Unfriendly=Understatement

I'm sorry to have left you all for so long. A few things have happened that have kept me from posting any more blogs. 1. I have most things figured out, so my daily life has become really dull. The grocery store and laundromat have become unfortunately routine. 2. We have been travelling on the weekends, and it takes up more time than I realized. Three weeks ago we went to Vienna, last weekend we went to Berlin, and tomorrow we leave for Istanbul, Turkey for Spring Break. (It sure beats my last Spring Break in '94 at Myrtle Beach!) It's sounds so exotic travelling to all these countries and it's awesome, but it's like going to Virginia. All of these countries are so close. The bad thing is that you're constantly saying "please" and "thank you" in the wrong language, and you really need a fanny-pack to keep all of the currencies straight.

Vienna was not at all what I thought it was going to be. All of the buildings are huge rectangles made of white stone-they all look like the capital building, with very little variation. There weren't any eclectic neighborhoods, and the people were definitely not glamorous. Dave was impressed by how many people wore sweatpants. For some reason I had been envisioning the set from "The Sound of Music". So wrong. Our favorite thing was the cafes. They were huge rooms with high ceilings and lots of old decor. The waiters were all men that wore 3-piece suits, and they didn't care if you sat there all day. The food was fantastic. If F. Scott Fitzgerald had walked in I wouldn't have batted an eye. We also went to a show at a national theater/opera house that was amazing. It was an Alfred Hitchcock film with a live symphony playing . Fabulous.

We were glad we went to Vienna, but we probably wouldn't go back, except to stop at a cafe on our way to elsewhere. Cont.