Hiking the Schafberg

Panta, me, Mary, and Claudia on a very unstable plank/bridge at the beginning of our hike

Remember how I said we had forty days of sunshine in the fall?  One of our last truly sunny and warm days, Claudia, Panta, Mary, Bernhard (Claudia's friend), and I hiked the Schafberg.  Normally by November it's cold and snowy enough that there isn't a lot of traffic on the mountain, but we lucked out.

I had made the conscious decision not to go anywhere for fall break this year.  During both my abroad semester and last year I felt like I had to see everything, to go everywhere.  By now I think I've seen many of the places I have always dreamed of - certainly more than I ever expected to see - and decided to explore more of Austria instead.  Naturally, that meant hiking an Alp.

Claudia's friend Bernhard is an experienced hiker who had hiked the Schafberg upwards of 30 times last summer, and we enlisted him to lead us up the mountain.  We got an early (and slightly chilly) start to our hike.  Supposedly it's a six hour hike, but we decided that six hours Austrian hiking time is more like seven American hiking time.  As my former German teacher would say, Austrians "truck" with the ease of mountain goats.  Just ask my dad, who will most likely do an impression of his Austrian fishing guide leaping from rock to rock.  There is certainly a different approach to climbing an Alp that we Americans experienced on this hike.  Hiking a mountain like this can be a spontaneous decision, whereas anywhere I've ever lived I've had to plan well in advance to go on a hike of this magnitude.  And schnapps is involved.

Anyway, Bernhard fearlessly led us up the mountain, over the rivers and through the woods, until we reached the top in the early afternoon.  There we took pictures and ate lunch next to the cross at the summit.  After a little wandering and a lot of gawking at the paraglider launching himself off the mountain, we sped down the mountain to beat the sunset and the cold.  It was definitely a strenuous adventure, but it was one of the most enjoyable things I've done in Austria.  There's nothing like working up a sweat with good company and a great view.

The gang (Bernhard was playing photographer)

Panta and his new best friend

The back of the Schafberg

Gipfelkreuz! The cross at the summit

Bernhard with the mountain sign

We watched this guy launch himself off a mountain

The mountain at the top of the photo directly above the paraglider is the Untersberg, the mountain in whose shadow Salzburg sits.

The whole crew: Mary, Panta, Claudia, me, and Bernhard

The slow descent

Halloween Cookies and Pumpkin Carving

Panta and Nora rolling out the dough

Since caramel apples took so long, we had to put off our pumpkin carving until the following week.  To this event we added cookie baking, mostly because I have a ridiculous amount of Halloween themed cookie cutters, but also because, seriously, who doesn't like cookies? Also, baking is much more fun if you have an industrial-style dishwasher at your disposal (like Nora and Lars do in their castle).  The cookies are the same recipe I always use, the one so lovingly written out by my grandmother on an old, yellowed, flour-covered note card, and copied by my mother onto a slightly less yellow and flower-covered note card.  These cookies are special.  It's just not Halloween without some pumpkin cookies somewhere.  I even made them last year for our Thanksgiving feast.  This year we had slightly less vibrant food coloring, and slightly more warped looking America cookies, but we had fun.  And this time we actually got around to carving the pumpkins.

Here is the tried-and-true sugar cookie recipe, for those who are interested.

Sugar Cookies:
2 3/4 c flour
2 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 c shortening
1 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Cream sugar and shortening.  Add eggs. Add vanilla. Sift and add dry ingredients. Chill 10 minutes. Roll and cut. Bake at 400(F) 10-12 minutes.

Frosting:
2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 c confectioners sugar
Cream above. Add:
2 tbsp milk
1/4 tsp vanilla
Beat until fluffy

Panta, Nora and Lars

Mary and Me

Note the upside down vampire bat

Frankenstein cookies

Cookies that were supposed to be shaped like America, but ended up looking more like fish so we decorated them accordingly

Fish/America cookie

Panta (Kansas) loves Canada

Bat/bowtie

Pumpkins!

Guts

Panta = 5 year old when it comes to pumpkin guts

Nora, taking out some aggression on that pumpkin!

Mary

Finished products

Caramel Apples (x2)

The apples, skewered and ready to go

In October we decided to have an evening of pumpkin carving and caramel apple making.  After all, what is Halloween without jack-o-lanterns and caramel apples?  Nora kindly volunteered her castle on a hill as our home base for this event.  The problem with that?  Getting some fairly large pumpkins up a mountain.  I loaded myself down with two Ikea bags full of pumpkins, apples, and other equipment.  I got some fairly funny looks on my way up, but that's to be expected, and made it up the mountain without any problems.

