February 27, 2012

• Our First Day

  I don’t know that I’ll be so prolific in posting later on, but for now, I have the time.  After breakfast, we discovered that the kids were lying around online and watching Sponge Bob in German, so we decided to do something in the city.

  ohhhh…..wer wohnt inner ananas ganz tief im meer?
  spongebob schwammkopf!
  ist saugstark und gelb und porös und zwar sehr?
  spongebob schwammkopf!

  

   

  We are staying on Lange Strasse.  Today, I found out that that funky “B” like letter (ß) is also just two letter “s.”  So, it could be Lange Straße.  Anyhow, we headed down the street.

  

  And walked with James to his meetings.

  

   

  The reason we are in Austria is that James got a Fullbright scholarship to teach math at Johannes Kepler University in Linz. Monday and Tuesday, however, he has orientation in Vienna.  The headquarters were only about a 15 minute walk, so we walked.  It was a beautiful day, and there were beautiful things to see.

      

   

  We walked through the Museum Quarter. Handily, there are about seven or eight museums in this location as well as the Fullbright offices. There were several cool archways, and this one had some sort of piano music playing. The photos along the sides showed a man with a sardine can, so you can imagine the type of piano music I mean.

   

  

   

  We got to the right place and dropped James at the door.

    

   

  And then we headed out to tour a museum. We were going to go to The Kunsthistoriches Museum,

   

  

  but it was closed on Mondays.  So, poor us. We had to go here instead.

  

   

  This is the Natural History Museum, and it was an average natural history museum. We started out with looking at rocks.

           

   

  And some rocks looked back at us!

  

   

  Michael took the rocks for granite.

  

   

  We enjoyed looking at all the animals. Is this a saber tooth tiger?

  

  Nope, Chuck Testa.

  There were a lot of people who did not speak German at the museum, so I did not feel so much like a conspicuous American. Some of us were amused by a mother who just posed her two somber pre-schoolers in front of displays and snapped pictures. We felt the need to recreate the shot.

  

   

  And we decided to take a few shots of our own design.

       

   

  I failed to mention that the entry way of the museum was just gorgeous! But you can decide for yourselves. 

        

   

   

  There was a life-sized mechanical dinosaur that moved and blinked and roared. It is thing that will come back to haunt you in a dream later when you’ve eaten too much sauerkraut. But watching it do its thing was neat.

  

   

  After our touring was done, we decided to stop at a grocery store for an afternoon snack. Libby passed on the “fish in a jar.”  Rachel got Pringles. They also had Barilla pasta, and the grocery store and all during breakfast at the hotel, they played American pop music with the real, English lyrics.

    

   

        

  • 2:52 pm
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