Welcome to the World, Sunshine

Dorothea Vuksanovic was born on May 14th!!! She is finally here! She is beautiful and our little sunshine! Everyone is beyond excited to welcome the new family member into the world! We have been celebrating ever since! I have never had the pleasure of holding such a young new born baby. It was a beautiful experience.

Fruehlingsfest

Another beer fest has come and gone. This one is called Fruehlingsfest (Spring Festival). It looked like a small Okoberfest with the carnival set up and the beer tents, but it wasn't as traditional or a big deal really. There were only 2 tents, that we saw at least. It was fun to go and sing and dance on the tables in our dirndl ;)

Dane and Rahul finially took a break from studying and came out to play with us!

And it was a bonus because my cousin Hayden and his roommate are here visiting from his study abroad in France! Hayden put it nicely when he said that he has never seen so many happy people together celebrating like that! haha Everyone sure is happy.

Every girl needs a picture with the Munich lion in her dirndl ;)

So apparently in Bavaria they celebrate 5 seasons with a special brew of beer. There is a brew and festival for summer time, autumn time, winter time, spring time, and then also for Lent. So the spring festival is the last one I will get to celebrate while I'm over here. And it was a good time :)

Andechs on Ammersee

Last Tuesday was May Day (Der Erste Mai) here in Germany so it was a work and scool holiday for everyone. I think it is equivalent to our Labor Day. So we celebrated by, you guessed it, going to a beer garden. But this one was special.

6 of us took the train down to Ammersee in Herrsching. We played around a bit by the lake before making our way to the Andechs monastery. The monks here have had a brewery going for a thousands years! So they have nearly perfected it. You can only get the beer at the monastery. So it is a special one for sure and is a local favorite!

We definitley stole those mugs.

The hike up to the monastery took us over an hour so the beer at the finish line tasted amazing! The hike was absolutely beautiful! This is one of my favorite things we have done in Bavaria!

The entire monastery was pretty impressive.

It was such a beautiful way to spend a day together with friends! This was another priority on our Munich must see wish list!

There is a First Time for Everything

I have had a lot of firsts getting to live in Germany so far this year. It's been my first time to...

...see Europe... live in Europe... live somewhere besides Texas.

...watch a full soccer match... and attend my first hockey game.

...wear a dirndl.

...go to so many museums and palaces... see a royal treasury.

...learn another language.


...have non native English speakers correct my English. Only slightly embarassing.

...teach kids English (as their third language).

...see the Alps.

...ski in the Alps.

...drive a stick shift... drive in the snow.

...have a white Easter. Still haven't had a white Christmas yet though...


...go ice skating outside on a frozen pond (that just so happens to be infront of a castle - Nymphenburgschloss).

... have at one point 5 different money currencies in my wallet (American, Euro, Swiss Francs, Hungarian and Brazilian money - I traded my American 2$ bill to a friend for his Brazilian 2$ bill)

... hear 3 different languages at the dinner table.

...see Spiderman beat up a Princess.

It's been an eye opening year ;)

Bayern Ticket

There is this great train ticket here called the Bayern ticket - 30 Euro for 5 people for any Regional train in Bavaria. It's a winner. We decided to go to Rothenburg ob der Tauber on Sunday. While we were at the train station on Sunday morning, we decided to go to Nuernburg as well! So Markus, Michaela, and myself took a day trip there with the Bayern ticket! The train ride was 3 and a half hours, but one of the crossword puzzels I brought took us an hour and a half, so the ride flew by! Unfortunately, when we got there, it was raining. But the town was still beautiful! It is a medieval town that has been really well preserved. It looked like walking in a fantasy. It was a stereotypiclal idealic old style German town setting. This is one of the few towns that was not damaged badly in the WWII. There is a surrounding wall blockade that people can still walk on! So that was the first thing we did! Then, we went to a museum of torture that was filled with what they used to torture people with back then... We also went into a Christmas history museum which cheered up our spirits a bit. The town is really well known for their Christmas Markets and this museum and shop that hand makes everything in there. It was so adorable. We had a nice meal together and took a break from walking. Before we hopped back on the train to Nuernburg, we bought snowballs, some yummy baked goods that look kind of like a pie crust twisted up into a ball.

