Weihnachtsmarkt

The christmas season is in full swing in Vienna (and it is only the 22nd!). That means a few thing. Most promiently are these little Weihnachtsmarkten. They are pretty much little christmas shopping villiages that spring up in town squares across Vienna where you can buy a lot of cool (and not so cool) things. Oh and Punsch, but more on that later. They are quite festive and make for an interesting time, have a look:

This is from a markt at the Vienna Rathaus, people told me that it was a little too "corprate" and "touristy" but to be honest that is all I want.

This is a pretty typical stand. A surly looking woman with stuff that would make a lot of our grandmothers faint from sheer knick-knack awe.

While all this is great, the real treat is the traditional holiday drinks Punsch and glühwein. These are both awesome drinks that are beloved around Christmas time. I cant

really describe them, but I'll give it my best shot: it is like hot wein with nutmeg on top.

I dunno, it isn't my favorite thing in the world, but I don't get a fuzzy nostalgic feeling

when I drink it, so who am I to judge.

Top 5 Habsburg Moustaches

The House of Habsburg ruled over Austria for 6 centuries, as well as being Holy Roman Emporers from 1452 to 1740. More importantly however, these dudes had some AWESOME facial hair. Here is my personal top 5. Feel free to argue.

5. Albrecht II
Seen here sporting the 1970's baseball star. Albrecht II was king of Germany untill 1483.

4.Ferdinand IIIFerdinand III looks dignified in his Fu Manchu variation that helped him become Holy Roman Emporer in 1637

3.Rudolph II
Rudolf's unkempt moustache/beard combo (plus his lazy and ineffective ruling) led straight to the 30 years war.

2.Franz Joseph
The man himself, for me, there is nothing else to call his moustache other than the "Franz Joseph".

1. Maximilian I

The first (and only) Habsburg Emporer of Mexico. The Mexicans were somehow not charmed by his enormous facial hair. He was executed in 1867.

BMW Museum

This may sound like an odd choice for me to go, but Dad said I should check out the plant, so I thought it could be cool. And IT. WAS. AWESOME. As far as Museum presentation and layout goes this Museum definitely deserves to have the BMW brand. The best way to describe this place is by saying that it feels like you are in an ipod. Straight up. The Germans know modern design and this place is about the pinnacle of modern museum magic. They pulled out every stop to make sure every room was interactive and fun. Plus, I saw some really really really nice cars. Like ridiculously nice.

The Museum also gives a good overview of the history of the company with some classics.





This is one of the concept cars at the end of the tour.



This is the very first thing you see in the museum, it can only be described as the weird ball thingy.

OK more notes from Munich

Seeing as I have now seen Munich twice (and loved it both times) I am going to give the blog over to Hailey to get her first impressions.

This is the Glockenspiel in Marienplatz. It is super famous.

Alright everybody, Munich is wonderful. I loved it. It probably helped that the weather was perfect for me and Kellen, only crisp beautiful fall days. We took the early train in on Friday with a few friends. We managed to get horribly horribly lost going one stop on the "Schnellbahn" to get to our hostel, oh well. Our first day was spent just walking around the main area, waiting to go to the Hofbrauhaus, it was really awesome, but I'm not sure if sharing the pictures with the world wide web would be a great idea. The next day we went to BMW World and the BMW Museum, see the next post. We wandered around again for a while and ended up at another beer hall, more delicious food and a fun time.

Our last day (today) before we left Kellen and I headed over to the art museum district. We went to the Alte Pinakothek which houses all of the art pre-1800. There were some beautiful paintings and we didn't take a picture of a single one... sorry. Then we made our way over to the Pinakothek der Moderne which is the modern art museum of Munich. It was super super wacky, everything you want in a modern art museum including really weird video installations. And I'm talking really weird here.

All in all Munich was great, I really enjoyed it and I would love to go back again. There is so much there, we only scratched the surface.

Munich

This pretty much sums it up

Do You Ever Get a Hankerin' for Some...

CHA-LUP-AS (say what, did the Blazers just score 100 points?)

Well, Hailey and I did, as I'm sure you have too. There was only one problem, we are in Austria(WHOAAA!) and they don't know anything about Mexican food. Except this one place called Taco's Lopez, it is pretty authentic, but I don't think they have Mom's reciepe. So, we set out to find the ingeredenits. Should be easy right? There was only one problem, were were still in Austria (WHOAAA!). So our mission was that much harder, it sent us all over Vienna. First things first, finding cream of chicken soup. This actually proved to be simple, not because any grocery store here had it, but because I heard rumors of a British/American foodstore in the 4th district (Pop-tarts? Yes please!), and they had delicious Campbell's soup.
The thing that proved most difficult was trying to find these peppers you see in the picture. They definitly aren't the same thing we use at home, but they had a good spice to them so I'll give them a break. Tortillias were pretty easy to find too (someone in our group even tracked down "Mission" brand, sweet). Sourcream is everywhere, but it a little different than what we have at home and that gave us the most worry. Cheese too, was kind of a struggle but we managed to grab some cheddar which was clutch. When everything was combined, it looked pretty close to what it looks like at home. Here is a picture of me doing what I do best, normally to my Mom's chagrin :To increase the interactivity of this blog I decided to make an awesome vid showcasing my talents behind the camera. You may find it boring, but I think Hailey really put a lot into this role and it shows. Subtle- yet effective stuff. A tour-de-force. Oh, and the song is by Girls. Hope I don't get sued. We just happened to be listening to it at the time.

They turned out really good. Not really too different from home. Wanna see something goofy? Look how many clocks my host Mom has in the kitchen, I think she collects them, they go off all the time, and for the first like week I was there I always thought someone was at the door.

Gratz-ee!

Oh my god, what is that? Are Aliens attacking the southern Austrian city of Graz?? Well...no, not exactly. This UFO-y building is the Kunsthaus Graz. A center for modern art in Austria. And yes, everyone is aware that it looks like an Alien spaceship, it was even dubbed "the friendly alien" by its designers.
Graz was the European capital of culture for the year 2003, and they built a lot of weird stuff for it. It is easy to see why they chose a place like Graz though, as the city is adventerous to put a big blob of a building in its historic downtown. Artist there don't seem to mind taking chances. Such as this stained glass window in a local church:
On first glance it may seem like any other church window depicting the passion of Christ, but this one is a little different. See if you can figure out why. Go ahead. I'll just wait here...
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See it yet? Well, if you look to the right of Jesus' shoulder, there are two very (in)famous tormentors. This window shows Hitler and Mussolini watching Jesus get whipped! As you can imagine it created quite a stir on its debut, but it remains today.

The last cool thing we saw in Graz was the armory, supposedly the biggest medieval weaponry! Sadly they won't let you take pictures, but let me assure you it was intense. There were enough weapons and armor to fit an army of 5,000 men. Luckily with the wonders of the internet I have tracked down an informative video about the armory for you all to enjoy: