The Professor and Mary Ann

As the crowning glory of our study of Baroque architecture this week, Rob went to Melk Abbey (Click to enlarge pictures)with the students and Maddie, Will, Sebi and our good friend and former study abroad student Sarah Reed. Mary Ann stayed home with Joss, who is fighting an ear infection and losing piteously. The 1-year old set does not exactly care about Benedictine monks, Baroque theatricality and Trompe-d'ouille technique (spelling, Marie-Laure?). The students were very into the marble library, the super-gilded church and the dressed-up skeletons in the side chapels. They look like they have been stuffed into panty hose and posed in perky, life-like positions. Will got the willies from a smiling skeleton propped up on one elbow who looked like he was trying to pick up a sexy ham-bone in a bar with a sleazy lounge-lizard line like "does that femur go all the way to the floor?" For many years, the traditional Melk trip has been followed by a pleasant 3-hour bycicl

I don't think I've really talked much about it, but Maddie and I are taking classes at the Austro-American Institute of Education with the students. We go for two hours each morning and talk about Austrian topics like minorities and political parties, and relative clauses and indefinite articles. I always do my homework and I still don't make much sense. Maddie doesn't ever do her homework and she's still the star pupil. Harrrumph. This week she got points for correctly identifying the aria being sung next door. Show off . But I was actually going to talk about Thursday when we cut class to go to the Lower Belvedere. With apologies to Herr Dr. Wassertheuer, German grammar we have with us always, but Alfons Mucha is gone after this weekend. We met Rob and took the streetcar over to this building where even the basement staircase and the faucet and the hand dryers were hip and artsy and they played peppy music in the bathroom stalls. Alfons Mucha was Czech, and is b

From Diciembre Rob wants to see great performances while in Vienna. He's not content to attend the fluffy tourist concerts being hawked by men in Mozart coats. But he tries hard to find things I can understand too. Consequently we have seen some interesting, but offbeat things. In 2005 we saw something called "Amnesia de Fugar" (Amnesia of Migration?) for which the audience had to be at least bilingual. It was a play in Spanish and Hindi being simultaneously translated into German (the Spanish) and English (the Hindi). It was fantastic. Last night's language was theoretically simpler: Chileans speaking Spanish with German supertitles. It was a dystopian play with three actors set in 2014 with a Chile who is at war with Peru and Bolivia. A soldier, Jorge, is at home visiting his two sisters, Trinidad and Paula. Trinidad is a hippie pacifist and Paula is a warmonger. Family dysfunction reigns. At various points both sisters are so mad that they rip off their wigs. The

Rob and Maddie had just had their own adventure going to the Karlskirche (click the collage to enlarge). Each afternoon, Monday through Thursday, Rob takes the students for two hours and they see part of Vienna's architecture. He is working his way through the historical periods, so he started with the Roman ruins, then Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and now they're in the Baroque (which is huge in Vienna -- they'll be Baroque for a week or more). The Karlskirche is a huge baroque confection with minarets which was built in gratitude after the plague had left Vienna. It's a wonderful place to see the Baroque because they're refurbishing it, and you can ride an elevator up into the scaffolding in the dome -- "close enough to touch the angels" as Rob advertised it. You can see in the bottom of the collage, the students are standing on the platform in the dome. Even at that height, they're all clustered in the middle, and there is a "camera net&qu

I need to confess that during the opera I was thoroughly frustrated. I couldn't understand enough of the singing (which was operatic) and I couldn't understand the supertitles (which were in German). It had been a long several days and Joss hasn't been giving us a whole lot of sleep, so trying to understand church, then class, then the opera was giving me what Rob says is "classic culture shock" whose major symptom, according to him, is a wish to quit speaking German. Whatever. I have good reasons. In the opera, the word "shicksal" kept coming up, over and over, and I couldn't make out any cognate in the singing. 'What the heck is a shicksal?' Afterward I asked Rob and he told me it means "fate". I was mad. Fate doesn't have an indefinite article -- what is that about?! If there is "a fate" it means I can choose between options and is that, I ask you, really fate? Also, etymologically, I thought that shicksal should be

