For a little Valentine's Day getaway, Mike and I took the train to Austria. Snow fell the whole weekend, making it hard to see all the mountains, so I couldn't do the Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music impression I was hoping for, but I got to have a snowball fight instead. We ventured through the little baroque town and saw two amazing churches, which are pictured below. Then, we hiked through the hillside, which was so serene when we weren't slipping and sliding all over the place. The trails took us to a small museum of modern art that looked over the whole city; its views far exceeded the art inside, but it was well worth the trip.
Then we strolled back through the mountains and went to a beer hall that serves beer from the monk-run Augustiner Brewery. Here's the history of the place, according to its website: "The Augustiner Brewery at Mülln in Salzburg was founded by Augustinian monks in 1621, who had been called to Salzburg from Bavaria by the Archbishop of Salzburg, Wolf Dietrich. A monastery was built for the Augustinians in Mülln on the northern slopes of the Mönchsberg hill between 1607 and 1614. When the Augustinians died out in Salzburg in the 19th century, Emperor Ferdinand the King handed over the monastery to the Benedictines from Michaelbeuern." The giant beer hall still retains religious elements, like gorgeous stained glass windows. Plus, it has a great market, so I got fresh baked pretzels, and Mike got his sauerkraut. You can see the picture of Mike holding his giant mug. He was happy :)
I could have stayed in Salzburg for much longer than two nights, but we had to get back to Pest. Snow is following me since Salzburg, it snowed all last week in Budapest, and now it's snowing in Zagreb, but at least it's pretty.
In other news:
- I started volunteering again with the North American Women's Association in Budapest. They coordinate this brilliant thing called the adopt-a-granny program where they match elderly people from a local nursing home with children from an orphanage so they can mentor each other. Last week, we took the group to see the Hungarian State Folk Ensemble, and it was quite entertaining. I'd never seen a full program of Hungarian dancing, and I loved all the colorful dresses worn by the women, who changed costumes about every two songs. The men were phenomenal dancers and amazed me by their jumping and foot-stomping abilities.
- Because of my work and my own curiosity, I've gotten to see a number of great art exhibitions lately, including a contemporary photographer, Thomas Ruff, and another intriguing photo exhibit called The Happiest Barrack, which was Hungary's nickname during Communism because of their alleged freedoms, compared with neighboring countries. The curator gave me a private tour of the exhibit which had more than 100 black and white images taken by photojournalists that showed day-to-day life under the socialist regime. While I've seen the Terror House museum and other exhibitions, they usually only capture the revolutions or violent aspects, so seeing this show opened my eyes to other cross-sections of communist life, such as athletics, mandatory recreation, the agriculture system, parenting, etc. However, the whole show is fascinating, because while most of the photos are "candid," the journalists who took the photos were censored and controlled by the state, so many of the photos are staged for propaganda purposes, so they aren't quite realistic. But, I guess it'll be the closest I'll get to seeing a clearer picture of the times.
- Now Mike and I are in Zagreb again. On the way here, our train broke down on the the tracks about 1.5 miles from our apartment, so we had to wait an extra hour for a replacement locomotive to take us the about 4 miles to the train station, after already riding for 5.5 hours. At least we didn't break down in the middle of nowhere.
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