The Blithe Traveler

Ptuj

Ptuj, Slovenia. Pronounced, well, I don't really know. I could take a stab at it and probably even say it close enough that Slovenians would know what I was talking about. But to try to write it phonetically? There's a kind of a ptoohey bit that I really can't descibe using the sounds American English gives me. pa-TOY maybe gets us there, so go with that if you need to ask someone about it, okay? 

Ptuj represents every single thing I am missing about living in Europe right now: charming small towns, castles, cathedrals, and medovnik. Gah, I am pining for some medovnik.

Ptuj is the oldest city in Slovenia, orginally settled in the Stone Age (1). By the 1st century BCE, the settlement was controlled by the wandering Romans. What we have here is the Town Tower. What you cannot see from the photography, but which I will point out because it is interesting is that the Tower has clock faces on three sides. The side on the left of the photo is missing a clock face: that is the side of the tower that faces the castle. The castle owner at the time when the Tower was built did not feel like contributing toward construction costs, so no clock face for them. 

At the foot of the tower you can see a large white monolith. That is possibly the coolest thing in Old Town Ptuj: it's the Orpheus Monument. It is the oldest public monument preserved in Slovenia, erected in the 2nd century Common Era to honor the memory of Marcus Valerius Verus, the mayor of the area. In the Middle Ages, it was used as a pillory, and criminals were tied to the iron rings attached to its lower part.  Since March 2008, it has the status of a national cultural monument. Wiki Orpheus Monument

This is the Minorite (Dominican) Monastery; don't let the "Monastery" bit fool you. It is actually now a museum and theatre. Originally built on the site in 1230, the original monastery burned to the ground in 1302 and was rebuilt through the mid-14th century. The principal activities of the Dominicans in Ptuj were preaching, pastoral care, economic operations and education; the monks inhabited the monastery until 1785 when it was dissolved under the reforms of Joseph II.  In 1926 the monastery was bought by by the town and renovated for its current use. 

Hiking up to the castle was our goal, because, what's a Saturday afternoon without hiking to a castle? The children's pain is almost palpable in this photo, isn't it?

The views were spectacular, totally worth it for the grown ups. Look, there's the Town Tower! And, no clock. Honestly, that would have really ticked me off were I the castle owner. I would definitely have kicked in for the Tower if it meant I had a clock always available if I peeked over my left shoulder. 

Once we arrived, though there were a few other things to keep the children entertained. Well, it was one thing with many elements. You can probably guess right off what this was about. 

Nevesta means "Bride" and Ženích is "Groom." So, a wedding! Which included this dude and his well-groomed furry friends. 

Cool venue for a wedding. I am amazed at how many weddings or at least wedding photos shoots we have run into over the years as we travel. 

And, one last thing. I love that someone at the castle has a sense of humor. Sorry if you can't see it all that well, but that is a pile of, ahem, road apples piled up behind the statue. 

Next: In Which We Reap What We Have Sown (a quick Real Time Update) 

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(1) The Stone Age was a pre-historic period lasted roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 6000 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking. Translation: Older than old. 

Bob, and Friends

Meet Bob. That's Bob the Chicken, as opposed to StickBob. The children knew Bob was a girl chicken, but they seem to think Bob is a nice kind of gender neutral name. 

The apartment where we were staying was part of a small family farm. They raised chickens and sheep and had a pretty outstanding garden. Croatia in general is a beautiful country, and, like much of what I have seen in Austria and the Czech Republic, people are quite house and garden proud. They enjoy being out of doors and taking meticulous care of their homes and surrounds.

The people we rented the apartments from had a boy of about six, so there were toys and outside play equipment for our children to enjoy. The internet was kind of crappy, which is always a bonus for the children and sends them looking out-of-doors for things to do. Less of a bonus for Jeff and Fran for whom this was a "working holiday," but for the moms and children, it was just fine. 

The weather was on-again-off-again grey, but the rains pretty much held off, despite a whole lot of threatening and fist shaking. 