This is in the city center in Rothenburg.

This is the view from the Imperial Castle on a hill in Nueremburg.

This is the St. Lorenz Church in the city center at Nueremburg.

We didn't stay too long in Nuermburg. We mainly just walked through the city center and to the city castle! This town is also really popular during Christmas time because they have the biggest Christmas Market. I came during the wrong season!

Michaela and I have our last months in Munich wish list and these two stops were priotrities on it! So, thanks to the Bayern ticket and Markus' great navigational skills, we were able to cross those off our list!

Buda, Pest, and Obuda also known as Budapest

After our perfect day in Vienna with my wonderful travel buddies, we took an early train ride to Hungary's capital city, Budapest! I couldn't tell you anything about the train ride because we slept the whole way; rather uncomfortably, but, we slept. We had three days to explore! The first day was our long walking day! We walked all over the city. We started on a walking tour but it wasn't holding our attention well enough so we snuck away to play on our own. We at least learned that originally there were three cities (Buda, Pest, and Obuda) that were united over the Danube River to make the capital city of Budapest. And this is what we found...

This is the bridge crossing the Danube River near our hostel.  It had such a great view of the city so we took our time walking and taking pictures and cheering on the marathon runners that were passing by. Don't let the beautiful sky fool you, it was a windy day! During WWII and the Nazi occupation, all of the bridges connecting the cities were destroyed (along with most of the city). But they were all repaired beautifully.

This is their beautiful Parliament Building! It was modeled after the Westminister in London.

It was quite a little inner city hike to get up to Castle Hill, but we did it! And it was so worth the beautiful view.

This was also on the top of Castle Hill. It was a pretty big area. More than just a castle but a palace area. There was a beautiful church, stairways, museum, officer post (we saw the changing of the guards), and yea, palace. For the part of the tour we did hear, they told us that in the earlier days, Hungary was the winner of their time. But then they became the losers and have not been able to come out of that hole. Yes, her words, they became the losers on the battle field and in the conquering world. So after continuously being ruled and overtaken by other countries, and occupied by Nazi rule and then under Soviet rule, Hungary won its independence and is now a democracy and apart of the EU. Even though there is still contraversy about their current President.

We had to take a break from so much walking.

Hero's Square. Monument to Hungary's long fight for independence.

State Opera House. We didn't get to spend an evening at the Opera in Budapest like we did in Vienna.

We had a lovely traditional dinner that night at a typical Hungarian Restaurant that was super touristy with terrible service. It was kind of funny how we continued to have to correct what we ordered or ask for more and how they just did not care. But it was still yummy. Then, of course, we explored the city by night. And stumbled upon some sort of car commerical shoot with a rather large pig oinking around infront of the club we went to and some sort of concert. I don't know what kind of music it was. It was past my bedtime and I nearly fell asleep on the bean bags on the floor :) haha Sorry Anna, and Hayden, I tried to be a trooper. I was so tired, I didn't even want to dance. And I always want to dance so you know I was tired!

The "City of Spas." On our second day there we relaxed at the pool. This area is known for having natural thermal springs. It was one of the reasons the are was settled in the first place. When Turkey had control of the area they had a big influence on buildling all the baths there. Some of them are still there now. They told us that a lot of elderly people or people in some sort of physical therapy have perscriptions to go to these baths. There are several spas inside but we were lucky enough to catch a good day and swim in the warm water outside!

