Around the world in Eight days...

I know it's been ages since I blogged but the absence is not because of not being up to it... it was just that we were away... far far away...for too long.   and yes, blogger.com was filtered in the place where we spent  majority of our time. 
But my main purpose of recording this special journey was for you Arah to look back some day and see to which places your parents 'dared' to take you  as a toddler as it seemed  you were asleep for most parts of it and will probably not remember any of the rest by the virtue of your age!  I would probably say that we were ambitious,  courageous, and adventurous or as  others may put it  'crazy' to make this  excursion happen but I must confess that you were nothing short of thrilled, content and even  curious just like the rest of us to just spend some exclusive, continuous time with both mom and dad, meet the paternal side of your family and explore and meet all the new places and new people we visited even in the most difficult parts at times.    
It seems to me that you're a ambitious voyager somewhat like the rest of us! 

Part I: Austria

at Schweizerhaus a Viennese restaurant, rich in tradition, that is inseparably linked with the 'Prater', a large public area and amusement park in Vienna. The food, was  beyond tasty as I had a spinach dumpling along with an assortment of Austrian bread.  The restaurant garden filled with pink and red roses and classic lantern style lighting gave it an inviting and charming atmosphere. With that being said, along with the culinary perfections of Austrian cuisine(somewhat to my surprise) we also tasted another side of Viennese culture here!!

The 'special' menu for non-German speakers is multi-lingual with  prices indicated in French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch,... except in English. When asked why English is not-priced they exclaimed we could look at the line where our choice is located in English version and compare it with a similar line in a page in another language to find the pertinent price!! the interesting part was that not all the food titles had the same length or line order in the different versions! [The reason, simple.  if you haven't guessed it already. Most original Europeans already know another European language beside English so they don't need to see the translation page but those who don't, supposedly the oblivious tourists, alas, like we,  would simply have to pay the price and face a big rip off, surprise  check at the end required to be paid with cash of course!] I guess it  pays off to know more than one language after all (smile)  Think I read somewhere that some Europeans view American's as rich, proud and naïve .  This could  perhaps be a testament to that cold, xenophobia like demeanor we noticed later on among some Austrian.  Well, as it turned out we decided to swallow the bullet, and stick with priceless menu plan. We even didn't give up there and asked the head waiter to disclose the price for a few items we thought we liked.  But the real predicament didn't end there... when later on we found that despite switching the order of sparkling for natural bottled water and convincing the head waiter that we should not pay for the wrong ones [which  the waiter had brought presuming we ordered sparkling; Note to self:  when asking for bottled drinking water, make sure to differentiate between 'sparkling' and 'Natural'.  a lot of Europeans drink plain sparkling water with their meals ] we ended up being charged an extra 10 euros for a order of side bread, though neither mentioned  as an item in the menu nor did we ask for it,  and even  got blamed for not speaking German to make the order clear for him in the first place.  We though it was quite out of ordinary and discourteous. Something that you don't face everyday in the American restaurants.  We decided to move on as we found no point in staying to argue with such absurd, wicked people.  

Perhaps this could be a testament to the famous tumultuous German  dogmatism after all.  

Whatever...At least the food was healthy and delicious so we'll forgive but I guess not forget about them...(smile)

Arah at a man-made lake in front of our Hotel.  Notice the submerged trees in the water!

                      

The future EAGE conference participant...  Too bad they didn't invite her to the exhibitions o_o

strolling around the town and smiling for mommy while daddy spends some time in the conference

waiting for daddy outside in Messe Wien

and during our stroll we found a great English speaking side street sales group in the medieval attire for Mozart Orchestra Symphonic concert.  After all, Austria is the Musical capital of Europe... Well, you'll find out about the result of this adventure later!