Mixing cultures in the graveyard

This weekend was a lot of fun!  My friend Kristin, who is also a UWEC Alumni and Uni Graz alumni, and also a TA (but down near Graz) was up to visit for the long holiday weekend.  It was great showing someone else around Baden, and because I had company we went some places I'd never stopped/been before.  I always see this used book place in a little tunnel, but I never stop, it turns out all his books are 1 Euro, so we each got one.  Mine is called Barry Trotter, it's a spoof on Harry Potter; I think it'll be pretty funny, but right now I'm working on finishing a book for one of my classes.  We went in and out of a few shops that I hadn't stopped in, and just generally walked around town.  The weather was pretty nice this weekend, so we took advantage of it and hiked around a bit, and sat in the parks reading our books and people watching.  One phenomenon that we've both seen, and find funny, is the popularity of Nordic Walking (aka walking with two poles).  I can understand the use of poles while walking/hiking trails, and I know that if you keep up a good quick pace while using poles it can be more of a cardio workout than just walking.  However, many of the "Nordic Walkers" I've seen here are going at a slower pace than me, so it would certainly not be a workout!  Also, people here take it very seriously, the have special walking outfits (I saw a husband and wife wearing head to toe matching walking wear), and if you don't get out of their way, or pass them, they act as if you've been very rude.  It's pretty funny.

Along with shop adventures we also had some small food adventures.  Before this weekend I hadn't eaten out anywhere in Baden, so we tried a few places.  We stopped at one of the street stands and bought some Bratkartoffel (baked slices of potato) with garlic sauce, they were quite a tasty snack.  We also had Kebab for lunch yesterday, I finally saw a kebab place that looked like people went there and it had been cleaned in the last decade, so we checked it out.  It was rather good, although they only have one sauce, which tasted a bit like ranch (my favorite place in Graz has two sauces, one creamy garlic and one spicy).  Today for lunch we went to one of the Italian Pizzerias in town; I walk by it a lot, and it always smells amazing.  We both ended up ordering pasta dishes, and we were very happy with our choices.  Next time I go in there I have to order pizza, but today I just wanted baked pasta.

We watched some rather interesting TV this weekend.  One of the reality TV shows here, and in Germany, is called "Bauer sucht Frau" (Farmer searching for wife), it's not at all intellectual, but it's rather entertaining.  We saw two episodes of the German version, and one of our favorite farmers is gay, a first for the show, but really it's all pretty cute, and reminds me of Wisconsin.  We also saw (but didn't pay close attention to) a bit of this movie called "The Witches of OZ".  It looked awful, and based on the terrible dialog and effects I thought it was a 90s made-for-TV thing, but apparently it was made this year! However, it was doomed from the start as it was released in Eastern Europe before it was shown to the rest of the world... the reviews on IMDB are pretty funny though!  We also watched a few of my movies: In Bruges (Irish, dark comedy with a bit of action and romance, and MIDGETS!), Sissi (an Austrian film from 1955 about Empress Elizabeth, the first in a series of 3, it's so adorable, everyone should watch it!), and of course The Nightmare before Christmas (because it's Halloween!).

Speaking of Halloween, we saw some Trick-or-Treaters yesterday afternoon.  It's not terribly common in Austria, but it is catching on.  We also saw some houses with Jack-O-Lanterns outside, and my doorbell rang a few times, but we didn't have any candy to hand out.  We didn't dress up at all, but we did decide to celebrate Halloween by creeping ourselves out.  Because today is Aller Heiligen (all souls day) people started cleaning and decorating graves yesterday during the day.  They cover the graves with flowers, and light red candles to burn through the night.  We decided to check that out (one of Kristin's teachers told her she should), and also scare ourselves by being in a graveyard after dark.  It was pretty spooky for us, but we saw some older people in there, either lighting candles or just walking around, so clearly we've seen too many scary movies!  We went back to walk through in the daylight, and there were a lot of people there visiting graves.  Graveyards here are quite different than American ones, I always think they're much prettier and give more of a sense of tradition.  We were sort of looking for the oldest grave, and we did find one from the 1860s, but I'm sure there were older.  There were of course many people from the first and second World Wars buried there, and in a separate section of the cemetery there was even a graveyard full of Russian soldiers who died during World War 2, everything there was in Russian, so I don't know anything else about it.

Anyway, the time changed here on Sunday, so I'm an hour closer to home, but it also means that the sun sets at 4:30... it seems very strange!  For the next two days I'll be staying in Baden, and maybe hiking in Berndorf if the fog ever lifts back there, but on Friday I'm heading down to Graz to return Kristin's visit!