The hostle we stayed in was so great! It was called the Groove Hostel. It was just a normal (but big) flat that they were renting and turned into a hostel. It was this old building with a courtyard. I liked it! It was really homey and much more of an ideal hostel rather than hotel. There were a lot of young people traveling and good company. The people working there were so nice to talk to and laid back. Not about touristy stuff to do but just to talk with. And they made us coffee. It was so nice of them. That is the way to my heart haha And they had a lovely balcony that we sat out on until dinner that night.

We went into their Museum of Fine Arts on our last day there and saw a great photography exhibit called The Birth of Photography.



After the museum, we went shopping for a bit, and then climbed the winding stairs to the top of the St. Stephan's Basillica and enjoyed another wonderful view of this beautiful city.

Budapest is such a great city to visit! We enjoyed our time there very much! The bar was set super high from our amazing start in Vienna. So Budapest was the perfect stop after that. We took the train back to Vienna on Tuesday night and spent the night there before heading back to Munich. We celebrated our wonderful trip on our last night out in Vienna. Thanks Anna and Hayden for being such great travel buddies and explorers with me :) Couldn't have asked for a better trip to Vienna and Budapest!

The Perfect Day in Vienna

My friend Anna, my cousin Hayden (who is studying abroad for a semester in France), and myself had the most perfect day in Vienna 2 weekends ago. (sorry it took me some time to write about the update) It started off a little bit stressful because we nearly missed our train from Munich. But because we are such fast runners, we made it with 3 minutes to spare! After a 4 and a half hour train ride on Friday night, we were there, in the beautiful capital city of Austria! Friday night we saw the night life and then Saturday we explored the city!

In front of St. Charles's Church.

Inside St. Stephan's Church in the City Center. It was so sweet, there was a school orchestra playing when we were in there.

We looked forward all day to our midday break because we knew we were going to Sacher. It's a fancy hotel and restaraunt that apparently has the best chocolate cake in the world. It's been this secret recipie since the 1800s. Mmm it was so good!

 

Us at Hofburg Palace. This is apparently where the President lives! It didn't have security like the White House does. This area, it's close to the Rathaus and the Parliament building, is where most of the government action goes down.  And this was where the beautiful Empress Sisi lived. She had a typical fairly tale story. She was from a royal family in Bavaria, met the Emporer of Austria- Hungry and he fell madly in love with her at first sight. Everyone still knows who she is and her romantic story (even though she was murdered). She is still a historical icon here.

This is us goofing off in front of the Parliament house :)

One of my favorite things about exploring a new city is the random things you come across that you weren't expecting. As we headed toward the Rathaus, we came across this bike festival. It was really cool! The riders were launching themselevs off a ramp that was set up front and center of the Rathaus. They were doing all sorts of tricks and flips. So we wondered around there and cheered on the riders for a bit. Some of these boys were crazy with the jumps they were doing. They probably make their mother's constantly worried sick haha.

We went to the Belvedere Museum in the afternoon. It has a beautiful garden that we walked through and we saw their exhibit called gold. So most everything was made out of pure gold. I didnt care too much for that art. It was too modern for me.

The day became offically perfect when we went to the Opera Saturday night. We are pretty much awesome and through our awesome connections, we got hold of some awesome seats. Even if I put 3 more awesomes in that sentence, it would not come close to describe really how awesome it was. Tickets originally costing 200 Euro were graciously given to us poor students for 15 Euro, thanks to a lovely family friend's sister who plays in the Orchestra. The Opera we saw was called L'Elisir D'Amore. It's Italian, so we had to read the translation the whole time (I managed to read it all in German). It was really good! It wasn't like a traditional stiff opera. It was funny and had a lot more acting- theater tone to it. So we were able to enjoy an absolutely lovely evening at one of the most well respected Opera houses in the world. It was just wonderful.

Saturday night we probably stayed out later than we should have because we had to catch the train to Budapest at 7am. But we made it and had a nice long nap on the train so everything was good :) We kept talking on and on about how perfect our day in Vienna was! But then we were excited to see Budapest next! I'll try to write that blog and put all my pictures up on facebook tomorrow!