As a bonus for our large group, this lodge was available for our meals. We breakfasted in outdoor splendor every morning. 

And the best bit? The local baker delivered! He'd drop by every morning when we were out eating and the children would race down to buy bread and pastries. 

The good life. No, the GREAT life. 

Next: Ptuj, Slovenia

 

Plitvice Lakes, Croatia

This particular UNESCO World Heritage site had been calling to me for years. The Lakes are about a five hour drive from Vienna, and I had a hankering to camp in the nearby vicinity, while breathing in the splendor of what was meant to be a majestic watery vista. 

Alas, it was one of those cases where the picture in my head and the easily read-on-Wiki reality weren't exactly simpatico. The lakes are described as a Water Wonderland of cascading falls, gushing cataracts, and torrential rapids. All of this they are. The bit I missed was about how the park registers more than 1.2 million visitors a year and is "tightly controlled."

Which translates into wooden pathways, electric buses and electric boats that lead you around the 73,000 acre park. It's not exactly like hiking into the wilderness to experience Oneness with Nature. It's a bit more like a multi-lingual Outdoor Mall Walk. 

The national park was found in 1949 and is situated in the mountainous karst region of Central Croatia. The road that it is set on is the north-south route between the inland and the Adriatic sea. Translation: busy road, lots of bus tourists.  

In truth, we could have managed to see most of the park in a single day, but we were traveling with friends of ours and had pre-planned it as a three night stay in a local area pension. The area twenty kilometers around the park is dotted with utterly charming apartments that people have added to their utterly charming homes. There aren't a lot of obnoxous big hotels immediately clustered around the park, which is refreshing, for this sort of park. 

The family we were traveling with, the only family we ever seem to travel with, as they are the only family we have ever found who travel even close to the way we tend to travel, which is basically, go anywhere you can anytime you can, have five children. They manage it far better than I ever could, which is to say, I am glad they have five children while I only have the two. 

Everyone managed the two days of hiking we did around the lakes without too much difficulty: the littlest one spent some time walking and some being carted around in a backpack (the benefit of being 2), while the others pretty much romped around the wooden boardwalks, occasionally exclaiming over the fish they could see, the sticks they picked up by the side of the walkways, the occasional mice that peeked out, the color of the water, and even periodically noticing the prodigious water flows. But not too often.   

Despite the crowds, and the inherit incongruity of viewing nature from a wooden boardwalk, the lakes are amazing. There are something like sixteen separate lakes arranged in what the park literature refers to as "cascades." LIke this: 

And like this:

The sixteen lakes are separated into an upper and lower cluster formed by run off from the mountains, descending from about 2,000 feet to about 1,650 feet over a distance of some five miles. The lakes collectively cover an area of about two square kilometres, or about two-thirds of a square mile. Wiki

The lakes are renowned for their distinctive colors, ranging from azure to green, grey or blue. The colors change constantly depending on the quantity of minerals or organisms in the water and the angle of sunlight.  Since it was grey and cloudy for both days, my photographs don't really reflect the beauty of the water. It was quite lovely, and well worth seeing, despite the crowds and the oddity of seeing nature from a wooden walkway. 

Mother Nature has quite the eye for designing water features. 

 

On one of the walkways is a plaque commemorating Plitvice Lakes champion, Ivo Pevalek. Tourists have decided rubbing his nose is good luck. Pevalek was a Croatian botany professor;  in the 1920s, he recognized the unique nature of the lakes' landscape, and worked tirelessly to see the area established as the first Croatian national park. It was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1979. 

Interesting and sad recent history: In March 1991 the park was the site of the first armed confrontation of the Croatian War of Independence (Wiki), and led to the first fatalities in the Serb-Croatian conflict. For several years the park was on UNESCO's Endangered World Heritage List due to the risk of mines in the region. Plitvice Lakes was among the first areas cleared of mines, and it was removed from the endangered list in 1998. For which we are incredibly grateful. 