Monday night we saw another of the Festwochen performances. This was one of the most popular from 2006 and was having an encore performance both here and in England. It was Henry Purcell's renaissance opera, Dido and Aeneas, with a new foreword performed by Fiona Shaw. She came out wearing a grey t-shirt and jeans, with a corsetted bodice tied on, and a bustle, which just looked like a fanny pack without a skirt over it. She recited lines from Ovid's story of Echo and Narcissus, then a section of TS Eliot's "The Wasteland," and finally a few lines of Yeats.Then we saw the opera, and I can see why this was a popular favorite in Vienna. It was both very formal/classical/historical and very hip/modern/spare, which is a combination the Viennese really groove on (they will often stick a new glass and metal facade/elevator/awning onto an old, old building). It suits them. This had unadorned banks of theater lights in the middle of a typical Baroque room, and the opera f

Will and I agreed, as we so rarely do, that since we were having to change trains at the Prater stop, that we should ride a couple of the rides at the Prater (Vienna's amusement park). So we walked down the Hauptallee until we reached that pinnacle of Viennese kitsch, the Hochschaubahn (a wee, alpine rollercoaster from the early post-war era which is all cement and has garden gnomes and the like; Rob had a student do his thesis on it, so we found out that at one point some homeless person lived in the highest tower for nearly a year, and all sorts of other useless factoids about it). I asked Sebastian after his ride if it was too scary, and he said "NO! IT WAS AWESOME!! OOOOWESOME!" I was glad that we'd made his day. Then we let him ride the Monzabahn (above in the little green car), and Will got to ride in the bumper cars. Maddie was, like me, just plain garden-variety tired, so she opted out of a second ride. We stopped by Mr. Lee's Quick Lee chinese food and g

These are pictures from lunch (click to enlarge). We had scraped together a picnic before we left, but we had no bread. So while we were waiting at the train station, I bribed Maddie and Will to go buy rolls (called semmel here, or schrippe in Berlin, and they don't understand you if you call them the wrong thing). I gave them money and told them they could split the change if they'd speak in German; they're very motivated for euros because Rob has let them each have a cell phone on this trip. So far, I am underwhelmed by the decision -- phones have caused hard feelings and tears and they spend plenty of time playing games on them. On the other hand, I was able to call Maddie during one of Rob's tours, and that was convenient. In any event, we had a nice lunch, the students played with the kids, and Rob taught us all strange German idiomatic phrases such as "it's sausage to me" ('I don't care') and "you're stepping on my cookies&quo

Every day is another day trip. Saturday morning, as every morning, we try to get everyone dressed, fed, and repack the backpack and stroller with everything we might need for the day's events (which, let's be honest, could be anything). We try to do it on time. Saturday we met most of the students at the train station to catch a commuter rail out to Leobendorf. Once we got there, we had a forty five minute hike up the hill to see this castle: These are some pictures of Burg Kreuzenstein (click to enlarge). When we last went in 2002, Will was napping and I stayed in the hot bus to keep him asleep. This time Rob stayed out with Joss, who was asleep in his stroller. On the tour, we got separated from half of the students, and they turned out to be the advanced German speakers. The guide was nice enough and even funny, but his accent was pretty thick Wienerish, and so none of us could really tell what was going on. The kids were not much help. What we did understand was that we w

Friday afternoon, Rob and I took Maddie and Will to a children's concert of Haydn in the basement of the Konzerthaus. There were three female musicians: pianist, violinist, cellist, and two male actors playing Haydn and his helper. The music was great and there was lots of kid humor and interaction. Our children said that the kids were much louder and worse-behaved than American kids (they would shriek "YES!" or "NO!" or "GOOD!" when asked). There is definitely something in the way that children grow up here as opposed to home, where they are raised by the dozen. But I loved that when the actor said "But who can break the spell of the magic piano?" some little girl yelled "Josef Haydn can!" They enjoyed it and we wished that we'd brought Sebastian too.

This morning we went to see the Lippizaners at morning practice. Mostly this was an event I was pushing through. I thought that we should take the family to see the famous horses perform after living there as much as we have. I'd seen a performance once by myself, but not even Rob had been to see them. Our former student Sarah, is here for a while, and we dragged her with us, jetlagged as she is,  down  to the Hofburg palace to see it. I'd sent Rob down earlier to get tickets. It was mayhem for him, buying the tickets and saving the seats from rabid Italians, and mayhem for us, trying to cross town and get to the seats in half an hour with the three boys and the stroller. It happened. We made it. The Lippizaners trotted around to their music, and soon  enough the kids had named the horses: Whiffle (pure white), Smoky and Buddelbär, who was their favorite. They lasted for about an hour and then we left. It was definitely as much as kids could handle, but I might try kids on the

