winter is here, kind of

we have had some absolutely beautiful snowy days. unfortunately, the weather can't seem to make up its mind. one day, beautiful snow, next day, pouring rain and ice. kinda like today and tomorrow's forecast. oh well, such is life. but much like our warmer than usual fall, winter has been equally unpredictable ranging from -20F to +40F within 48hr periods.

the one thing that stays the same is how pretty it is!

fun fireworks

beautiful bright lights over lake champlain as the clock struck the new year.
i just thought it was fun, so im sharing some of the good ones.

happy holidays

though i'm behind (sadly it's been a trend so far in 2012). here is my holiday card. summarizing my more than spectacular year+.

wishing you a happy and healthy 2012!

the warm glow of fall

the fall has been absolutely amazing. very quiet, surprisingly warm, colorful, and gorgeous.

one of the rare moments before they collected all the hay

this has been an incredible season for loons. we saw more loons than i think i've ever seen. on this amazing morning, i saw 20 at one time. unfortunately my camera capabilities could only capture a few without making them all look like mini specs on the picture.

one of the beautiful (but extremely chilly) evenings, my mom and i went for a bike ride, and she had the genius idea to transport the remnants of a friend's garden in my bike bags :) loaded with onions, pepper plants, a mini artichoke, etc.

and here are just a few more pictures that show how wonderful a fall it has been.

and though it has been relatively warm, we have had a couple snow coverings. my last swim was the week after columbus day weekend, slightly numbing, and then my last kayak was beginning of november. i went knee deep in the water - SO COLD. but beautiful.

summer in sporatic snap shots

per usual, im really bad about computers during the summer....but i was finally sorting photos and thought i would share a quick glance at my summer... (now that its almost winter and all)

i arrived home to be greeted by Greensboro's fabulous funky fourth parade, charity bike rides, and lake fun! the lake was as perfect as ever.

fun fact. this rooster moved around town all summer long, among its locations: town green, up in a tree, and here, in the middle of the lake.

my mom's garden was fantastic, and due to the fabulous arbor that my brother built, we had AMAZING grapes. im overly excited about this fact because we have never really had plentiful grapes, but this year, there were more than i could ever help to eat. and this led to delicious grape jelly!

after the falcons moved from their nesting ground, we were able to go up to nichol's ledge for some fantastic hiking and picnicking.

we then made a trip up to montreal - continuing my global trot in a much lower key travel. it's amazing how close i live to montreal, and yet have hardly ever gone. it's even closer than boston.

obviously a lot more happened. but it's already november. so moving on :)

global trot part 2

obviously if you are looking at the date, it in no way reflects when I actually did these things, or even wrote them down, but hey, summer happened. and for anyone that knows what a greensboro summer is like, computers are just not a part of it.

however, that being said, i don't like to leave things incomplete. and so i must include the last few stops on my global trot. London, Morocco, and Southern Spain....

London: I stayed with a friend of mine, who unfortunately was busy and had to work most of the time, but I also got to meet up with a friend and my former RA boss from Hopkins. It was great. As I had already hit up the main tourist sites the last time I was in london in 2005, and i only had a few days, this time I just enjoyed walking around different areas, attending the evening song in westminster abbey, and seeing a shakespeare play in the famous globe theater before jetting off to my next destination...
PHOTOS: LONDON

Morocco: I traveled with my cousin Laura (who was in Morocco for a month prior), her fiance Noel, my cousin Sara, and her husband Ed. It was an amazing trip during which we saw quite a lot of morocco considering we only had 10 days. We started in Marrakesh for a couple days, then drove for a day across southern Morocco and through the mountains until we reached the Todra Gorge which was beautiful, then drove north for a day to Fez, which was very sophisticated and bustling, then drove for about half a day to Chefchaouen (one of the blue cities), before heading to tangier to catch the ferry to southern spain. Each place was so different and it was very interesting to experience the cities, the mountains, and see a lot of the landscape (though I would have loved to experience more of the rural areas like Laura was able to for a whole month because the cities were overly tourist oriented).
PHOTOS: MOROCCO

Southern Spain (Tarifa, Sevilla, Ronda): Tarifa was extremely windy but absolutely beautiful for the half of the day we were there as a group and then we split up and I went to Sevilla where, though very pretty, was way too hot for me! (46C). So that made sight seeing and exploring a little more difficult, especially since with the Spanish ciesta, everything was closed from about 11-6pm everyday. open from like 9-11am and then 6pm-whenever in the evening. But it just gave me all the more reason to go visit Ronda which is up in the mountains and was slightly cooler. Famed as one of the white cities with a cool bridge it was very nice for just relaxing, which I did with Megan, a girl I met from Australia.
PHOTOS: SOUTHERN SPAIN

The flight back to Austria was beautiful, I flew over Ibiza, Majorca (stopping in La Palma airport), and Menorca. But I was more then ready to be getting back to way below boiling temperatures.

narzissenfest

flowers, lots of flowers, but no daffodils.

more coming soon...

global trot part 1

the travels of may.