Next: Kicking around the Plitvice area

 

Love Locks: A Bridge Too Far

Love Locks have become such a "thing" that you can buy little red locks with hearts on them for the expressed purpose of locking them onto a bridge to declare your everlasting love. Think on the absolute absurdity of that for a wee moment. I talked about Love Locks when we visited Paris last spring (Love Locks), and ventured at that time with no supporting data to suppose that the whole Locks-on-a-Bridge thing was started by Chinese tourists. 

Wrong! It is more probably a European generated notion, one thought to have possibly begun in Italy (although the Serbians claim that they have a Love Lock bridge that dates back to World War 1). 

Not surprisingly, given their penchant for creating new words by earnestly layering on top of words that already exist (1), the word Liebesschloss has been created by German speakers (Liebesschloss Wiki) to describe a lock that is meant to declare love. As opposed to a lock that is meant to lock something less abstract, like a bicycle. The Liebesschloss Wiki site is in German, but the translation is as follows: Love Locks are padlocks that after a custom of lovers on bridges are attached to symbolically seal their eternal love. 

Here's a section of bridge in Prague under the Charles Bridge. 

You might see this as charming, beguling, wacky, depending on your perspective. But, but, but! Locking locks to bridges is not the harmless past time you might think it is! 

On a hot Sunday in June of this year, a section of the Ponts des Arts bridge in Paris collapsed from the weight of thousands of locks affixed to it: Ponts des Arts collapse. Harmless, schmarmless, tourists pose a danger to us all. 

No one was injured in the incident, but it did spur a tweet from Bruno Julliard, the city's head of cultural affairs, who said it "confirms that our desire to find an alternative to these locks is a real necessity." 

Indeed. Really, if you have to prove your love, would it be so hard to find something that adds value? Like, plant a tree, or a rose bush? Just a thought. 

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(1) My favorite example of this is the word Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän, which translates to Danube Steam Ship Company Captain. They get right touchy about that space bar, those German speakers. 

Next: We Head Back to Croatia, to visit the Plitvice Lakes

Medovnik

Honey cake. Lordy, it took me too long to discover this! The issue is that I am not a cake/pastry sort of person. I like the occasional croissant in Paris (spoiled much?), there are incidental cupcakes that catch my fancy, but in general, I take a pass on anything cake-y or pastry like. 

But Medovnik! My word. A friend of mine who lives in Brno was astonished and horrified to discover a few months ago that I had never tried the stuff. She just about forced a forkful into my mouth, whereupon Angels Sang. 

Light, light, not terribly sweet (despite the, you know, honey), and almost ... dare I say it, savory? 

It's made with cinnamon, and (I know this because I have made it!) a tiny bit of cocoa powder. You can't taste "chocolate" when your teeth sink into each delicate bite, but there is clearly some job for the chocolate to do with your taste buds that brings the whole thing to a new level: it's like eating golden sunshine. 

This child of my loins, who also eschews all things cake-like, loves it.  

This child, who inherited her tastebuds from Jeff's side of the family and prefers things like olives and cranberry Wensleydale for snack time, loves it. 

This company, Marlenka, has been making these delightful cakes from an Armenian honey nut cake recipe for the past ten years. The cake is sold all over the Czech Republic and Slovakia (that I know of ... probably in other places in Europe, but not in Austria) and, drum roll, in the US! Although, only in a few parts of the US: specifically Massachusetts and Michigan. Here's a list of stores if you would like to track down a cake: Marlenka US Stores. Trust me, it's totally worth it, although, I don't believe that they ship them, because they require refrigeration. 

Despite the fact that the recipe is stratospheric ally over my head, I decided to give it a go. Brilliant, it was not, but suitable? Adequate? And impressive enough for a first try? Yeppers. Here's the recipe if you are brave. The basic premise of the thing is that you bake six or seven or ten very, very thin crisp cookies. Then you make a creamy bit that you schmear between the cookies. The whole mess sits in your fridge for 24 hours, whereupon the crisp bits have become soft and delectable.