Last night we had our first event, called I Went To The House But Did Not Enter (you might be able to see a trailer of it here)   I don't know if I can do it justice.  It was a performance in three acts, based on the poetry of four of the 20th century's great poets: Kafka,  Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot and Maurice Blanchot, and their work had been set to music. Imagine, if you  will, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" being sung by a barbershop quartet as they set out tea, and you'll be pretty close to act one (John, I thought you would love it, and Allen, you'd have thought at least that part was pretty spot on).  Act two took Blanchot's "Madness of the Day" and divided it up so that the four men were each saying parts of the poem -- as a conversation, on the phone to each other, in musings as they went about their daily rituals (Rob said "That's what should happen! You should pick up the phone and people should be asking deep philoso

That's a literal translation, anyway of what we did yesterday. We had no classes for Christi Himmelfahrt (Ascension Day), and it was one of the first warm days of the season, so we and a number of students went out to the Gaensehaeufel (goose island) to go swimming. It is hard to imagine just how huge this place is if you haven't seen it. You  pay your fee and you get a  locker key. There are buildings, named for each letter of the alphabet and each one is divided into small rooms which each have about 50 lockers in them -- you do the math. Here is Joss, who thought he'd gone to heaven -- the whole world  is his bathtub! He didn't want me to hold his hand, but when a wave came, he'd  fall in face first. Then there are several pools: the wave pool, where Will is checking out an incoming wave, then the baby pool, which is a lot like the splash park at home,  then two pools in the middle. These are lined entirely with plates of metal. I can only assume that this heats

We are really enjoying Vienna's small size as compared to Berlin. We had half an hour before Rob had to teach, and we walked from the restaurant where we had lunch over to the Burggarten so that he could take the kids to the butterfly house. This is housed in half of what used to be the imperial orangery, and now it's kept toasty and tropical to keep the butterflies happy. Maddie was especially excited to get three of them to land on her leg -- our camera captured one flying away from her. The building is a little art nouveau jewel, all swooping green iron ornaments and curving glass. They stayed among the fluttering insects until Rob had to haul bootie back to the Institute to teach a lesson on Gothic architecture and lead a tour of St. Stephen's Cathedral. Maddie tagged along on the tour, and discussed flying buttresses and ribbed vaulting with the students. Last year, on a tour of St. Stephen's dark and spooky crypt, Maddie and Will clutched onto Rob and whimpered a

I just had to post some of the pictures Saydi took in Boston because they are five times better than anything I can do. You can see more of her great stuff here and Saydi Shumway Photography . Saydi stayed off the swan boat with Emmeline and chased around the lake taking pictures of us. The whole boat had to know who she was by the end of the trip because we were all chanting her name and pointing and waving at her. I love it! How did I miss this moment? He looks so much better with her lighting than in my pictures. Yay Saydi! The rhino brothers show their stuff. We obviously need to practice kissing for the cameras -- too much nose here.

These are not first steps -- Joss has been walking for about six weeks; we wanted to record his gait because we find it so much fun (and grandma needed to see it). It was probably unfair to film him on pavers, but my don't they look good! This was in the courtyard of the Brothers of the Order of the Holy Cross which is now the college for applied arts.

but a truth nonetheless, that you feel more at home after moving around some furniture and making an IKEA trip of your own. So that is what we did on Saturday. We had to come up with a high chair and wanted some other things, like a rug for Joss to play on in his room. We walked straight up to Kinderparadies and signed the three oldest up, then Rob told them that we only wanted to leave them for half an hour (half an hour?! are you kidding me? In the history of the world, when has any trip to IKEA taken half an hour?!? We'd still be wandering around sofabedland by then). We did, however, know what we needed, and we took only fifty minutes to find everything on the shopping list. Then it was time to show off my packing prowess. Paper napkins and plates and cups in the panniers. Stuffed animals and pillows with the glass items in back. Bulky items and childproofing in the IKEA back hanging off the stroller, and the rug and highchair strapped into the front. Pretty good, huh? Joss d

We arrived here at Spittelauerplatz. The apartment is up only one flight of steps and has an elevator which is very, very luxurious for us. It is a block from the U-bahn, and we have various restaurants, two grocery stores, a drug store and a pharmacy all very close. We even have a taxi stand half a block down. It looks out on this plaza with a small playground. There are lots of homeless guys around whom I will not talk about because my mom reads this blog. It has been a revelation to us staying in an actual Study Abroad apartment -- always in the past we have had to rent a holiday apartment sight unseen over the internet, and we spend a lot of time the first few weeks reinventing various wheels. This apartment comes stocked with dishes and utensils to feed thirty students (rather than wine glasses for a few couples' drinking weekend away), folding chairs for all of them, a printer, and even little things like staplers, tape, and pencils that just don't come in vacation renta