I kept trying to figure out how to summarize all that I did and experienced, and I simply couldn't. So rather than trying, I will just say this. I had an amazing time, met some amazing people, and experienced 4 very different places.

Berlin was a beautiful city, that embraces its rather unique history. It felt very green and open, with wide streets lined by trees, giant parks you could get lost in, and large open spaces allowing you to focus on a few very unique places. It was a quick visit, shortened even further by my delayed flight. so all in all I had less than 48hrs to experience the whole city. But thanks to my host family, I was able to do just that, have some delicious food, and practice german the whole time as well.

PICTURES from BERLIN

Paris was absolutely gorgeous, fun things to see everywhere you look. I was graced by the most perfect weather from start to finish, which made walking around the city all that much better. Thanks to a family friend, I had a wonderful place to stay and I also met up with one of my friends from college, who has been doing a year in Paris. I enjoyed wandering the streets, eating pastries, and enjoying the gardens, and river side activities. In addition to seeing all the sites of paris, I also took a trip out to Versailles (incredible!) and was able to squeeze in a trip to Roland Garros to see some amazing tennis exhibition played before my flight took off. 5 days was just enough time to realize that there was so much more to be experienced in the city, so I will most certainly have to go back!

PICTURES from PARIS

Barcelona was a city full of energy and art. I arrived in the evening in Barcelona, to a crowd of people protesting of sorts against the many activities of the government. I walked down La Rambla several different times and was amazed at the constant mass of people going to and fro, performing, and enticing you to evening performances and clubs. I had a very fun experience visiting a friend on the Norwegian Epic (Cruise Ship) and was given VIP treatment. It was so much fun to see her after so many months and to see her on the ship I had heard so much about (really quite impressive). I saw the city's sights from a hop on hop off bus tour and thoroughly enjoyed all of gaudi's creations giving the city some flare and encouraging it to embrace the arts. 

PICTURES from BARCELONA

Cyprus was absolutely amazing because I was able to meet so many people - my Schleifer relatives in particular, who I hadn't seen since I was either ~4years or ~2months old and had mostly only heard about since. I totally lucked out because so many were there :)! Cyprus is a beautiful island of course, with some amazing history, but the best part by far was just hanging out and getting to know everyone. I spent hours playing and swimming with my cousin's daughter (just tooo cute!) and had an amazing afternoon with my other cousin visiting the turkish part of Nicosia where we encountered a couple groups of kids who just lit up with joy and uncensored emotions in front of and behind the camera. It was for sure an experience I will never forget. Most of the time I was bad at whipping out my camera, so my album is mostly filled with adorable kids :). It was an unbeatable experience, and I only wish I had had more time to spend with them all!

PICTURES from CYPRUS

Right now I am in Austria, at the Raßberg, heading to the Narzissenfest tomorrow, though most of the flowers have gone by so we shall see how it is....either way, the area will be beautiful.

pinball

excuse the bad comparison in advance. but it popped into my head.

feeling a little like a pinball hovering above the spring in the machine waiting to be rocketed out of its little holding place and be bounced around from place to place before coming to a rest at the bottom. That's me in a nutshell at the moment. I have 2 weeks before I leave Graz and go Europe hopping so to speak.
The short itinerary (at least the plan, which may be changed due to future events in certain countries..) is as follows:
Graz > Berlin > Paris > Barcelona > Cyprus ... return to Austria briefly (Hallstatt, Bad Aussee, and Bad Gleichenberg)... then off to > London > Morocco (hopefully!!) > Sevilla > Stallhofen, Austria (1 day) > Vermont.

so as of now 1.5 weeks left of work (gotta make the money to then spend in all these cool places!!) and pack up my life into boxes and bags. you would think i would know how to live with just a few little things, but somehow i always manage to accumulate stuff...

