My life back in Austria

Since I've been back for almost two month now, I thought that I should write a post for all my friends and family in Wisconsin - so here it is!

It was hard for me to say good bye to all of you, but as nice as it would have been for me to stay, I had to come back here. I already miss everything there - my family, my dogs and cat, my friends, school, food, shopping,... The list is endless and words can't describe how I'm feeling right now. But I'll be back sooner than you think, I promise! :)))

Before I start telling you something about my home country, I wanna make sure that everyone knows where it is. It's not an island between the Phillipines and Australia, like one guy thought it was. It's not even attached to the ocean, for heaven's sake! Everyone probably knows where Germany is (it's not the same!), so it's right next to that. And north of Italy. Kinda the center of Europe ;-)

And no Kangaroos!

see, not even close to Australia

So I've been thinking and I realized that most of you hardly know anything about life in Austria, so I'm gonna tell you guys a little bit about it.
I live in a rather big town with a little over 3.000 people, and believe me, compared to other towns around here that's big. The best part about living in a town of that size is, that you can walk everywhere if you want. It takes me less than 3 minutes to go to the grocery store, while we had to drive almost 10 minutes to get to pick'n save. Google maps says that I could walk around my entire town in about 2 hours, it would probably take me that long to walk to southridge mall.

isn't it beautiful?

But believe it or not, it can get even smaller. A few weeks ago, I spent a weekend in a town in Styria, which is about 1 1/2 hours away from where I live. One day we drove up into the mountains, and here is, where your Sound of Music cliché Austria begins.

Mountains everywhere, no matter in which direction you look. A small village up on a hill, probably less than 300 people who live there, and no cell phone reception. Everywhere you look people run around in a Dirndl or Lederhosn and have a Lebkuchenherz around their neck. (There was a Fest going on that weekend so that's why there's more than 300 people...)

Lederhosn and Dirndl everywhere

Lebkuchenherz

and more Lederhosn

Sometimes people get a little too old fashioned and this happens; they cook their Sterz and Soup outside in metal pans over the open fire.

While I was in Wisconsin, I was told that it's the dairy land of the U.S. and that cows are THE animal there. The part about the dairy and cheese might be right, but cows? I saw some cows maybe twice while I was there (State Fair doesn't count for that). Here, my next door neighbors are cows and if you drive around the country side you have to be careful sometimes - there might be a cow in the middle of the road! So who's the real dairy land here... ;)

Austria is a cute little country and all of you should come and visit me some time, so we can drive up into the mountains in our Dirndl and sing The Sound of Music together (or something like that). :)

I miss you guys!
Love, Sarah