From Boston, we traveled to New York's JFK airport. I can't walk through the Delta terminal without thinking of Jordan, one of our students, who was stuck there for 12 hours. He was appalled that "this is the first thing that some people see when they come to America! I really need Delta to get it together!!!" Amen. Thankfully, we didn't have to stick around. We went to the Austrian counter where we discovered that they had switched planes on us and consequently messed up our seating: four random seats across a row of 8, and two loners. The man who would have sat in the midst of McFarlandom gratefully escaped to one of our aisle seats, as did the man sitting next to Sebi, so it worked out well. It was a flight full of kids: there was a family with twin 16-month-olds right in front of us (loud and out of control, but you just don't care if it is going to deflect attention from you) and a Jewish family with five kids in matching yellow hoodies going to Israel.

We arrived in Boston, where Jeff and Saydi have fed us fabulously, shuttled us to and from the airport (two trips each time), given us guided tours and and entertained us, and let us sleep all over their house. In return, we've busted their muffler, clogged the toilet repeatedly, thrown random objects wantonly across their home, and kept Jeff mostly out of the office for three days. They're all broken up to see us leave. Our Make Way For Ducklings tour of Boston. (click to enlarge) We walked through the Public Library, down Newbury Street, Commonwealth Avenue, took a ride in a Swan Boat in the Public Garden and visited the duck statues, and walked through Beacon Hill. We were also feted by Dave and Heather so that we got a chance to see dear Boston friends while we're in town. We have three Heathers to whom we are close (sister, cousin and friend); I don't know if it's something in the name, but they are all three consummate hostesses. They are not of the fussy-pip

My lovely family did actually squeeze in a mother's day dinner on Saturday. We had the house mostly clean upstairs and all packed, so we went to the farmers' market for lunch and sat out in the sun. We forced the kids to jump on the trampoline, knowing that they couldn't jump or yell or run screaming around the apartment in Vienna. Then they took me to Thai food and gave me great skincare gifts for the trip and a box of truffles from Sees for sanity. Will also made me a fantastic vase with flower pens and Maddie wrote the following poem: Dear Mom, Roses are red, most smell pretty good, You're an awesome mom, and you make good food. No twinkies, no corn dogs, no junk food at all, Your food tastes delecious and portions arn't small. You also really love us, and we really love you, I know that sometimes I can be a big poo. Love, Maddie I love it! I love it as much as my aunt's, when cousin Reed called her "Beautiful as a baby orca whale".

We tried to break up the flights this time around by stopping in Boston on the way out. We vacuumed ourselves out the door early on Mother's Day morning. We had a jolly driver in our airport shuttle who packed candies into each of his cupholders (which did not go unnoticed by the boys in the backseat). We were feeling overwhelmed on the curb when he dropped us off, and decided to use the sky cap. It was the best decision ever, because we thought we'd have to pay for the bags since we were only going to Boston on Sunday. He looked at our itinerary and went and got us through free (a savings of $550) for the eleven bags of hooey we're hauling with us. Before you berate us though, note that our luggage is a legitimate reimbursible expense, while buying Legos or Cars the Movie underwear over in Vienna is not. The security checkpoint went so smoothly that I couldn't believe we were on the other side. They let through our bottle of amoxicillin and motrin without batting an e

We're now three days away from departure. I'm recording this to read when next we contemplate a study abroad, and to remind myself that I am never EVER going to rent or lend or permit anyone to live in my house while I'm gone again. It's like I'm trying to vacuum us into a corner and make a discreet exit with 6 people and hundreds of pounds of luggage. Rob and I are not sleeping and we're working all day long. Yesterday in particular, Rob was a crazed demon: he gave up on sleeping at 5:00am, went running, read the Economist for a while, and fed the kids breakfast. After we got people off to school, we filled the truck with easily a thousand pounds of rocks and cement which he dumped by himself at his sister's/father's house where they are trying to fill a former root cellar (it will be an immense french drain after this). Then he picked up mulch and spent the rest of the day distributing it about the yard along with as much landscape renovation as one