it has been raining almost all week, which is actually pretty cool, but it makes it hard to find time to hang out the laundry to dry. this morning i went to the farmers market in the rain. got some yummy veggies, fruit, and bread, and came home to cook. perfect relaxing saturday so far.

and tomorrow is may!

southern austria to slovenia and back

Bled Island, Slovenia

Last week I took a trip down south with my dad. We went through Klagenfurt, Austria stopping at Maria Wört to see the pretty church on a peninsula area and eat lunch in the sun. We then drove down through the mountains, passing through a 7+km tunnel to reach Slovenia. The mountains are beautiful, but it was a much prettier drive on the way back when we wound through the mountains rather than just going through them. Our destination was Bled. It is a beautiful place, nestled in the mountains with a glacier lake. In the middle of the lake there is an island with a church on it and looking over the lake there is a castle, perched high on a cliff. Very picturesque. We enjoyed the evening watching the sun set over the beautiful lake and then had a nice meal before settling down for the evening.

Preseren Square, Ljubliana

In the morning, it was as beautiful as the day before, more perfect weather could not have been asked for. We went up to the Bled Castle which overlooked the lake and had a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains. We then headed to Ljubliana for the afternoon, which was not far away from Bled. Ljubliana is a beautiful city that I would love to visit again, but in the brief time that we were there I saw a lot of really cool graffiti and ate some delicious ice cream as I walked around and saw the sights. There was a book festival going on in Ljubliana so there were a lot of stands of books lining the streets on one side of the river. I bought one book for a Euro that was more of a comic style book, so even though I couldn't understand the words I could look at the pictures (and a good souvenir). There was a large farmers market which was fun to walk through (and I got a new hand bag, since the one that I have been using that I got in South Korea is on its last threads). 

 

one example of the fun graffiti in Ljubliana

 

We enjoyed the city sitting riverside at some cafes and I walked around just taking in the fun atmosphere and pretty sites. But definitely a city I could go back to and see a lot more of (and I am told it is absolutely beautiful in the evening as well! and there is a cool hostel renovated from a prison that I must see...next time). As the time on our parking was coming to a close, we sat on the main bridge (the triple bridge) and listened to some fun street music. We returned to bled for the evening where we rented a row boat and rowed out to the island in the middle to see the church. It was again, picturesque. The island is really small and home to a swan nest. We rowed back to shore as the sun was setting and then enjoyed a delicious meal.

 

the slovenian/austrian border

griffen castle

 

In the early morning, we headed back to Austria to get Ezra for the easter weekend. We drove through the beautiful mountains and made a quick stop in Griffen to climb to the top of some castle ruins that we saw while driving on the autobahn. After getting Ezra, we all headed out to the Raßberg. We saw the towns giant easter fire and made a smaller one of our own up on the Raßberg in the evening. 

 

Stallhofen Easter Fire

 

The rest of the weekend was then spent having lots of food (traditional meats, breads, and eggs) and visiting with family and friends. We closed out the weekend with some pretty cool rain/thunder/and lightning storms which were a first for me here in austria. normally it is tame rain. but this was some fun thunder and lightning!

for the complete set of pictures see album: SLOVENIA

from buda to pest

view from the citadell

budapest was a lot of fun! we saw a ton in a very short period of time and got to experience a lot, both touristy and just normal stuff you would do if you lived there.

here are my pictures: BUDAPEST

friday afternoon, ezra and i took the train to budapest and got there at night. we were met by ezra's friend ferenc, with whom we stayed for the weekend. we did a quick drive by of the sites at night (pretty lit up buildings and all) and making a stop at heroes square. We then spent the night out on the town, walking from one place to the next. saturday we drove out to Visegrád castle along the danube river at the very top of the long island that splits the danube. it had gorgeous views of the surrounding area. we had some typical hungarian food and then visited the city of Vác, ferenc's home town which was much quieter than Budapest and seemed quite quaint. It was fun to see the large number of people skateboarding and doing stunts of sorts in the main square.

Vác center square

Sunset on the way back to Budapest

It was a little chilly, and as the sun was setting, we headed back to Budapest where we spent the night partying with ferenc's friends. I didn't understand much of what was said, though some of them were able to speak some german or english, enough to allow me to follow parts of the conversation.

