"Castle" in the Clouds

Today was a glorious day!  The sun was out for the first time since I've returned, the temperature was in the 40s, the sky was brilliantly blue, and I breathed a sigh of relief after finishing most of my responsibilities for the week.  After teaching three lessons this morning, I met a few friends in a new café which occupies the first level of the Mozart family's second home in the city.  I ordered a coffee with steamed milk, a dollop of fresh whipped cream, and a dusting of pistachio, and also a cake with pistachio, vanilla, and chocolate layers, based with raspberry jam and topped with a dark chocolate fondant.  It was deliciously decadent, and surprisingly inexpensive compared with other cafés here in town.  

This past weekend, I traveled to Graz, a city in southeastern Austria, with three friends.  We arrived midday Saturday and explored the Altstadt.  A city lying on the cultural bridge between Austrian and Slovenian culture, Graz has a rich, mixed history and sense of tradition, and international legacy that continues to the present day with its large multi-national university student and ex-pat communities.  A quick walk from the train station lead us to the main square.  Just beyond, we started ascending the Schloßberg on which once stood a supposedly mighty fortress. Midway we stopped for lunch in a quaint, local restaurant, and then completed our rise up the mountain.  The summit offered wonderful panoramic views of the city skyline, though the castle of the "castle mountain" seemed mysteriously absent.  Graz's iconic structure is a 16th Century clock tower, which was one of the very few buildings at the top.  Aside from the brick façade of a mountain home, a Baroque-era belfry, and a few red brick walls, there was little to impress.  According to the historical markers, the fortress was once besieged by French armies during Napoleon's quest of domination in this corner of Europe.  After months of unsuccessful attempts to capture the mountain redoubt, Napoleon abandoned efforts and proceeded to Vienna, where he found his victory.  After defeating the imperial forces, one of Napoleon's first orders was to tear down, brick by brick, the fortress which defied him, leaving what little remains today as markers of the once-powerful installation.  It had continually snowed for a week, and it was still quite cold out, so after our descent, we sought shelter in a warm café along the river.  Braving the cold again, we explored the riverbank and a shopping mall before heading to dinner in a traditional restaurant, where we met a colleague of mine for a nice meal.  After dinner, we visited an English bar for a short while before calling it a night.  After a sleepy start the next morning, we bid farewell to Graz and boarded the train to Salzburg, looking out the window in sheer awe at the magnificently tall mountains on our winding path through the Alps.  The city had a very different feeling from Salzburg.  Fewer tourists, arguably less charm, but also a very "real" atmosphere.  Sometimes one can get swept away by Salzburg's beauty and fairy tale-ness, but Graz is a large, livable, working city.  Different, but a nice place to spend a short weekend, and I'm very glad to have visited.

One of the few remaining castle structures, this snow-covered belfry stands tall above the old city sprawled below.

While in my office at school this week, there was a knock at the door, and I was surprised to hear the voice of a fellow American.  She was sent by the board of education to speak with the English teachers at my school, and several others I hear, with the proposition of offering what she called "community service teaching."  She runs an exchange program here in Salzburg for an American university I've never heard of (I almost presume it's one of those fake online schools, or a foreign country-based "college"), and would like her participants, who do not speak German and are not trained in interacting with students, to teach cultural lessons for 20 hours over the upcoming term.  My supervising teacher, who was sitting across from me, would hear none of it.  He rather enthusiastically defended me and my position, as the sole native speaker and cultural ambassador to his school, which I didn't expect, but totally appreciated.  The idea did sort of seem like competition, and it came so out of the blue, that neither of us knew what really to make of it.  Other than that bit of excitement, the week's been mellow, and there's a general listlessness amongst both students and faculty as the semester slowly nears its end in two weeks' time.  

There is usually a week break in between terms (for which my supervising teacher has graciously given me an additional week), and up until last week, my little brother was planning on visiting for his short leave of service in Afghanistan.  I was hoping to show him around Salzburg, Bavaria, and even a surprise visit down south, with beer gardens and cafés thrown in between, but, in typical military fashion, they cancelled his leave just last week, to my great dismay.  Hopefully it'll just be postponed a month, but as it is the U.S. government, I'm not holding my breath.

Tomorrow I have the day off from work, and no university seminar, so I'll be taking an early afternoon train three hours east to Vienna to attend waltzing lessons organized by Fulbright.  Next week the 16 researchers here in Austria were invited to one of the most famous balls in Vienna at the Hofburg, the imperial palace in the city center.  Also, a friend here in Salzburg invited me and two other friends to a ball nearly across the street from where I live in the provincial congress house.  Typical for Salzburg, dress is Trachten, the traditional mountain clothes of this region, and it looks like so much fun - I'm really looking forward to going with them and enjoying the night together.  If I'm reading the website correctly, the ball is for an Alpine club, so I'm sure they'll have there own incredible customs, dances, and songs - should be a blast!