had turned icy and the road was steep and winding.  Luckily we didn’t cross with another car coming down, as if we’d have stopped we would have been stuck, and would have had to reverse all the way back to the bottom.  Driving up a road like that is one thing, reversing down one is another!  We were shown to a quiet table tucked away opposite a lovely open fire, and being Christmas I had the duck (no turkey to be seen) with dumplings and blue cabbage.  Maciek and Gordon had it too and we couldn’t believe our eyes when our plates came out filled with what looked like a whole duck, sitting beside 3 little dumplings and a blob of cabbage!  Tasty though, got my fill of protein that’s for sure!  Another fun thing about the place was the fact that you can slide to the loo!  Yes, there’s a slide down to the loo’s, and small kids playroom!  My friend Sam was very close to laddering her stockings as she had about 5 goes (her excuse is that she had to show her daughter that it wasn’t scary!)  Then it was back to our place for desert and Bailey’s coffees, and musical statues played by the grown men with Amelia controlling the music which came from her new ballerina jewelry box that played Swan Lake when it was opened!  Very amusing.  And they weren’t even drunk!

P.S  Pics are not so great due to Maciek breaking our camera a week before Christmas (he won’t admit to it) and us having to buy a cheapy one to replace it and not having time to work it out yet!

In town

Peach, Monika & Yannik

Let it Schnee, let it Schnee, let it Schnee!!

Schneeflockes here, schneeflockes there, schneeflockes everywhere!  There’s even a guinea pig in Amelia’s classroom called Schneeflocke!   He’s white, in case you hadn’t guessed!  It started snowing 2 weeks ago and apart from a couple of days here and there it hasn’t stopped.  It first started snowing Tuesday lunch time and didn’t stop until Wednesday night (a massive dump, as Maciek says).  Needless to say, being the first major snowfall of the season I was a bit (an understatement) nervous about driving.  But I put on my brave hat and tried not to think about it, only to have my confidence shattered when I couldn’t even make it up the driveway!  Wheels were turning but we were going nowhere except sliding towards the stone wall!  So we didn’t make it to school that day.  I’ve had some practice since, so even though I’d rather not, I’ve been driving a fair bit, and confidence is slowly growing.

It’s been about 2 degrees during the day and minus in the mornings.  Wednesday was -13 on the way to school, the coldest yet!

Our house, left, top balcony

Amelia had ski school this week in the afternoons.  She’s not much of a fan, but I think it was more to do with the instructor than the skiing.  The hardest thing was keeping Noah entertained for almost 2 hours in the snow at freezing temperatures.  But it ended today with a little race (which I didn’t think she’d do, so very pleased!) and then a presentation at a café in town with medals for all the kids!  She’s very proud of herself!

Maciek started his winter job last week as a Lederhosen wearing non-German speaking waiter /bar tender in a hotel! (photos to come) He starts about 11am and finishes at 7pm so I have to collect him (more practice for my driving – at night time too on unlit streets!) as the conditions are too bad now for riding his bike, and he’ll ruin his Lederhosen.  He’s enjoying the late starts (as am I with the extra help getting the kids ready for school) as he gets to snowboard before work.  He’s enjoying it but finding it very challenging as not only is it something he’s never done before but he has to learn it in an environment where he can’t understand anything and the German and Austrian customers are a bit baffled with this man who’s wearing Lederhosen speaking with an Australian accent saying ‘Ich sprechen kein Deutsch!’  The Austrians also have a habit of keeping you in the dark and then wonder why you are standing around with a confused look on your face!  He says he gets through by laughing to himself, shaking his head, and asking the question ‘what the f am I doing?’ which keeps him going through the day!

In town

Looking forward to Christmas.  We have friends coming to stay with us which will be nice.  Not sure if the tree is going to make it though.  It’s looking a bit ‘over it’!  We’re constantly sweeping up the needles from the floor.  And we’re a bit over being laughed at too, for putting our tree up at the beginning of December.  It’s tradition here to put it up and decorate it on the 24^th.  At least that way it won’t die before Christmas day! 

It looks magical here at the moment.  Just like a postcard.  And the sun will be coming out on Christmas Day!

“Frohe Weihnachts und ein gutes neue jahr” to all!

XXXX

 

Nikolaus (and some scary photos)

Saturday we went to the ‘a bit like Bunnings’ shop and bought a real Christmas Tree and some trimmings.  I never thought I’d have a purple decorated Christmas Tree, but as much as I wanted to decorate our apartment with all the traditional natural Christmas decorations that are so common here, shopping around for them takes too much time (and doesn’t work so well with kinder in tow) and they are a bit more expensive, so I let Amelia choose the decorations, and purple it was!!  We played some Christmassy tunes and spent the afternoon putting it all together and I have to say I think it’s actually the prettiest little Xmas tree we’ve had!!   It’s modest, and a bit fat around the middle and skinny on top, but that’s what you get with ‘natural’!  Maciek was determined to go chop one down himself but I wouldn’t allow it on account of angry farmers shooting at him!