Matthias Church

sunday morning, since I was the only one of the group who had not seen budapest prior to this weekend, I wanted to see the sites. after some rolled eyes, we figured out a plan that would let me hit up the main sites in a few mere hours. We walked to the budapest castle, which was cool. Rather than the type of castle i am used to, this was a much larger walled in area of the city where people actually lived and there were shops and restaurants (more a modern version of the castle cities that existed way back when). The main site at the near end of the castle was the Matthias Church. From the castle wall there was a gorgeous view of the river where you could see parliament and most of the city. After the castle, we walked down to the rivers edge to see a closer up view of the gorgeous parliament building.

Parliament with boat bus going by

While looking at the parliament, and with perfect timing (right on cue to ferenc's conversations), the tour bus that also floats as a boat in the river slowly made its way in front of parliament. comical site. we headed back to get our bags and make a brief stop at the mall so i could buy shoes! (and while this seems like a dumb thing to do on a trip to a new city, i needed new good shoes for my up coming trips and the prices here in austria are super high!! hence the reason for looking in budapest where i found shoes that were only 40% of the cost of the shoes i found here in austria, so totally worth it). next stop, the citadell. driving by the budapest castle another time, across the chain bridge and around parts of the city to get to the citadell allowed me to see much more (even if it was a a very fast speed). the citadell was cool, mostly because of the view that we had of the whole city. you could see the pretty parts of both buda and pest and the more ghetto like areas where you could see all the low rent buildings that were built. we also at this traditional pastry type thing (very similar to the one that we had in prague) freshly made with coconut. yummy. running out of time before our train came we did one more round about through the city, down Andrássy avenue to heroes square and then off to the train station, with perfect timing.

View of Heroes place while driving down Andrássy Avenue

It seemed perhaps a little bit rushed, but considering we saw so many different places in 2 days, it was amazing. and it just made me want to go back to budapest to see it again (perhaps at a slower pace). but hey, i gotta leave stuff for my next euro trip :)

next stop, prague

last thursday night ezra and i left for prague....getting there however, was more difficult than planned since our train ended up not going to Prague...somehow it ended up going direction Moscow rather than direction Berlin so all the people traveling with us (trying to get to poland etc) had to figure out other ways to get there...So we ended up in Prerov for a couple hours....needless to say we made it to Prague but 3.5hrs later than desired and a couple more trains than originally planned....

arriving in Prague at 7:30am friday we checked into our hostel and then full of energy (haha) we set out to check out the town. it was colder and windier than i had packed for but the city was very pretty. I think there were way too many tourists in the city and the language i heard most was english. we headed into the center of the town, seeing a number of the highlight buildings and then joining up with a free tour or the old town area. Apparently, the Israeli President was in the town center when we were there because we saw a bunch of police. The center square was also filled with easter market stands very similar to the christmas stands you see all around Graz in the winter. We spent the day walking around the city, seeing the sites and checking out the beautiful park and castle before heading back to the center for a classical concert that was performed in a church. After the concert we headed straight to bed (having not gotten any sleep on our night train to who knows where).

picture courtesy of ezra

day 2 we set out to find a bunch of galleries ezra had googled....i guess google and the czech republic haven't really joined forces yet because we didn't find ANY of them...we did see more of the city though and then found an info office that directed us to a cool photography gallery and then the modern art museum. In the middle of that, we checked out the famous charles bridge and saw some pretty graffiti, sat on the island in the vltava river for a little. The modern art museum took us out of the main city a ways but it was nice to see the "normal" streets where people live. we finished off our evening with a concert in the famed rudolphinium performed by the czech philharmonic orchestra. one piece was ~1hr long! but very well done. we had a little bit of time to kill before catching our midnight train back to austria (hopefully) so we ended up going to a bar that had live music performed by a trio (singer was from boston and said he had been living in prague for ~20years).

overall, prague is a beautiful city, luckily protected from all the bombings, but i think 2 days was enough to see the sites and experience some of the wonderful music (the concerts were only ~13euros with student tickets, which was great!!)

check out some of our pictures: PRAGUE (and Vienna)

the train made it back to vienna without much trouble. i had sunday free so decided to check out the vienna since i realize that i have hardly seen it. though 6:30am on a sunday morning in Austria...almost nothing is happening/open. It was very pretty with the morning light. saw the austrian parliament and some pretty churches but since i was exhausted i found a nice bench in the sun and just relaxed a while ;) when it got late enough for the city to be a little more alive, i met up with a friend of mine for lunch and then later for coffee and cake. oh austrians and their coffee shops ;) vienna was wonderful in the afternoon (once the sun warmed it up enough that the ever-present wind wasn't so biting!) but i headed back to graz ready for another week to start :)

austrian parliament building