Quick Update

It's been a depressing last few days as Austria Wien was eliminated from the Europa League after drawing with Aris Saloniki 1:1. We had lost the first match 0:1 hence the elimination. The distress was compounded by our cross-city rivals coming from behind to beat Aston Villa, who is a far superior team, on the same evening in the same competition. Then yesterday we played against the newly promoted Austrian Bundesliga team, Wacker Innsbruck. Yes, they're near the top of the table at the moment, but it's early and that must be just a fluke. It sure didn't seem like it when the teams took the field, we weren't dominated by any stretch but it was evenly matched until the 70th minute when they scored on a counter. Then they scored again on a counter in the 77th minute, then again in the 80th minute. Frustrated by the quick turn of events, a fan behind me through a beer or some other liquid and it splashed all over me so I left in a terrible mood.

Today Marlene and I uploaded many of our wedding and honeymoon pictures online to design photo albums which we'll then order from Bipa. While looking through the photos I was reminded of a funny item from our honeymoon...

You know how I know your resort is meant for old people?
(Besides the fact that all your neighbors and all the people you see around the pool are old)
There's a non-slip mat and alarm to pull in the shower.

Waterford Crystal Story

Before the Waterford crystal story, I'll talk about a couple other things. First, on Tuesday I became an official season ticket holder for Austria Wien. There's my season ticket on the right, and a ticket to today's match which is for the Europa League competition.
We need to win by 2 or more goals to advance to the group stage. If that happens we could be drawn into a group with a big team like Man City, Liverpool, or Juventus. We'd play each team in our group twice, both home and away, and I've promised myself that I'll go to one of the away matches. If we don't win by 2 goals today (or tie, or lose) then we're out of the competition and my dreams are shattered.

Marlene is still a vegetarian, she'll be celebrating her 2 week anniversary tomorrow. Her weakest points have been the few times she's seen me eating meatballs which happened on two trips to Ikea and once during a lunch at her parents' house.

During the second trip to Ikea mentioned above, I designed a new desk for myself. They have several options there for table tops and table legs which can mixed and matched. I chose a solid wood top, it's much heavier than their normal wood-looking material, and it has one square end and one rounded end. For the legs there is one circular, metal leg for the rounded side, and a shelf for the squared end which will eventually hold a desktop PC.
Just imagine me sitting on that chair and typing on the laptop at this very moment!

Lastly, we finally received the Waterford crystal stemware that my grandma ordered for us as a wedding gift more than two months ago. My grandma's original hope was that they arrive prior to the wedding and we perform the toast at our reception with them, but unfortunately we hadn't received them in time. The sad part was that we could have if not for a few mistakes and miscommunications. The first error was that Waterford uses UPS for delivery to Austria. They are terrible here. They don't have keys to get into the apartment buildings like the normal Austrian post office, so they can't leave a shipping notice in our mailbox for us. The next error was that Waterford never provided a tracking number after their email informing us that the order was shipped. I asked them for the tracking number last week and when they sent it to us 2 days ago, we were able to figure out what happened and get the package yesterday. After submitting the tracking number to UPS's website, we found the package was marked as delivered on July 16 and had been signed for by PLANK. I ran downstairs to look at the building's doorbells but saw no PLANK listed, though about half of the bells didn't have names, including ours which wouldn't have helped the situation. So we called UPS and they told us it was signed for by the person in room 7 of our building. We went downstairs and left them a note because no one answered the door. A few hours later they called up to us and we got the package! On the delivery address it had room 8 instead of 18 which is ours, so that explained why we hadn't heard anything from our neighbor. Nevertheless, it turned out mostly okay since we did eventually receive it. We got the Dolmen champagne flutes and I did take a few pictures of the unboxing but I need one more pic of Marlene and I toasting before I upload them. Maybe we'll put our wedding attire back on for the picture so that in 50 years we can pretend they did arrive in time...

News in Brief August 20

Even though I thought mosquitoes only laid eggs in lakes, there were a ton in Madeira. They were especially mean to be doing all their attacking at night when I was helpless to resist. All my mosquito bites are just about healed.

Marlene decided to a vegetarian. She has lasted one week so far.

Yesterday we moved most of Marlene's possessions from Neusiedl to our apartment in Vienna and there's almost enough space for everything.

Austria Wien lost the away leg of the Europa League matchup with Aris Thessaloniki 0:1. The only goal of the match was scored in stoppage time by former MLS star Carlos Ruiz. They play the second leg of the series on Thursday in Vienna and I expect to be there. I'll also be buying my season tickets soon.

After arriving here one of the first things you notice as an American is the different models of cars they have in Europe, but one stood out from the rest and I finally got a picture of myself next to it... wearing my Twins hat of course.

Fiat Punto: The ultimate car for defensive drivers.

Back in Vienna, Summary of the Rest of the Honeymoon

I'll just continue right where I left off last time...

