Time for some travel!

Winter break has finally arrived, which means I have survived most of the first semester in Vienna! (We still have three more weeks of school in January before finals.) After a 14-hour winter-break-is-finally-here hibernation-nap, I woke up this morning on the first day of winter well-rested and ready to start organizing my plans for the break.

As most of you know, I’ll be spending Christmas in Vienna. I’ll be having Christmas dinner with a family from the German school where I taught this past year in the US. They have been like a host family for me here. The grandparents have shown me around the city, have invited me over for coffee, and have generally helped out during my time here. I think they also like that I come from the same area in the US as their daughter. Even though they visit her several times per year; I still bring that sense of “Home” with me, and they do the same for me.

So … what exactly are these travel plans I speak of? Shortly after the Christmas festivities and just before the post-Christmas boredom sets in, I will be traveling to Switzerland to see a friend of mine compete in women’s indoor track cycling and then the two of us will go to Paris for New Year’s Eve and Day. Altogether, we will spend three days in Zürich and three days in Paris. Add a day for traveling by train and by air, and I’ll be an international European tourist for about a week.

For these new travels and for future plans, including hiking in the Alps and elsewhere (once it’s a bit warmer!), I finally bought a serious backpack:



I’ve been looking for one for a while, but hadn’t found the “perfect” one – one that was the right size, right fit, looked nice, and wasn’t too expensive--until today. I bought this backpack on the Mariahilferstrasse, which is a little amusing since this street is nearly the Viennese equivalent of New York’s Fifth Avenue—a place where most people would rather window shop than actually purchase anything. Little did I know, however, one of Vienna’s only sporting goods stores is on the Mariahilferstrasse. Go figure. Compared to its surroundings, the store looks so out of place, but after searching in other stores all afternoon, I was sooo happy to find it.

So, now that I have a good traveling backpack, I am ready to start packing for my next mini-journey. But before I begin packing, it is now time to relax, enjoy Christmas—which curiously in Austria is celebrated on Christmas Eve—and generally be merry. Happy Holidays everyone!