At the beginning of December each village hosts the arrival of ‘Nikolaus’, the Austrian Santa.  There are stalls in the village centre selling food and the delicious Gluhwein, and at the one we went to here in Kirchdorf, there was a wooden tripod holding a cauldron of fire, sitting atop a mound of snow, where the witches were hanging about (hey, it’s a different culture, right?).  Nikolaus comes dressed more like a red and white bishop than the Santa we know, flanked by six little girls dressed as angels.  There’s traditional music played by live musicians in the Musikpavilion, and Nikolaus walks through the crowd greeting all the kinder before handing out little bags of treats.  The treats include peanuts and walnuts (in the shells), a mandarin, a piece of ginger cake, a small chocolate bar.  It’s very sweet, something very simple and oldy-worldy about it.  It starts at about 5pm so it’s dark, and very cold.  The tradition here is that all the good children are visited by Nikolaus, but if you have been naughty, then the ‘devils’ come after you.  They are called Krampus, and they are teenage boys dressed up in the most terrifying costumes!  Honestly, the week leading up to these little festivals, there were a few ‘devils’ knocking around town just popping up in random places.  We encountered some on our way back to the car from gymnastics class, with a group of teenage girls, just hanging around, and as soon as I saw them my legs went to jelly!  People have been telling us about this for months.  It’s fantastic to see, they said, but really scary.  They whip your legs with a bunch of sticks tied together like a big witches broom and it really hurts, they told us.  Don’t stay with the kids, let the kids see Nikolaus, then leg it, they told us.  So we were there with our friends, Amelia says she’s not scared, it’s just boys dressed up, it’s not real.  So we hung around a bit, not really sure what to do, or how long after Nikolaus left they’d come out.  I saw a large group of people standing on the lit ramp leading to the library, lots of families with children, so I went there thinking it’s a safe place, they won’t come near here with all these kids.  Plus around the bonfire was a barrier, so we assumed they would stay in there, as they do in other villages we were told.  How wrong was I.  Suddenly the music went from calm lovely Christmas to raging heavy metal and all this smoke appeared and all these middle sized devils came stomping out.  Within the barriers at first, phew I thought, safe up here.  But then they started to stomp through the crowd, and to my horror up the ramp where all the children were!  Amelia watched, not bothered, just boys, she said, in costumes.  It only lasted about 5 minutes and I thought, that wasn’t too bad, okay then, let’s go.  But then the music became louder, more smoke, and the sound of a chainsaw!  And the ‘big’ really terrifying ones appeared.  They wear chains and big bells on the costumes so they even sound really terrifying, and the costumes stink like real wild animals.  We stayed put, like statues, don’t make eye contact, and they won’t notice we’re here.  Amelia’s face buried into my belly!  They were really aggressive too, going at teenagers mostly, one of them had a boy of about 14 cornered against the wall, whipping him over and over again.  The look on the boys face was pure terror.  As soon as the excitement started to die down, we legged it!  A little too late.  We feel like the worst parents in the world!  My friend told me that she was at the shopping centre that day and a group of them turned up, during the day.  Everyone was screaming and kids were crying.  We heard the next day that a 13 year old girl was beaten so badly she ended up with broken bones.  I asked why it’s allowed to continue like that, and my friend said, because it’s tradition.  I guess in some societies nothing can shake it.  I just have to remember what I learnt on Contiki all those years ago, it’s not wrong, it’s just different, but in this case, i think it's at least a little bit wrong!   At least we have something to threaten the kids with if they misbehave!  Not really, wouldn’t dream of it, the model parents that we are!

A great day in Salzburg

Driving to Salzburg

 We took a trip to Salzburg on Saturday as we needed more stuff from IKEA and the nearest one to us is just out of Salzburg city centre, just under an hours drive.  It’s around -5 degrees in the mornings now with lots of frost which usually disappears by 9am.  But in some parts of the valleys where the sun doesn’t shine it remains there for the day and looks like it’s been snowing.  We captured this picture on our drive to Salzburg.  It was still like this on the drive home early evening. 

