Thanksgiving in Austria 2011

           For Thanksgiving this year we went to Innsbruck, Austria. We drove 3 1/2 hours to get there and Taylor decided that we should take the scenic route through the mountains to get there. Needless to say, I almost threw up because of his crazy driving and all the curves and we did NOT return the same way. Once we got through the switch backs it was beautiful.

     We stayed in the small town of Tulfes, which is right outside of Innsbruck. We got there Thursday afternoon and went into Innsbruck to see the sights. 

Empress Maria Theresa had the Triumphal arch built in Innsbruck. One side has images of joy and happiness to celebrate the marriage of her son and the other side has images of sorrow for her husband who died during the wedding celebrations. 

All the buildings are super fancy here. This building is a sporting good store. Can you see the guy hanging from the balcony? Don't worry…he is just a manikin. 

The Golden roof was built by Maximilian I (one of the Holy Roman Emperors) as his royal box. 

Taylor was so excited to learn that they were having a Christmas Market the 

very same day we were there!!! :)

The entire week before Taylor kept talking about our trip to Austria in an Australian accent. We found these shirts everywhere so I guess the two countries get mixed up frequently.  

Every building is just so pretty in Austria. 

The winter Olympics were held here in 1964 and 1976. Here is the ski jump that is still opened today.

We came back to the apartment that we rented to cook our Thanksgiving dinner.

We had a roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. 

My favorite part of Thanksgiving was getting to skype with all of our family! My family was in Fort Davis and Taylor's family was all over at Granddad and Memaw's house so we had two long skype sessions!!!

The next two days we went skiing at Dubai glacier which supposedly has snow and skiing 365 days out of the year. Not sure how this works?

We were a little concerned since there was really no snow on the ground. We were thrilled when we saw snow in the distance…very distant mountain. 

We parked in an area that had absolutely no snow, then rode a gondola up the hill which had a small amount of snow.

But after about 15 minutes, we arrived to snow!!!!

Taylor and I have both grown up skiing in New Mexico so we thought the snow was great! It got a little icy towards the end of the afternoon, but overall we had 2 great days of skiing.

They had these t bars that you could ride up instead of the ski lift. You basically just put it behind your bum and let it pull you. After riding it with Taylor once I decided it would be best if we rode by ourselves. You can see why by watching this video. 

Interesting trash cans in the ski lodge…I guess newspapers and shoes went in this one??

The Austrians were not afraid to drink their beer during their lunch break. 

I really lucked out on this video. I was just skiing along taking film of Taylor and then…

       We had a great time in Austria and can't wait to go back soon!

Our Italian Apartment

     I finally snapped some pictures of our apartment…or should I say that it was finally clean enough/in order enough to show you pictures that I took! We are loving our apartment. It is situated down town and takes about 7-10 minutes to get to post depending on traffic. 

This is the view of the outside. Our balcony is on the 2nd floor,  on the right side with the air conditioner in it. The window to the left of it is in our living room as well. They just finished restoring the outside. 

View to the right and left off the balcony. 

From the bedrooms you can see down into the courtyard where I park.

There is my truck.

This is Taylor in front of the entrance to where I park.

Taylor parks in a garage just across the street from our apartment. It is very tricky to get into it. You have to back into it very carefully. I have to say that I'm getting pretty good at it…it doesn't take me 10 minutes like it used to! :)

Notice there is no such thing as just backing straight into it. Ours it he garage door on the left.

Looking down our street.

This is the side of the building. They are restoring it now, but this is what it looked like before. 

You walk into the door and to the right is the living room/dining room.

Here is a shot from the other side of the room. 

This is currently in the corner. Electricity over here is extremely expensive so we have turned into crazy people when it comes to saving energy. So, we hang dry our clothes. We do have a dryer and I do use it for about 5 minutes just to fluff the clothes so they aren't crunchy!

Off of the living room in a little closet is our kitchen. It isn't bad, not any smaller than our kitchen at Fort Benning. And, we got a brand new kitchen so that makes it even better. 

OLD kitchen

NEW kitchen!!

Crowded fridge

Itty bitty freezer. There will be no stocking up on meat here.

The army gives us these kitchen cabinets for extra storage. 

This is our recycling corner. (not sure how to flip this picture and I'm too lazy to go back and download it the right way). Recycling is law in Italy. We have 5 different trash bags…plastic, glass & aluminum, paper, humid waste which is like food and paper towels, and non recyclable waste like baggies, foil, etc. You can get fined if you don't put the trash in the right dumpster or if you put your trash in someone else's dumpster. They are serious about their trash over here. (My friend Autumn has been living in Switzerland for the past 3 months and they make them separate the colors of glass!!)

Looking back towards the door. This used to be my Mamaw's old microwave stand, which I painted and made a little curtain for. It now holds knives, spices, and my beloved kitchen aid mixer. 

This is the small entry way right after you walk into the front door. The boxes have finally been taken away and the plan is to put a desk here. 

Here is a pic without all the boxes. And yes Clark, the table you made for Taylor made it all the way here!

Here it is from the other direction.

Here we have one of our bathrooms. 

Little washing machine that takes 2 hours to wash a load of laundry!!!! And a bidet.

We are in the process of constructing a shower rod made of pipe that we can hang a shower curtain from since there is no rod and the tub is in a weird corner in the bathroom.

Bathroom #2.

Itty bitty corner shower. 

Guest Bedroom

This tile is in 2 of the 3 rooms. It is very common- we saw it a lot when looking at apartments here.

This is furniture that the army lends us for free while we are here.

This is looking down the hall form the guest bedroom. Our bedroom is at the very end. 

Storage room. The army gives us one wardrobe per person and then one extra. All of our clothes were not fitting…I guess I mean all of my clothes were not fitting. Taylor was having no problem with his 1/4 of the wardrobe I was allowing him access to. So, while trying to figure out what I was going to do with the 4 shower rods I have (not sure why) I came up with this brilliant idea! And it cost me $0.

The other... not so organized corner. 

Taylor's army stuff corner and the seldom used dryer. 

The master bedroom, which is quite large. 

View down the hallway from our room. 

     The end.