The biggest mistake I made was in not being precise in measuring my layers, some were larger than others in a way that did not appear to be a problem when I was setting it up, but which became a problem when the cream was meant to soften the crispy bits: the sticky out edges stayed crisp. Hope will also point out that my layers were too thick. But she is fussy about things like that.  

Here is a link to the recipe if you'd like to give it a go yourself: Medovnik Recipe. That said, please be sure to extend me an invite when you do get around to making it; I will be forever grateful. 

Next: Locks of Love

The Weird Statues of Salzburg

When you first walk into this part of Salzburg's Kapitelplatz you are forgiven if you do a double take and wonder what on earth that dude is doing up there. He's a statue, though, so no worries. 

This statue is part of a pair. While this particular statue is quite visually arresting, making you stop in your tracks, the second in the pair, a woman, is meant to be less in-your-face.  It's still fairly weird. Although, I am passing judgement when I say that, aren't I? In my opinion, it's a pretty weird sort of statue. Better? 

"The sculpture “Sphaera,” on Kapitelplatz [the man], is about nine meters in height, including the pedestal. It represents a male figure standing in a relaxed pose on a golden sphere. Black trousers, white shirt, neutral attitude and expression – this man might be a nodding acquaintance, or he might be everyman. The same neutrality characterizes Balkenhol’s about 140 cm-tall female counterpart, “Woman in the Rock,” inserted in the rock face on Toscaninihof. Neither figure tells us its story, being first and foremost what meets the eye: a larger-than-life man on a sphere and a smaller-than-life woman in a rock face. Whether or not there is more behind them – an art historical quotation, a religious or political commentary – is a question the artist purposely leaves open. This is where we as viewers come in." Salzburg Foundation

So it's left up to us to decided. Personally, I think the outdoor chess set in Kapitelplatz makes a more visually pleasing tableaux, but I'm boring that way. 

Although, skulking just around the corner from the chess set is this fellow: 

That could give you nightmares if you came upon it on a dark night after a few beers. There is another one, just like it by the same artist, Anna Chromý, in Prague. It is equally creepy. But what Ms. Chromý is truly known for is her marble scuplture, the Cloak of Consciousness, which is an enormous version of this hooded figure carved out of a single block of marble. 

If you are wondering where you can see this thing, the answer is, it is still seeking a home. It is an astonishing piece to behold, even just in photos. The sculptress would like to see it placed in Rome. I'm not sure the scale of the thing works in a city already crowded with millenium of human artwork: in my mind's eye, it belongs on a lonely mountain somewhere, to scare the bejesus out of some lone hiker off for a solidary wander. 

I will be tracking it, though, through Google Alerts to see where it lands. I would love to see it in person, whereever it ends up. 

Next: Medovinik

The Playgrounds of Salzburg

We'll start out in Mirabell Gardens, which was the playground of Julie Andrews and her faux-Austrian crowd of singing siblings.

Julie et al. had nicer weather. That said, the gardens and surrounding palaces, fortresses, fountains, and magnificent baroque structures are beautiful. I could continue dropping in photos of Then and Now starring Julie! Andrews!, but, I'm bored already. Enough of that. 

The Gardens are attached to Mirabell Palace (the large building on the left), built around 1606 by the Catholic Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich Raitenau for his mistress, Salome Alt.

When Raitenau was deposed and arrested in 1612, Alt and her family were expelled and the palace received its current name from the Italian: mirabile, bella: "amazing", "wonderful." (Mirabell Palace Wiki) I find it fascinating that a bishop would build a palace for his mistress and her family. And that they would lose it all is possibly sad? Without more data, though, maybe it was just karma. Unless karma isn't kosher for randy Catholic bishops? Eh, who can keep it all straight. 

Attached to Mirabell Gardens, though, was something even finer than a Palace:

A super playground. I won't bore you with photos of all the toys, but it got two thumbs up from the children. In general, we have found that touring European cities is much easier when we alternate Culture with Playground. Your mileage may vary, but I will give you an insider travel tip: many European playgrounds have a WC, and generally, because they are for children, they are reasonably clean and stocked with the all important toilet paper. No need to thank me, just remember, next time you need a free loo, look for the kiddie playground. 

