"Uomo di mare" = "Man overboard"

Oh my goodness, talk about a whirlwind month! As slow as the trip began, it has ended as quickly. While I am incredibly excited to tour Europe with Andy, I am definitely not excited for exams. Thank goodness for Pass-Fail!!

Venezia was awesome and just as expensive as ever. I love Italy and I was sorry to leave. I didn't do as much of the touristy thing as I have with the other cities. For Budapest, Prague, Vienna, and definitely Salzburg, I ran around trying to take pictures of everything and hit the major cites. But either because I am losing steam after travelling every couple of days, or because of the general laid back attitude in Italy, I certainly took my time. I spent most of the weekend not on main island itself, but on the islands surrounding Venice. On Saturday it was Torcello, Burano, and Murano, and on Sunday I laid out on the beach on Lido where I promptly burnt myself--I hadn't exposed my skin to natural light for the past nine months (and the light coming into the study rooms through windows in the library doesn't count). Despite the exorbitant prices, the anti-Bush rally in Rome, and the unique canal-aroma, I had a good time. Just what I needed to rally myself for 5 days of cramming.

Anyway, I am going to upload pictures to my computer and post them, so if you are so inclined I wholeheartedly encourage you to check it out.

Ciao bellas!
Jess

More Pictures!!

Okay, I only have four minutes left to use the computer but I wanted to let people know that I have posted more pictures. It is the same website as the Budapest photos, but they are in different albums--Linz, Salzburg, Czech Republic, and Mauthausen. Anyway, only a couple of the albums have been sorted and captioned, but that will be happening sporadically over the next few days, so you can always check back.

~Jess

Budapest Photos

http://picasaweb.google.com/Rosenberg.Jessica/Budapest

Okay, so this is going to be short because the bus leaves in 5 1/2 hours for Prague and I need to get some sleep. The above is a link to a website where I have posted some pictures. I have indiscriminately posted all of my Budapest photos. I am having technical difficulties with the Linz and Salzburg ones, but I will definitely get those up when I get back from Prague, at which time I'll edit the Budapest photos and add captions so that viewers have some context for the photos.

Enjoy!

~Jess

Sauerbraten Night, Or How I Gained the Linz 11

Grutten Gott!

Okay, so in the last post I mentioned a couple receptions that we went to, and then last night we all trucked over to a local restaurant called Johann's. I love this place! I had already been there once and I actually went there for dinner tonight, but last night it was ridiculous. Sauerbraten, I believe, refers to the pork and the cabbages. The pork was fried and had a delicious crust and was served with cabbage, potatoes, dumplings and gravy. The food tasted great, but it was so dense and heavy. I don't know how much more I can take; however, it's free, so I should stop complaining.

Anyway, tomorrow we leave for Budapest and I am looking for to it, except for leaving at 6am for a 6 hour bus ride. However, I know plenty of songs and the entire Sound of Music soundtrack, so I think the time will fly right by.

The weather is still nice and warm, unfortunately I have to keep my window shut because I have been infested with little gnats, or some such insect. They're more annoying than anything else and I just keep a napkin at my desk so I can kill one whenever they come by. The worst is at night when I have my reading lamp on. Oh well, so it goes; it's just too bad that the city isn't familiar with air conditioning.

Other than that things are going well, I'm still getting questioning looks from the locals whenever I try to communicate in German, probably because I want to use a Latin accent whenever I see a word that I'm unfamiliar with, so I might just have it give it up. As long as I can keep asking "Sprechen sie Englisch?" I think I'll be okay.

Hope everyone is doing well, auf wiedersehen!

My first post.

So, welcome to my blog.

This is the first post and I feel all this pressure to write something profound, but I can't think of anything; probably because I haven't been getting much sleep since at night I've started sewing my drapes into clothing for 7 local children while singing "My Favorite Things."

I don't really know what to say, I have spent a lot of time getting settled and purchasing all the items that I forgot to take with me (and I was so cocky about my "great" packing job, too). Fortunately, Linz has a population of about 189,000 and plenty of shops, so it hasn't been too difficult, just expensive.

Yesterday the hotel we're staying at hosted a reception for us, it was up on the roof and had chicken, carrots, chips and drinks, so that was fun. It was a beautiful afternoon and the entire city is surrounded by green hills, so we had a great view. Then today we went to a reception hosted for us by the Johannes Kepler University (the host University for this trip) and we had some great sausage, pretzels, and other items followed by more beer, cider, and wine. The best part was that on campus there was a student who was attempting to get in the Guiness Book of World Records for singing karaoke. He is going to try to sing for 30 hours straight, pausing only 5 minutes every hour. So far, I've heard him sing a couple of German songs and "Sweet Home Alabama." I tried requesting Ina Goda Davida, the long version, but I don't think it translated well.

Well, I think that's enough for now. The classes are going fine, they're done with early enough in the morning so I have the afternoon available to do anything but the required reading.

Auf Wiedersehen!