Goodbye 2017, Hello 2018!

Welcome back! My apologies for the lapse in blog posts, but I have (unsurprisingly) been on the move a lot the past few weeks. So here's a quick recap before this year's posts begin!

I finished out the courses I was teaching in mid-December. I had all my students fill out evaluations, and took great interest in what they had to say. Some of it was very helpful ("Please give us more structure for the projects"), some of it was dumb ("You should have said that this class would be hard from the start!") and some of it was funny ("I just love your American accent!"). Most of it will help inform my teaching for next semester.

After finishing up work, I hopped on a plane to Berlin, where I celebrated an all-female Christmas with my mom, my Oma, and my cousin. It was very low-key, but nice to be with family. As is usual when we are with our German family, there was a lot of coffee-drinking and cookie-eating. Yum!

I returned to Budapest just in time for New Year's Eve, which also marked the start of my friend Rachel's visit! She came for two weeks. We started in Budapest, where we celebrated the new year together with my Hungarian friend Dorka.

Happy New Year!

For a few days, we explored Budapest. Rachel, who studied architecture, was drooling over all the old buildings. We also took a day trip to a small Hungarian town called Eger, which is famous for its red wine called Bikaver, or Bull's Blood. After walking around the town, Rachel and I paid a visit to the famous winery valley, where we got to try many different types of Bikaver (and brought several bottles home!)

Eger Town Center

After showing Rachel around Budapest, it was time for me to go on vacation, too! So we hopped on a train and headed to Vienna. Now, I know what you're thinking -- wasn't she just in Vienna? Yes. Yes, I was. But I specifically chose to do different things both times around. This time, we visited the gardens and art museums at Schloss Belvedere (where a famous painting by Klimt called The Kiss hangs). We also walked to the Naschmarkt, Vienna's famous street market, which was mostly full of Turkish people selling dried fruit and souveniers (we bought both). We also went to the Natural History museum to see a children's exhibit about cats and dogs -- and thoroughly enjoyed it. We played cat- and dog-breed Guess Who, battled each other at cat trivia, and played a computer simulation where you could cross different breeds and see what the offspring would look like. It was dumb, but just what we needed at the end of a long day. Finally, I also got to catch up with a good friend from middle school who I haven't seen in 11 years (!) and the three of us had dinner together. It's always fun when people from different periods in your life meet each other (and get along).

Schloss Schönbrunn, Vienna

Dog and Cat exhibit...complete with taxidermied animals.

After Vienna, we hopped on a train to go to a city I have wanted to go to for years -- Salzburg. What a stunning city! Salzburg is, of course, the setting of the famous musical The Sound of Music, (one of my favorites) so it was really fun to see the filming locations of some of the most famous scenes. I even made Rachel, who hates musicals, watch the movie-- and she didn't hate it! Then I made her take pictures of me in front of a bunch of the filming locations. Aside from Sound of Music mania, Salzburg is just a really beautiful, compact city at the foothills of the Alps, and I loved every minute there.

Mirabell Gardens in Salzburg -- the "Do-Re-Mi" Scene

We spent a day and a half in Salzburg, but then it was time to move on, up into the Alps themselves. Rachel and I continued on our journey to a tiny Tirolean town called Alpbach, where we spent the next three days marveling at the mountains, skiing, and eating. For me, it was the first time in a long time that I have been in the mountains, and they were mesmerizing. It was also my very first time on skis, and I think I did pretty well for someone who has only had one lesson and two days of skiing! In Alpbach, we stayed at a gorgeous guesthouse where we had our own little apartment, and could spread out, relax, and enjoy the mountains. It was a nice change from the hostels that we stayed at in Salzburg and Vienna!

Our traditional Tirolean guesthouse.

Top of the mountain!

Besties on Skis!

Sadly, the vacation has gone all too quickly -- Rachel left this morning, and I've spent the day getting my apartment back in order, cleaning, doing laundry, and all those other boring things that people do. Work will start up again soon, and school soon after that. Time to get back into the swing of things for 2018.

This year will bring a lot of changes for me! My Fulbright grant will end in May, and then, for the first time, I have absolutely no plans after that. So, we will see what happens!