After playing for a bit, we hiked up Festungsberg (the hill where the fortress is) to get the views of the city. On the way, we found this: 

The rock wall behind this is a formal climbing wall. Amazing playground for kids and not-so-young kids just carved right into the side of a hill. Available to anyone who hikes by who is interested in playing. Nice stuff. 

We continued up the hill, checking out the views as we went. 

And stumbled onto one more fun playground: this one is for the mathematicians. The far-more-amazing-in-real-life art installation is called Numbers In the Woods, and was created by Mario Merz. It's a  Fibonacci series enclave. You probably know what a Fibonacci sequence is: "by definition, the first two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence are 1 and 1, or 0 and 1, depending on the chosen starting point of the sequence, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two." Wiki So, 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1,597, 2,584, 4,181, 6,765, 10,946.

What you are looking at is a half a sphere shape comprised of steel arches interspersed with neon numbers. It's quite ethereal, particularly given that there's not a lot of notice that you are about to walk into a glowing Fibonacci igloo. 

 "Numbers in the Woods" is a work in which the contradictions between the world of living and the world of work, sensibility and rationality, are brought into a precarious symbiosis. Merz’s approach to art relies on an interplay of forces governed by to the principles of ratio (Fibonacci), gravity, aesthetics, emotion, and nature, and that appear symbolically focussed beneath the transparent framework. The artist’s walk-in igloo does not initially provide the protection we would expect of a dwelling. Yet viewers immediately sense a change of atmosphere when they enter it – some even speak of magic." Salzburg Foundation

Magic schmagic, it must be really cool at night.

And that concludes our playground tour, both literal and metaphoirc. We'll use this oddly engaging art installation to segue into the outdoor art scene in Salzburg. 

Next: Odd Art in Salzburg

 

Salzburg

Salzburg is rightly full of pride over the accomplishments of native son, Mozart, and seems to have a slight deranged ex-girlfriend in that American stalwart, The Sound of Music. The Sound of Music was filmed on location in Salzburg in 1965, and there are bike tours, driving tours, walking tours, audio tours, you name it, all in the name of seeing the locations where the movie was filmed.

All tourists come to Salzburg for the classic Baroque architecture, the solid Austrian food, the picturesque Alpine surroundings and the Americans crowd the (many!) Sound of Music tours. I sound like a travel brochure, don't I? True confession time, it's not going to get any better. I'm running on empty. 

Between Jeff and my friend Jane's travel schedules, we decided to take the train to Salzburg on Saturday morning, and back to Vienna on Sunday evening. So a quick trip, but as it turned out, given the sub-optimal weather, a fine plan. The blue sky above peeked out toward the end of our Sunday morning, so we did get to see a bit of the city in sun, but mostly it was under grey skies. 

The original plan included a Sound! of! Music! biking tour, but with the chilly rain, we decided to cancel. The children were incredibly disappointed (lying), as was I (not lying). Jeff and Jane remained silent on the topic, but one can assume that they were devistated and kept a stiff upper lip so as not to upset me further. Good people, those two.   

Salzburg is a beautiful city even in the rain, so no harm, no foul. The fortress you see in background is the Festung Hohensalzburg, or literally, the High Salzburg Fortress. The hill was first inhabited in 1077, with subsequent generations greatly enhancing the fortress, until we have what you can see today: one of the largest medieval fortresses in Europe. 

We spent our rainy Saturday afternoon exploring the interior. I have no photos because in my deep depression, I forgot something. The camera? The chip? To charge the battery? Who can remember that far back. 

On Saturday evening, in one of those weirdly fortuitous moments that make you wonder about the nature of co-incidence, it turned out that a friend of Jane's (and someone I am friends with on Facebook, so technically a "friend" of mine, although up until Salzburg more a Theoretical Friend than a Real Life Friend) was going to be in Salzburg for the evening and would love to join us all for dinner. Funny, that. 

