The Events of Friday, July 1, 2011

                I climbed out of bed and made my way, ever so quietly, to the doors and down the stairs. Caitlin opened one eye as I went out, gave an exasperated sigh, and then rolled over. I tip-toed down the stairs, sat down on the couch and opened the book I had started yesterday. I had found a book I had never read before (a rather rare thing) and wanted to finish it before we had to leave. Once I had finished the book I climbed in the shower and officially “started” my day.

                Since we were having problems with the hot water for Mom’s shower, we decided to have breakfast first. Mom, freezing cold from her aborted chilly shower, requested a cup of tea to warm her up, so four of us ended up with tea. Dad cut up some pineapple, and we ended up with a delicious breakfast. After breakfast, the water was hot. Now able to finish getting ready, we were soon on our way to Austria.

                In the Czech Republic, you must have a sticker to go on the freeway. Not quite knowing how to do this, we decided to stay legal and stick to the back-roads. This decision allowed us to see a lot of the Czech countryside that most other tourists don’t see. Mixed among the rolling hills were dense fir forests, curvy mountain roads, and long fields of waving white flowers stretching as far as the eye could see. The latter was my favorite. It all looked so peaceful and pure. We stopped in Černovice, a quaint town and sat on some ancient, run-down benches, eating a yummy lunch. Our next destination was the town of Telč.

                Our guidebook said that 90% of visitors to the Czech Republic only go to Prague, so to go out of the norm, we visited this historic town. We parked and walked to the historic main square. This square, unlike most of the ones we’ve seen, was very large and displayed a variety of pastel-colored houses. Historic European house gables usually fall under the following four categories – neck, bell, step, and hip. The neck design rises up from sloping “shoulders”. The bell is shaped like a bell, and the step gable has steps going up on either side of the roof. The hip design consists of a very steep roof. These houses with different facades lined the squares, and all of them were a different color, mostly pastel. Another point of interest in the square was the plague memorial. The bubonic plague, also known as the black plague, skipped over this town, so the locals built this monument to thank God for sparing the town.

                Soon we would be leaving the Czech Republic and Dad had some extra Czech coins and wanted to get rid of them. He found a great deal for ice cream – a double scoop for only 16 Czech crowns (a bit less than a dollar). Six of these cones took up all his change, plus an extra tip, and so we all licked happily away at our ice cream cones. Heading back, we wandered down a back street to a beautiful bridge over a still lake with weeping willows reflecting on the water. I dubbed it Willow Bridge and then we headed back to the car and drove on to Austria.

                Once we entered Austria, we started to notice a change of scenery. Instead of fields of white flowers, there were fields of bright yellow sunflowers. As we passed these fields of flowers, we listened to a podcast about Viennese culture. Unfortunately, the fields of flowers soon disappeared and we entered the suburbs, and then the city, of Vienna, Austria. Before long, we were in the heart of the city, finding our apartment at an extremely convenient location for sightseeing. Soon we were filing into the elevator and moving into our apartment.

                As soon as we were moved in, we started a load of laundry. Dad and Lindsey headed down to the grocery store that we live near, a trip which turned out to be very interesting. The store was actually very tiny, with tiny carts and tiny aisles. They eventually came back with everything we needed and Mom started to cook breakfast. At first I was very confused – why are we having breakfast for dinner? It turned out that we needed to get rid of some grated cheese we had bought back in England. So we all settled down to a dinner of scrambled eggs with cheese and left-over horseradish filled ham (from our Czech dinner), Black Forest ham cooked like bacon, toast, and oranges, finishing off with a delicious ice cream cake. After dinner some of us chilled and watched the Women’s World Cup on TV while Lindsey and Daddy researched Vienna. At first the channel we found was only in German, but luckily we stumbled upon another channel in English, so we listened happily to English commentary on the game and its players. After England beat New Zealand, 2-1, we headed to bed.