Advertisement
Published: October 2nd 2009
Edit Blog Post
Opera
My view from the cheap seats at the Vienna Opera House (3 euro, and there was no seat...standing room only). However, Madame Butterfly was fantastic. Venice, Italy
Friday, October 2, 2009
I'm alive, readers. Yes, there has been quite a pause in updates, but with good reason. The main reason is a lack of internet access. But another reason that is almost as important is the fact that I have been city-hopping like a grasshopper on steroids. I have finally gotten a taste for what the usual backpacker does, and while it can be fun I think I really enjoy having a base to work from for a week or more. Since last updating, I've visited Vienna, Salzburg, Munich and Venice. I've stayed in two hostels, two hotels and a B&B. And today I'm off for a 2-day stay in Florence, which should be fun if short. I will probably return to Florence later in the month, but there are other things to be taken care of starting Monday which require my presence elsewhere in Italy (more on that later).
So, there are highlights and lowlights of all those cities I've visited, and I'm sure at some point I'll mention them, but let's get on to something I think is a bit more important: recycling. After a fair amount of time in Germany, I've
Palace
The Habsburg Palace in Vienna come to appreciate their recycling efforts. Not only do they try to minimize restmull (what you and I would think of as garbage), but they make it easy and worthwhile to do so. First of all, everyone has at least two garbage cans: restmull and packaging. Restmull costs money to get rid of, while the packaging is free to give to the trash man. All the food containers are made of recyclable material, so they get to go in the packaging compartment. There is also a municiple dump for each area that accepts aluminimum and glass, so you can easily get rid of those things for free. And then there is the biggest, most impressive part (in my opinion): bottle returns. Yes, every drink container has a pfand associated with it, usually around 20 cents. It's paid up-front, but is easily redeemable at just about any grocery store via a machine that calculates refunds and spits out a receipt for you to use in cash or trade. And if you're too lazy to collect the pfand, then there are people who roam train stations and streets looking for bottles in trash cans. They're more than happy to collect on your
Mozart
The Master at Work money, and it has created quite the underground economy. Talking with a fellow from England who has been living in Germany for 2 years, every summer the streets are flooded with beer cans/bottles that people do not have an interest in returning them. It gives the homeless an incentive to actually clean up the mess. Pretty good.
So, I have not found a farm to work at in Italy, and so I have decided to conclude my trip with something I have always wanted to do. I'll be spending two weeks, starting Monday, in Sorrento attending Italian cooking lessons at a combination cooking school/B&B. The cooking lessons will cover Neapolitan cuisine as well as some of the classics of Italian cuisine. We should learn things from the proper ratios in a caprese salad to how to make a proper pizza. I am really excited and looking forward to it. After that, I have another couple of weeks until my sister arrives (if the class goes well, I might spend one of those weeks taking a pizza-only class), then I have a plane ride back to Austin already booked. We'll see how this all plays out in the end. But
Von Trapp Rear
The rear garden and lake view of this house were used in The Sound of Music for now, I look forward to the next couple of weeks.
Lessons Learned:
Sweet Home Alabama is a classic German song. At least, they were playing it in the Oktoberfest tents, so it must be.
When traveling, you really do need two sets of footwear. I have opted for the shoe & sandal combination, and finally replaced my sandals that were left behind on the last farm (there was an incident involving manure water that made them unbearable). I managed to replace them with a cheapo pair in Salzburg that have done well. A new pair of SuperFeet have been added to my shoes to replace the pair that got a bit moldy (thanks Sara!), so those are back up to snuff as well.
Sometimes you really have to accept the fact that you will be a tourist on this trip, even if only for part of it. I really enjoyed going on the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, which takes you to various locations used in the film. It was 100% corny, but very fun given my dad's obsession with this movie and the number of times I've seen it over the years. So sometimes
Gazebo
This gazebo was built especially for the Sound of Music, and has been moved twice since the end of filming. you really have to let your hair down, stop trying to 'fit in' all the time and just do what you think you will enjoy.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.105s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0405s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Brock Sampson
non-member comment
Your opera experience
Did you get a chance to attend a true Italian opera? That's an experience I don't think I'd beable to handle. Please give all the details when you're back "home"