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Published: January 1st 2007
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New Years Eve and New Years Day
We roused our lazy behinds from the room at about 7pm to go get some dinner. Figuring that most restaurants would be packed for New Years festivities we decided to get our festival dinner at the Chinese restaurant around the corner. Thankfully we were able to get a table with no problems and enjoyed our smorgasbord of food.
We finished dinner surprisingly fast and were back out on the streets by 8:15 and therefore had a ton of time to kill. We were a little concerned that we wouldn’t make it to New Years because we might get tired of just standing around waiting.
From the restaurant we set out on the mile or so walk into the heart of Salzburg old town where everyone brings in the New Year. At this point there weren’t many people in the streets which made walking a little easier but we noticed right away a huge difference between New Years in the States and New Years in Austria. It seems that fireworks are legal in Austria, or at least they are during New Years. As we approached old town we noticed that
Mike and Kel Ice Skating
That's Damien Cohen in the background trying to help Kel skate. at least one in four people (including tons of kids) were carrying huge bundles of fireworks.
As we approached the center of old town, people were setting these fireworks off all over the place. With no regard for safety people were throwing these things in the streets, lighting them off tables, even holding them in their hands while shooting them off. We watched one guy later in the evening light a bottle rocket with the lit cigarette in his mouth and then hold it above his head. Crazy!!
After walking for a while we headed over to the ice skating ring to watch people skating. While we were standing there Courtney Cohen (the youngest Cohen daughter, 15, of the family we met on the bus earlier in the day) skated over to us followed by her younger brother Damien (10-12 years old, we think?). They pointed out where their parents were and invited us to come out skating with them.
I had been skeptical of skating while we had traveled because I could easily see one of falling and breaking something and having to end the trip early. Kevin Cohen came over to us (Kevin is Dad)
and cajoled us into skating and at this point I felt my resolve softening.
We left Kel’s bag with Kevin and Joan (Mom) and set off to get some skates. 15 minutes later we were on the ice. I took some skating lessons in college (I had a girlfriend - Hi Emory if you’re reading this - who wanted to take figure skating lessons so I said sure and joined her) but it had been at least a few years since I had skated at all. I was certainly not the worst person on the ice but far from the best either. Kel on the other hand was a bit like a horse colt who has never stood up before (even though she has skated many times as a kid . . . just always looks like that colt). Damien went and grabbed her a penguin which they use for people who are just learning to skate. These things are basically sliding objects, about 3 feet tall with handles that help people who aren’t feeling sure of their balance yet - sort of training wheels on ice. Kel slowly moved around the ice while I tried to stop with
her every once in a while. (Kel - even though I was slow, I had a great time. Ice skating in the middle of an old city in Austria on New Years, how cool!)
We stopped for a while and talked with the Cohen kids. Kel talking to Courtney and I talking with Damien. Damien and I taught each other about Cricket and Baseball. He picked up baseball pretty easily, I’m not sure if I get Cricket but I’m a lot closer to understanding. Kel and Courtney talked about Courtney’s dancing and school studies.
With an hour of skating under our belts we decided to call it quits after one more circle of the ice. I skated slowly next to Kel while she held on for dear life to the penguin. As w were skating this one kid, he was maybe 5, saw us skating around and stopped and stared at us for a minute and then set off again. We didn’t think much of it until he showed up again 2 minutes later with another penguin which he gave to me and then set off again. We both got a good laugh from it and thought that
it was really cute of him to have put 2 and 2 together and figured that if Kel needed a penguin that I needed one too. Funny! I took it as a sure sign that I should get off the ice before someone else assumed I needed serious help.
The Cohen family and Kel and I proceeded to talk for the next 2 hours about all sorts of things. It was really great to have some friends who were nice and fun. Kel and I polished off a small bottle of peppermint schnapps while we talked and waited for the New Year to come.
The Cohens left right before New Years which was kinda sad but they wanted to be sure that they could make it back before the crowd got too crazy. We stuck around for another hour and watched the fire works while standing behind the big statue of Mozart. It seemed fitting to see fire works while standing in Mozart’s shadow. The fireworks were great and very different from fireworks in the US. We usually can pick a direction to look because the fireworks are setup in one place to be set off. Here the
fireworks were coming from everywhere. In any direction you looked there were huge fireworks displays.
After a while we set off for home. We were forced to dodge crazy people and their fireworks, huge crowds of drunken Italians, and finally had to weave our way through a dance party on the riverbank. Neither Kel nor I had been in a big celebration of this sort on New Years and it really was fun. People were just partying everywhere!!
New Years Day and Rain We woke up late today and had to go out to get breakfast because we had missed the hotel’s breakfast. A lot of things are closed here today so we were afraid we might not be able to get any food. Thankfully we found an Italian restaurant that was open and could get lunch.
From lunch we decided to see some of old town in the sunlight since we had only been down there at dark. It wasn’t raining too hard at this point so walking around didn’t seem like to bad an idea. After seeing the cathedral and some of the buildings downtown we decided to head back to the
hotel because the rain seemed to be picking up.
As we passed down a pedestrian street leaving old town we ran into a store that sold handmade decorated egg shells. There were thousands of them in the store and they were all beautiful. All the shells are hand painted by local housewives and students.
Kel fell in love so we bought a few and had them shipped home. We got a few for Christmas and a few for spring/Easter figuring we could get a small tree back home and decorate it for the seasons. They were unfortunately too expensive to buy as many as we wanted. To really decorate a big tree you would have had to buy hundreds of them which would have cost a fortune!
After egg shopping, we finally headed back to the hotel where we are now. Hope everyone had fun last night and that everyone was safe. We miss you all and wish you a great New Year!
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Don and Lindz
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It's not the heat, it's the humility
So, it's raining it's meteorological butt of here in Monde du Riche. Not a pretty start to 2007, but it does give one time to reflect on the myriad of things one will not accomplish in the coming year.