The Snow's Comin' Down...

It's snowing. It's been snowing off and on for most of this week. Now, this alone isn't much of a problem. I can handle a little snow; it means I go to Aupark to do my wandering instead of Stary Mesto (and let me tell you, Aupark isn't nearly as interesting)and that's about it. However, it's also cold. Cold as in, 19 degrees Fahrenheit at one in the afternoon. Thus, any plans I had of wandering around town this afternoon have been dashed; I have no intention of venturing outside in hostile weather. As such, you get to hear about my lovely Rotary Weekend!

Well, the weekend started off about a week earlier, with a panic attack at the discovery that Stuškova was the same weekend as the Rotary weekend. After a frantic email to Ivan Lamoš and Juraj Sabaka (the inbound coordinators for Slovakia) asking if there was any possible way that I could be permitted to go to my Stuškova, especially since I live in Bratislava, and this was the Bratislava Rotary Weekend, I received permission, and a special itinerary. I would show up on Thursday for the weekend like everyone else, spend Friday in Bratislava, spend most of Saturday in Vienna (like everyone else), and then get off in the bus taking us to Senec (I'll explain later) with some of the Rotarians in Bratislava. From there, I would make my way home. They assured me that we'd be back in Bratislava by five. This left me about an hour to get to Stuškova, which was pushing it, but doable.

So, I went to Senec (that's a suburb of Bratislava, which was where our hotel was located) on Thursday afternoon, and met up with everyone. It was great! It was so much fun to see everyone, and be able to compare notes, so to speak. Also fun was the book swap a couple of us organized. We all (well, all of us who remembered/knew to do so) brought some of our English books, and passed them around. I wound up with a copy of Reading Lolita in Tehran and the new Dan Brown book, The Lost Symbol. Here's a picture of the horde:

Granted, this is minus a few books, but this is the vast majority. Next meeting, in Košice in January, we should hopefully have more! I look forward to it.

Anyway, we spent Friday in Bratislava. It was all very dull for me. I mean, I live in Bratislava. A guided tour of Starý Mesto, where I go for a walk at least four times a week isn't exactly fascinating. Shopping was also something of a drag. Koi, Alannah, and Misae didn't want to take the trek to Aupark (I wasn't too fond of the idea either, as we were forbidden to take the much faster bus route), so we wound up staying in Starý Mesto. In other words, quite dull for me.
That evening was quite fun; I got to hang out with everyone, which was great, and even better, I actually liked my roommates this time around. (The first weekend, my roommates were fond of pouring over Vogue, and complaining about the lack of Czech/Slovak fashion sense, the second time around, while my roommate was nice enough, I suppose, she was Mexican, which means that she was, errm, very.... energetic. And fond of partying(best description I can provide, which isn't very exact)with her fellow Mexicans. Let me tell you, it's very awkward to want to go into your room to get your clothes to take a shower, and turn in for the night, because you're dead tired, when there's a group of four or five people in your room.) so we spent a lot of time talking amongst the three of us. Carolina, my Brazilian roomie was really sweet, and lives in Košice with a Hungarian family. Angela, the other American in my room, is in... ok. Let's see if I can get this right, Spiška Nováves. Or, something like that. It's a small town, in the Košice area, I believe. Not the point. At any rate, we wound up staying up past midnight, happily chattering away about anything and everything from the Hungarian family Carolina is staying with to the fact that America really having Puritanical values, to our favorites in Česko Slovenská Superstar (Miro Šmajda, hands down). Unfortunately, our wake up call came entirely too early. I paid for that the following morning.

We were awoken at 6:30 am by one of the Rotex. Joy. Before another two hours or so had past, we were on a bus headed for Vienna, Austria. The bus ride itself was pretty uneventful. It was a two hour trip, which was about as much fun as a two hour bus ride can be. Paige, one of the Canadian exchange students, and I exchanged high school stories for most of the trip. Once we got to Vienna, we headed to the Hapsburg Palace. It's a rather impressive shade of yellow, as can be seen below:

Let's see... from left to right in this photo
Back row: Maggie, Paul, Kellie, Angela, Elisa, and Carolina
Second row: Alannah, Hope, Alex, Bruna, and Me
Front row: Kati

So, at any rate, we went to the Hapsburg Palace. Paul and I spent a good bit of time wandering about the Christmas Market (I forget how to say it in German), where we conspired to get hot chocolate. It was very good hot chocolate too, I might add. Not the weird melted chocolate stuff you get in Slovakia if you foolishly order horucá čokolada (lit. hot chocolate in Slovak) instead of kakao. And they served it in nifty mugs that you got to keep, if you paid five euro instead of just three!

Paul and me. With mugs!

Thus, after we were done at the Hapsburg Palace, we headed downtown. We saw the Stependome, St. Stephen's Cathedral, which is the most famous church in Vienna, and a few other sights on a tour, and then were turned loose to wreak havoc (err, well, actually, to go shopping...) in various downtown stores, and the larger Christmas Market. I had so much fun! Paul, Misae, Koi, Beth, Paige, Angela, Jenn, and I wandered about en masse. It was great! The larger Christmas Market was especially beautiful, as were the Christmas lights they had up downtown. If you have me on facebook, I have more pictures up of this.

Eventually, we headed back to the bus, and went back to Senec, with a stop en route at Aupark for two Rotarians, one of the Rotex, and me to get off and head into town. It was... about 20:30 when I got back to my house. Fortunately, I had conned Hope into doing something with my hair on the bus, because I knew that there was no way on Earth that I would be able to come up with something presentable, or I would have been toast. I got into my house, said "Ahoj!" to Miša and Laco, then ran upstairs, and did some seriously fast changing into my formal dress, and moved as swiftly as I possibly could in spiked heels to the car, and Laco drove me to Stuškova. I was nearly three and a half hours late. I was most unhappy. Oh well. It all worked out, and life goes on.


I started this blog much earlier today, and was interrupted for... various reasons. At any rate, I got to go to a family Christmas gathering. For the record: I have discovered that taking an exchange student to a large family gathering can be considered a form of cruel and unusual punishment if the student does not speak the language. According to Petra, even if the student does speak the language, it can still be so considered. I socialized for a little bit, was studiously ignored by the three other teenagers present (I think they went off to another portion of the house), was overlooked by the adults, tried a variety of cabbage soup that is a traditional Christmas dish, and wound up spending most of the evening sitting in a chair in a corner with a book that I was fortunate enough to have had stashed in my purse. Yes, I know you shouldn't read at social gatherings. Yes, I know it's somewhat rude. However, they didn't care, and Petra informed me that this was completely acceptable in the mind of everyone present. So. I spent the evening with a copy of Sepulchre by Kate Mosse, which is, for the record, a very good book, especially if you happen to be a French addict, like myself.

The snow is still coming down, if you're interested.

And that's all there is. There isn't any more.