She and her husband (someone for Jeff to talk to!) are delightful people, so we all had a lovely evening, and it turns out we (Jane, the mysterious unnamed person and ma famille) are all living within a few dozen miles of each other in Pennsylvania. Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini kind of world, don't you think? Unnamed is a horse person, and spends a fair bit of time in Salzburg, so she was happy to point out this shop to Jane and me: 

A tack shop right in the Old Town! Jane and I were able to restrain ourselves, but it was difficult (technically, the shop was closed and those bars looked right tough for us to get through). 

This is the Salzburg Cathedral, a Roman Catholic Baroque building located in the at Domplatz ("Cathedral Square"). It was built in 1628 and today it is one of the iconic structures of the city. We were amazed by the eye catching exterior and unique architecture of the cathedral.

HA! No, we weren't. It was spectacular but most of "we" blew by it without a second glance. That's what happens when you see too many cathedrals too young. Spoiled children. 

But we stopped to say hello to these fellows. They make Tom sneeze, but Hope just loves them. They are so much more like cart horses than the more elegant horses that pull the Fiakers in Vienna. 

Tomorrow: The Playgrounds of Salzburg, Because, Those We Were Amazed By

 

 

 

Poor Mozart

When last we checked in on the European side of things, it was American Mother's day, so we're still in early May in blog time. Post Chateau Herálec divertissement, my friend Jane dropped in for a visit. We had a lovely time checking out the sights in Vienna, Brno and (finally!) Salzburg. It is rather shocking that I lived within spitting distance of this particular tourist venue and never managed to drop by.

Festung Hohensalzburg, the "High Salzburg Fortress," 

My children have been to Salzburg, we have spent untold hours singing songs from the Sound of Music (a distinctly American thing to do, of course, as there is no Austrian version of this Rodgers and Hammerstein extravaganza), and we've seen the movie an embarrassing number of times. But, we've never managed the two and a half hour train ride. 

Despite the chosen weekend being a bit rainy and grey, we went, we climbed the castle, and managed to enjoy ourselves. More details in future posts, but today we will dedicate to the person who put Salzburg on the map: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  

In the spirit of Poor Sissi, we give you Poor Mozart. I am rather thrilled with the way my children have latched on to this notion; they scout out depictions of famous historical characters and critique them. I am not exactly sure how this is going to translate in the US, but I am sure we can find some game that is similar.

So, how do you think Mozart would feel about finding himself portrayed in this manner: 

While it is possible that he would take being sculpted in rubber ducky format as a tongue-in-cheek homage, particularly if it meant he would be able to pay the rent on time, it is also possible he would have had a flat out hissy fit.

This is just weird.  

Creepy. 

I imagine the cartoonification is meant to make classical music and Mozart more relatable. I'm not big on cartoon-y cartoons, so I find it flat out bizarre. What would you do with something like this in your house? Since I don't presently have any furniture, it would join the unfortunately rather large pile of tchotchkes that for the moment are meant to pass for a "coffee table" in my otherwise desolate living room. 

As an ex-marketer, I do wonder what the thinking behind these sorts of tourist souvenirs is. They must sell, or people wouldn't stock them in shops. But who buys them? And why? And how can anyone who has any respect for Mozart and the brilliance of his work think this is a good idea?

We shall never know how Mozart or Sissi or even the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette would have felt about their modern day depictions.  Although, with one last unfortunate homage to Dear Sissi, we can guess. 

 

Next: Salzburg, despite the rain! 

Moved

We interrupt this interminable journal of one family's precious adventures in Europe to bring you a Real Time Update on that Oh-So-Smug Stars and Triangles post I wrote a few months back. I'll give you the in-a-nutshell update so you don't have to click back: 

Someone here mentioned in reference to a recent public transportation posting that they thought I might have difficulty when I moved back to the US, dealing with the lack of mass transit where ever we land. 