IKEA was once again a nightmare with kinder in tow but once it was over we knew we could relax and go with the flow for the rest of the day.  We took advice from Karen (she hasn’t been mentioned in a while, poor old Karen!) to get us to the old town and enjoyed a lovely wintery day wandering the streets.  The Christkindl Markt was on.  Stalls and stalls of beautifully handcrafted Christmas decorations, sweets and treats, and Gluwein which we have only recently discovered by us and will be continued to be enjoyed through the winter!  It’s a sort of mulled wine, warmed up, and I for one love it!  Good for relaxing the nerves too on a stressful afternoon!  Noah had a great sleep for over 2 hours which gave us just enough time to take it all in.  The smells wafting from the stalls are delicious, including frankincense (which I have just discovered is a favourite at this time of year), orange, cinnamon, and all the usuals like hot chocolate and roasted chestnuts, mixed with the lights and decorations, really bring the atmosphere of Christmas to life.   

(What’s not coming to life though are all the poor dead animals draped around middle aged ladies with chignons in their hair and botox filled foreheads, prettying around with their pursed rouge lips and fur trimmed handbags and boots!  Loads of them, very posh…..i wish I’d have had the courage to sneak some photos as they minced passed us!)

The city itself looks gorgeous, bit hard to tell though with so many people and all the Christmas kerfuffle!  We will have to go again at a quieter time of year when we don’t need to stop in at IKEA on the way, and actually try to see a few of the tourist attractions. As evening fell the Christmas lights made it look magical, and it was nice to hear so many languages and accents from around the globe, made us feel like we were on holidays again.  A lovely happy interesting day.

 

Yum....Gluwein!

Noah’s little quirks and St Martins

You talking to me?

What a great 'pic'!

 Noah’s favourite song is not Incy Wincy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle or any other cute nursery rhyme, his favourite song is Beyonce’s ‘All the Single Ladies’ which he sings with gusto around the supermarket making the ordeal much more amusing than normal!  He’s watched ‘the greatest music video of all time’ on You Tube many times.  Not sure about the appropriateness of this, but I figure he’s too young to know anything anyway!  He’s also very keen on dressing up in Amelia’s clothes.  His favourite items are her pink Dora socks and Hello Kitty headband which he has worn out in public a good few times.  The other day he ran out of the bedroom dressed in a skirt, white leggings, and a Barbie t-shirt!  He does make a very pretty little girl, but we’re not concerned.  He equally enjoys cars, tractors, playing with his little fella, destroying things and hitting his sister over the head with a plastic stool from IKEA.  And the chunks of hair he pulls out of her, I’m amazed she’s not bald!

He has a collection of cars from our travels.  I can’t remember now where each of them came from, but he loves them all and has names for each one.  ‘Body car’, is big and green, and is so called because it came from some ‘body’ else.  ‘Buse car’, is red and has flames on it.  No idea of the relevance there.  'Auto car', pronounced with a very German accent, is a little red one.  ‘Nee nah’ car is an ambulance.  Self explanatory.  He also has a car from the movie ‘Cars’, sent by Nana, it speak when the button is pressed and it says ‘Fin McMissile, British Intelligence - Time is of the essence’ .  So this is called ‘Time-a-essence car’!  He likes to dance.  His dancing goes like this – a couple of swaying movements as if he’s snowboarding (Maciek is excited) followed by two spins, for which he actually uses his head to spot (like a ballet dancer – daddy not so happy about this one!).

Facials by Noah

Friday 11^th November was St Martin’s Day and the lanternfest at school.  Don’t know much about St Martin except that he was a good man who was riding his horse one day and seeing an old, poor, hungry man on the side of the road, stopped and offered him the shirt off his back.  He was probably responsible for many more good deeds than that, but that’s the gist of it!  All the kids spend the week prior making lanterns at school and learning songs, and in the evening all the families gather in the courtyard at the front of the school, and the children do a procession holding their lanterns.  Noah’s group did theirs through the candlelit playground and sat around on tree stumps while the teacher played guitar and they sung a couple of songs.  It was very cute.  Included a very dark picture, you can just make out Noah on the right.  There was a small bonfire in the centre of the courtyard, and warm orange punch and homemade breads.  It was pitch black, the only light coming from the lanterns and the bonfire, and Noah wandered about for an hour holding on to his lantern like it was a lifeline, looking very bewildered!  Amelia has made a new friend, and here is a picture of them holding hands for the procession.  We’ve hung the lanterns up in the house, and every now and then we go out for a ‘midnight walk with our lanterns’ (it’s more like 5.30pm, but don’t tell Amelia!).

Another one for the 21st!

WARNING: THIS BLOG ENTRY CONTAINS COARSE LANGUAGE AND ADULT CONTENT

Misty mornings

 Hello, Maciek here with another riveting blog entry.  Not much has really been happening while we are waiting for the snow so I thought I’d write a blog about the dangers of mixing German and English together. A work mate told me this story after the apprentice at work didn’t know the word for ‘edge’ so he used the German instead.