We did, however, have a few problems with the caramel apples.  Most caramel apple recipes call for corn syrup; corn syrup does not exist in Austria.  Or if it does, I could not find it.  I even tried the English shop, where they sell Betty Crocker cake mixes, but the owner laughed at me and reminded me that it was an English shop and corn syrup is a distinctly American product.  So we worked around it.  After all, caramel apples have certainly existed for longer than corn syrup has, right?

Eventually I found a recipe on www.101cookbooks.com/ that called for a honey-caramel glaze.  The recipe has simple ingredients, all easily located in Salzburg.  Hurrah!

Yet somehow we managed to screw it up.  The honey-caramel would not stay on the apples.  It melted down the sides, slowly, so that we would think for a while that we had succeeded in keeping the caramel on the apple, only to find that it had oozed down and created a puddle of caramel-goo on the tray.

Eventually we were tired and hungry and ate the apples as quickly as possible, in the hopes that we would be faster at eating than the caramel was at dripping off the apples.

In all of the chaos of the apple making, we never actually got around to carving pumpkins.  We scheduled that for a week later.

Panta: caramel apple model.  Note the lame excuse for a caramel glaze on the apple.

Caramel fail

Maybe the nuts will hold the caramel on the apples...? Nope.

Success (for now)

Nora laughing at how hard the apples were to actually eat

Mary

Clean plate club

In the meantime, I tried again.  I was not satisfied by our first experience - I like caramel apples too much to go without them for the entire Halloween season.  Besides, I wanted to prove to myself that I could make caramel apples that were as good as what I buy at home.  So I tried again, this time using a more traditional caramel recipe (the honey-caramel was too sweet for me).  Recipe number two went well, and I ate caramel and caramel apples for a week, which was enough to satisfy both my stubbornness and my craving for the season.

My second attempt

Great success!

On Being A Teacher

I have complained a lot about my job over these past two years.  It's not easy.  We may not work long, grueling hours, we may not have the grading that other teachers have, but this also means we don't establish the connections with students, don't get to gauge their progress, and don't always know when we've made a difference.

Today I learned that a student of mine, with whom I have been working intensively outside of class, went from what is essentially a D- average to getting one of the highest scores in the class on his final exam.

His teacher called me as soon as she had finished grading his exam, and asked me to pass the information along to him.  I melted inside.  This kid has worked so hard to get where he is.  We met for hours to practice speaking; he sent me essays and practice grammar tests that he had done in his spare time.  So when I called him to tell him the news, hearing his grin through the phone was enough. 

But then he sent me a text message half an hour later.  Clearly he was still reeling from the news.  In the message he thanked me, told me that he didn't know what to say, that he was just so happy he could hug me.  And then he thanked me for always believing in him, and that it really meant a lot to him.

I now know why people become teachers.  There is no better feeling than knowing you have made a difference, even a small one, in someone's life.

Fall

Odd little running man on the street by my apartment

Fall in Salzburg was unusually beautiful this year.  We had 40 straight days of sunshine. Forty.  This meant we spent a lot of time outside, simply enjoying the weather.  I went for hikes, sat along the river, and did my lesson planning at as many outdoor cafes as possible.  In October I went to the Oktoberfest in Mondsee (a town near Salzburg) with a teacher friend, Claudia, and Emily.  Claudia wasn't feeling great, so mostly we sat at one of the many long tables and watched the debauchery happen around us.  The next day we saw a little bit of Mondsee and admired the view of the Schafberg, the mountain that we would hike later in the fall. 

Later, at the end of our stretch of beautiful weather, the Fulbright program organized a trip to the government buildings here in Salzburg, where we met the Landeshauptfrau (essentially the Governer) Gabi Burgstaller and another member of the government whose name I cannot remember for the life of me.  It's interesting that Salzburg, one of the more conservative parts of a conservative Catholic country, has multiple prominent female members of government.  They talked mostly about how good it was that we were doing this program, and shared a few tidbits about the Salzburg government such as the fact that there is a flag on the castle that is raised when Gabi is in town, and lowered when she is away.  I'd bet a lot of Salzburgers don't even know that!

More to come soon.  Really soon, if the forecast for tomorrow (rain, rain, rain) is correct!

My apartment is the yellow one

My apartment from above

With Emily at the Mondsee Oktoberfest

Emily and I ran into Katie, another assistant, at the Mondsee Oktoberfest

The scene.

Fall in full swing

With Claudia in Mondsee.  That's the Schafberg in the background, which we climbed climbed later in the fall

Cupcakes at Cafe Diva

Cafe Diva

Salzburg

The tree in my yard

*Sigh* Salzburg in the fall

Nora pretending to be part of the Austrian government

Gabi, the Landeshauptfrau, and the other lady whose name and title I cannot remember.