Photos Part Deux: The Reckoning

Title shamelessly stolen from Müs.

Here, for your viewing enjoyment: Austria and the Alps!

First off, to Vienna: Here, you can see the palace Schönbrunn, which I find very difficult to pronounce and where the Hapsburgs lived from... er, whenever they built it until Austria lost WWI. This is actually a view of the palace from the garden. And I think I took more pictures of that stork than of the palace and garden combined.

On Sunday, since nothing was open, Cathy and I went to the top of one of the towers of Stephansdom. Legend has it that the cathedral was supposed to have two towers (spires?); one was finished. Unfortunately, various tragedies kept happening at the top of the other tower: people falling to their deaths, perhaps a fire, I don't remember exactly. So after a couple of tries, they just stopped building where they were, put a little roof on it, and were done. This is the tower we went up. No wonder the fencing up there was so high.

Oh yeah, the roof of the cathedral was rebuilt post-WWII, hence the date.

The hills are alive in Salzburg...

The Festung: It puts the 'burg' in 'Salzburg'!

I think someone should put that on a t-shirt.

Then we went back to Germany, via Berchtesgaden and the Alps:

Kehlsteinhaus, Hitler's hideaway/vacation home. It was his 50th birthday present from the NSDAP. When I turn 50, I want someone to pick a mountain in the Alps, build a road almost to the top, dynamite a hole in the middle to create an elevator up to the peak, transport tons of raw materials up there, and build me a house. Funny thing was, Hitler didn't even like the house so much, or spend a whole lot of time there. But how could you ever get tired of the view?

Amazing.

The End.

On an unrelated note, Müs is coming to visit tomorrow!! Woo!

Photos!

At long last: Photos From My European Adventure! (PFMEA?) Some of them are kind of boring, and you probably have seen these things before, but oh well. You don't have to look. So there.

Moving on...

Ah, the East... how I've missed you, your Ampelmänner and your Ostalgie...

The Brandenburg Gate, with no scaffolding! Will wonders never cease?

Gendarmenmarkt. Say it with me now: "Die Tasche! Die Tasche!"

One of the lions on the Ishtar Gate, at the Pergamon Museum.

Inner workings of the Reichstag. The color of those chairs was specially made for the Reichstag... I mean, you can't have green or red chairs favoring any political party now, can you?

Entrance to KZ Sachsenhausen. Chilling.

And now we're in Prague...

The Charles Bridge, home to street vendors and pickpockets. And one of the main tourist drags in Prague.
On the Charles Bridge. See the tourists? And the castle in the background?

That's enough of Prague. (I'm not a fan.) Now for Budapest:

The first night we arrived, everyone was a little hyper after the 10 hours spent on the bus. We all met in the lobby to do some sight-seeing at 9.30 at night, because... well, why not? This is the view from the Pest side of the river (where the Parliament is) across to the Buda side.

Heroes' Square. This is the part where Hungarian reading skills would have been nice, since I didn't know who any of these people were. Except for the...
Barbarians! Aren't they frightening? Whereas most countries have these Classical-style marble statues of their heroes (Lincoln, Goethe, whoever), Hungary has barbarian hordes. Parliament building, as seen from here:

Fisherman's Bastion. Not entirely sure what its use was (check the Wikipedia link), but nice-looking just the same. The view made up for the endless stairs we had to climb to get here.

I think that's about it for now; my poor laptop and I are tired of uploading pictures. Enjoy! Photos of Austria and the Alps yet to come...

Much ado about nothing

So I've been harassed by the only two semi-regular readers of this blog that I should update. Good thing I succumb easily to peer pressure! I suppose I should catch you all (?) up on recent events, but to be honest, there haven't been a whole lot of those. Suffice it to say that I love being on vacation. Sleeping till 9, watching movies and reading all day, cooking decent food because I can... being a teacher has its perks.

Let's get to the point.
Recent Event #1: Chaperoning a high school trip to Europe
This was actually ganz okay, to use the proper German. Not quite as fun as traveling with friends and having an open schedule, but it was paid for and I got to know some interesting kids. The first two weeks were pretty awful, weather-wise; it was cold (in the 60s) and rained EVERY SINGLE DAY. Which is typical German weather, but not at the beginning of July. The last week of the trip was sunny and really warm, so it made up for the miserableness of the preceding weeks. There were also some crises: a girl decided to wander off, by herself, on the last night of the trip (!) and there was an incident of two couples kicking other people out of their hostel room so that they could have some 'alone time'. (Side note: Doesn't it seem counterintuitive to have 'alone time' when there is another couple in the room? Ew.) However, it was quite successful, and I'm going through the 300+ pictures I took so that I can post the good ones and write a decent update about the trip later. At some point.

Recent Event #2: More drama at school
That's right, I'm not even under contract anymore and I still can't get away from it. Apparently some comments that I made to a co-worker (who, until recently, I considered a friend) got back around to my boss, through two other people. These statements were used to attack her and her effectiveness at the school. Sketchy? Let's count the ways:
(1) These statements were used fourth-hand, without bothering to reconfirm with me.
(2) Board chairperson called me after the fact, to get my opinions.
(3) Apparently, griping to your co-workers can be used against you and the subject of the complaints.
I called her (my boss) today, and we're having coffee tomorrow to clear things up. She didn't sound incredibly upset, so I'm hopeful, but we'll see how it goes.

Recent Event #3: Harry Potter 7
Woo! I bought it Saturday morning (not quite enough of a dork to go to a midnight party, but enough to get up early on Saturday) and read it straight through until that evening. Fabulous! Lots o' action and drama, and plot twists. I'm going to have to read it again, slowly, because I rushed through the first time, but I must be the only person on the planet who thought the epilogue was cute. Granted, not as good as the rest of the book, but warm and fuzzy just the same.

That's the overview. Pictures of Germany/Prague/Budapest/Austria to come!