Right here we go, (kids do not read on).  The German word for edge is ‘kant’ and is pronounced exactly like the worst word in the English language. You know the one that starts with a ‘C’ and rhymes with hunt.

So the story goes:  A more senior ski instructor who had taught himself English over the years had a group of students,  with one particular nervous lady, who got left behind on top of a ski run and was too scared to go down. The ski instructor wanted to yell out some encouraging words to help her down this particularly steep slope.  He didn’t know the word for edges so he thought he’d improvise by using the German word.

‘Go down slowly on your ‘Kant’’ he yelled. The woman stood there stunned, I would imagine. The instructor thought she couldn’t hear him. “ Use your ‘kant’” he yelled again over the entire slope. There was still no movement.  “Just slide down on your ‘kant’”.

The woman eventually got down the mountain, I don’t know what on, but anyway nothing was said to the instructor and the lesson went on to finish. At the end of the day the instructors were having a few beers after work and this senior ski instructor, not wanting to have the same problem again, asked the boys what the English word for ‘kant’(edge) was and they asked ‘why’, so he told them that he wanted to tell this lady student today to use her edges but didn’t know the English word. They asked again ‘so what did you say?’

‘ Well, I told her to use her ‘kant’”.

After a few minutes of rolling around on the floor with laughter they finally told him what ‘kant’ meant in English and he said ‘ so that’s why her husband looked like he wanted to punch me out for the rest of the day’.

Coincidently, there is a town about 2 hours drive from us called F#CKING ( this is true), which apparently has a pretty amazing playground for the kids. We were thinking about taking a drive there but have since found out that the F#CKING mayor has closed the F#CKING playground along with all the other F#CKING attractions due to insufficient tourist numbers in the off season. The F#CKING residents are now concerned that the crime rate will double because all the F#CKING children will get bored… (this is not true)… the crime rate in Austria is very very low……

Picnic in the woods

Moving Day

View from the balcony



 Our official move-in date was 1^st November, but we didn’t move in until the 5^th, spending a week collecting bits and pieces and poor Maciek spending his evenings after a long day at work putting together flat packed furniture.  I managed a few bits and pieces but not so easy with the kids ‘helping’ and trying to eat screws!  We collected a couch on the Friday afternoon, and somehow managed to get it up the flights of stairs and around the corners into the apartment, just us two, and the next day my forearms felt like I’d done a good session at the gym (a chance would be a fine thing L)!  Next morning was the day to leave the old place, and what I thought would take a couple of hours to clean it took about five.  Luckily a friend lent me her vacuum cleaner, so I didn’t have to battle through with that ancient one!  Maciek picked up a washing machine at our local ‘almost Bunnings’ store and once again the two of us battled with it up the stairs.  Then it was a ‘quick’ trip to Worgl, where all the big department and electrical stores are, which actually took us an hour thanks to roadworks and a diversion, which left us only an hour before closing time to get pots and pans, plates and stuff and an essential television!  We split up, with one kiddy wink each, and managed to get everything we needed, despite discovering in the process that our Australian debit/visa card had been blocked!  (Luckily we scraped by with what we had, and have since sorted the problem out.)  Some folk may be scratching their heads and wondering why on earth we are putting ourselves through this and buying furniture and household goods which sit in perfectly good condition in the garages and spare rooms of our families back home.  We are some folk!  We have no answers to your questions!  But for now this is what we are doing.  Going with it and we’ll see what happens.  It’s all character building.  That’s what we tell ourselves anyway!



Cosy sleeping nook



So here we are.  It’s really nice to finally have our own place.  Amelia and Noah love their little sleeping ‘nook’ complete with bunk bed, which leaves them a whole room as a playroom to keep all their toys (and themselves!) out of sight!  We are still waiting on our wardrobe to arrive in the store.  And we need to get a freezer as the one on the fridge is only big enough for a pizza box and a loaf of bread, at a squeeze.  And we also need a vacuum cleaner, which I’m hoping to come by pretty quickly as the accumulation of crumbs around the dinner table is growing!  But at least now we can look forward to Christmas, knowing where we’ll be.  And there’s a fantastic view from the balcony, great place to sit (or stand until we get some furniture to go out there!) with a beer or a glass of wine.  Today we even saw the farmer in the distance, driving about his fields in his green tractor, towing along that dreaded poo sprayer machine switched on full pelt.  Which was nice.

Nothing like a man in lycra doing the dishes!

P.S  I’ve included a pic of the tiny kitchen that we are leaving behind.  Not sure if it is actually a pic of the kitchen, or more of a pic to showcase Maciek in his new second hand lycras which look like he’s wearing a nappy in desperate need of a change!

So long, old tapestry!



Fare the well, ancient vacuum cleaner.  You suck!!

  



Oh, the tree binding i mentioned last post