Me? Nah! I think I'll slip back into the US like I'm sliding on my house slippers. 

Not exactly. Unless my house slippers are meant to have little porcupines stuck in the toe bit. Sister Mercy my head is spinning. Although in my defense, I can argue that what I am suffering from is less Cultural Dissonance an more along the lines of Just Plain Disorganization.

Exhibit A: This is how we left Europe. It's not dissimilar to how we arrived in China seven years ago, although we had half as many bags and half as much Gross Weight in Children.

I think we only had six bags entering China, so ten bags, plus four, Yes-We-Were-Those-People, carry-ons (and I hand carried the Giraffe and Zebra carved masks from Tanzania and South Africa, because, I was determined that they arrive in the US in one piece) is the sum total of what we brought with us to our new house. Our new house that has no furniture. 

You might imagine that there is some rhyme or reason to the packing. You would imagine incorrectly. It's not like there are two suitcases for me, one for Jeff, one for the kitchen etc. We had a 23 kilogram limit for each bag, and we tried to weigh out before we cubed out.

Waiting for us back in the US were two key things: all of the bags Jeff had been carting back for the past year which included random suitcases of winter clothing, bric-a-brac and assorted memorabilia. Plus the entire storage unit that we had jammed full of stuff seven years ago and basically abandoned. Can you imagine packing up all of your important belongings in a large room, leaving for seven years and then coming back? 

The stuff. I can't even. Jeff rented a box truck and the two of us carted all of the stuff from the storage unit over to the house: there was a bed, and a few tables and chairs, so it wasn't like we didn't have any furniture that first week. Just, very little. Jeff's mom is in the process of downsizing, so she has given us a few lovely pieces that we're going to be using as the foundation for the rest of our furniture collection. But do note that that I have couched that (ha! furniture humor!) in the future tense. While three out of four of us have mattresses to sleep on, a week into it, the one of us who does not has begun complaining. Can you blame him?? 

But rather then collapse into First World Whinging about how I cannot find any decent cheese, and butter, what has happened to butter?? I shall instead attempt to shock and amaze you with the random things that we have found in our random unpacking of things that are randomly tossed about because, I have no place to put them. Random things that I would in a heartbeat swap out for a couch, a couch, my kingdom for a couch, would the genie just pop out of one of the three lamps that we stole from one of Jeff's friends because he foolishly gave us the key to his house and grant me a wish. 

Exhibit A: I am sorry, whoever you are, whoever you are whose handwriting I do not recognize that if I did not get you a t-shirt, unless you email me and tell me who you are and what sort of t-shirt you might be in the mood for, you will not get a t-shirt from me. So very random, so very, "who were you??" And why did I save this note for seven years? 

Books and books and books and Oh, My Word, more books! I distinctly remember getting rid of something just shy of a container of books before we vamoosed, but it turns out, we still had a container left. These Cooky McClung books will go on e-Bay so the next person who dearly wants to read them gets a go. 

The oddity about this book in particular was that there was a 100RMB (Chinese) note stuck in it. Worth about $16US, so I'll tuck that into Jeff's wallet for his next trip to China. How and why that would have happened is anyone's guess. 

This. When I un-packed this I had a horrible flashback to this post: Crystal Soulmates. I owned one of these babies and I didn't even remember! Although, not really. Mine is Waterford, and way, way nicer than the knock-off Swarovski version. One imagines it was a wedding present, and, it will be horrible if the person who gave it to me reads this and wonders what kind of a jerk doesn't remember who gave them what at their wedding. Me, I am that kind of a jerk. Mea culpa. 

And, last but not the least weird by a long shot. This is an empty bottle of A.1. Bold & Spicy that was autographed by Darrell Waltrip when he was driving the #35 Tabasco car (NASCAR, Brickyard 400). Tricky, what to do with this particular piece of memorabilia. 

Next: Hopefully, back to Europe to finish out the year. That assumes I can find a charger cord for my computer.