One last post from Ösiland...

...at least for this year.

My last weekend in Europe was a great one!  I went up to Erlangen, Germany on Friday last week to visit Marie, who was our first exchange student.  Her boyfriend Yves was also in town, and it was really good to catch up with Marie and get to know him better.  Friday night we relaxed and had a great dinner from the grill and drank some German beer and Austrian wine.

I never thought that I would like dark beer (Schwarzbier), but it turns out the Germans make it quite tasty! Yves claims that it's a girl beer, but that doesn't bother me- I'm a mädl. ;-)  I've never had a dark beer in the US that I like, they tend to be way too heavy or bitter for my taste.  I tend to drink beers more along the lines of Honey Blonde (from Central Waters), or just the typical Pils and Lager sorts.  I have to say that Austrian beer isn't anything to brag about (although it's better than your average American beer), but the wine here is rather good.

 Yves and I sitting down to a loaded breakfast table Saturday morning.

Yves and Marie in one of the pretty, old squares in Erlangen 

On Saturday after a large and lengthy breakfast we went out to see Erlangen.  It has a pretty nice old city center and a large pedestrian shopping area.  If I have time tomorrow I'll post my pictures from the weekend so you can see for yourselves.  We checked out some of the shops in town, stopped for a really great frozen yogurt (I had mine with raspberry and rhubarb sauce), and did a lot of people watching.  The Bergkirchweih (a festival held in Erlangen) was going on, so there were a lot of people to watch!  We saw a huge variety of Trachten from rather skimpy mini-Dirndl to men and women's Lederhosen.  That night we went to the Berg to see what it was all about, and we wore our Dirndls of course (Yves did not wear Lederhosen, or a Dirndl, which would've been funnier).  The Berg was PACKED! I don't know if I've ever experienced a crowd like that...  It took us quite awhile to get up to a beer tent to get our 1 liter mugs of beer, and then we were lucky enough to find somewhere to sit too.  Surprisingly I've never had the stereotypical German (Bavarian really) liter of beer from a ceramic mug before, but I got that in a few times over the weekend.  I took the Bier Krug (known as a Beer Stein in the US, apparently not in Germany) with me on Saturday night, but when we stopped at another place on the way back to Marie's I set it down and forgot it there.

Wearing Dirndls drinking from Krüge (those things are heavy when they're full!) at the Bergkirchweih.

Sunday Brunch

Our breakfast on Sunday was also quite big, and it was more like lunch-time when we ate... so it was really more of a brunch.  I never took a picture of the dinners we made, just the breakfast tables because it was an impressive spread!  We went to Bamberg that afternoon to check out the old city, which was quite pretty, and go to a typical Bayrisches Biergarten.  The town is known for having Rauchbier (smoked beer), I don't really know how it works, but the beer does have a smokey flavor to it.  I had a Radler (1/2 beer 1/2 lemonade), which is good, otherwise I don't think I could have drunk a whole Krug of the Rauchbier.  I also had some Bratwürste, which made me think of a song from Waldsee- Wenn Bayrish Bier regnet und Bratwürstl schneit (When bavarian beer rains and bratwurst snows).  After going to a Cafe to get some sugar and caffine to keep us going we went back to Erlangen to grill out and Skype with my parents.

Marie and I admiring the part of Bamberg called 'Little Venice'

The view of Bamberg from the Biergarten.

After another typical German breakfast on Monday Yves had to catch a train back to Leipzig.  I didn't have to leave until nearly 2pm, so Marie and I went back to the Bergkirchweih to get another Krug.  After checking some shops in Bamberg, where the mugs were rather kitschy, empty and 15-20 Euro, I was quite happy to get an authentic Krug from one of the biggest/most popular beer houses at the Berg.  It was 12 Euro, and filled with a Radler!  Afterwards we went back down to the train station and I came back home to Baden.  It was a great way to end my year here, and I'm looking forward to meeting up with Marie and Yves again next year (maybe in Austria)!

Yesterday was my last day at Bad Vöslau-Gainfarn, as well as my birthday. Two classes sang 'Happy Birthday' (aka Birsday) to me, which was quite sweet.  One was a 2nd form, so they're about 11, the other was my 7th form Wahlpflichtfach (so they're 17).  It was sad to say goodbye to my colleagues there, but I'll be in the area next year, so I'll stop by to visit & check out the construction and the expanded block of containers outside.

In return for my help with the Matura and for my birthday two of my teachers from Berndorf took me to dinner and an opera in Vienna last night.  We had dinner at a place in the Naschmarkt (where I go for falafel and scarf shopping), we went to one of the nicer places and had middle eastern food.  My meal consisted of lamb meatballs with Pita bread, lots of veggies on a bed of delicious hummus.  We went to Theater an der Wien to see La Traviata (there wasn't a show at the city opera house), and it was a good show.  The music was really well done, the singers were amazing, and I understood/had time to read most of the German subtitles.

Today is my last day at Berndorf for the school year, I'll be back here next year though, so it's not too sad.  I wore my Dirndl to school, and it's attracted quite a bit of attention, the students find it quite funny, and one teacher said I was the only Austrian in the teachers room.

Tomorrow and Saturday will be full of packing and cleaning... fun stuff I know!  I have no idea how I'm going to get all the wine, chocolate and scarves that I have back to the US.  I'd also like to say that I've already accomplished one of the things I want to do next year- I bought a bike from my friend Kittel on Tuesday!  It's rather pink... but it's a pretty good bike (it has gears, no brake built in to the pedals, a decent seat and it's not too heavy).  I fly home on Sunday, it's going to be a really damn long day of travel- I have to be at the Westbahnhof to catch the airport bus at 5am, I have a 6 hour layover in Copenhagen, I arrive in Chicago at about 6pm and then there's the 5ish hour drive home from there... Can't I just skip the next 3 days and go straight to Monday?!?