Tuesday, Aug 10
We took an early shuttle to Funchal and boarded a catamaran to try our luck at seeing some dolphins or whales. Unfortunately all we saw was a lonely sea turtle. When we got back to the hotel, we chilled by the pool for a few hours. In the evening we had some drinks at the hotel bar then played some ping pong and billiards.

Wednesday, Aug 11
This was definitely the most exhausting day of the trip. We went on our own excursion by bus to the town Caniçal (not to be confused with the town our hotel was in Caniço), then hiked to the Eastern most tip of the island called Ponte de São Lourenço. You can see from linked map that Google maps is not very accurate for Madeira which proved quite frustrating when trying to find street names or restaurants in Funchal. The hike lasted all day, from around 9 to 4:30 and after we got back to the hotel, it was the most satisfying swim of the whole trip. We were pretty dusty and tired so it felt fantastic to jump in the pool then just lay in the sun for a bit. Then we went to the hotel's free steam bath and sauna for further relaxation. That night we stayed in and mixed our own cocktails since we found the hotel bar overly expensive. We determined everything in the hotel was overpriced compared to a bakery and bar right outside resort's walls.

Thursday, Aug 12
We took a shuttle to Funchal for our last day because Marlene wanted especially to visit Reid's Palace for a coffee or afternoon tea. We decided we were feeling lethargic so we went there right away for a coffee. The place was magnificent on the inside, if you scan through the history page on their website you'll see they've entertained guests like Winston Churchill and Gregory Peck. We wandered aimlessly around Funchal for the rest of the day. I halfheartedly attempted to find soccer-related sights so we went to a spot on the map marked Estadio which turned out to be a pretty pathetic looking pitch. It definitely didn't belong to one of Funchal's two Portuguese first division clubs. Then we shuttled back to the hotel and relaxed with some reading, some cocktails, and later packed up our bags.

Friday, Aug 13
Ooooh scary, Friday the 13th... Luckily our plane didn't crash and nothing unlucky happened. We made it back to Vienna and back to the apartment to assess the damage. We hadn't seen it since my brothers and friends who were staying there returned to the USA. It was better than I'd been expecting but it wasn't tidy enough for Marlene's standards so we've spent the last couple days cleaning it thoroughly and doing a lot of laundry. I'm very relieved that it's all finished including Marlene's Ikea wardrobe which had been sitting in an unfinished state for almost a month. I wouldn't say I'm as happy as her that it's complete though, I bet she'll have written something about it on Facebook by the time I'm done writing this.

Honeymoon in Madeira

Marlene and I have been in Madeira almost a week now, we return to Vienna on Friday. I'll try to give a quick rundown for what we've done so far.

Tuesday, Aug 3
We departed from the Vienna airport at 8:20 then had a several hour layover in Nürnberg where we did a little bit of shopping and watched How to Train Your Dragon on my iPod. We later arrived in Madeira after a fairly choppy landing at about 4 o'clock. There was a guy waiting for us with our names on a sheet of paper (I've never had this service before!) and then we boarded a shuttle bus that brought us to the hotel. We unpacked and enjoyed a complimentary bottle of champagne that was given to us since we told the receptionist that we were celebrating our honeymoon. Maybe we'll do that on vacations in the future too...

Wednesday, Aug 4
We met with a representative from the travel agency we booked with and she gave us a lot of helpful information about the island and helped us plan an excursion for the following day. The rest of the day we spent relaxing by the hotel pool.

Thursday, Aug 5
We woke up early to catch a bus for an organized hiking trip into the mountainous center of Madeira to specifically see canals and waterfalls. The canals in Madeira are ingenious! They seem to run along side every road I've seen and are still in use to this day. Marlene took her camera for this trip so we'll upload those pictures later.

Friday, Aug 6
We were both exhausted and Marlene was especially sore for the previous day's hike so we relaxed by the pool most of the day. In the late afternoon we took a shuttle to Funchal and had an amazing dinner at Restaurante do Forte. I know that probably none of my readers will visit Madeira but if you do, I would strongly recommend visiting this restaurant. Near our table, right along the sea wall, with the best view of the ocean, was a reserved table. When the gentleman arrived, I was sure he was a professional soccer player, though I scoured the rosters of both Funchal teams and other Portuguese clubs and couldn't find him. You'll just have to trust me that local celebrities also enjoy dinner here.

Saturday, Aug 7
We slept in late after having arrived back to the hotel late the previous evening. In the afternoon we tried to walk down to the beach but found our hotel is farther away from the ocean than we originally thought. We can see the Atlantic from our terrace but the roads to get there are windy and difficult to navigate. We traveled about an hour before getting to another hotel which owned the beach front property and wouldn't allow us entry without buying a day pass. It hardly seemed worth it since it was a rock beach and their pool was smaller than one in our hotel so we turned around and took the bus back.

Sunday, Aug 8
I was delighted to find out that not all businesses were closed on Sundays like in Austria, so we ate breakfast at a nearby bakery. Then we spent the majority of the day in the spa, hopping in and out of mint/eucalyptus flavored saunas, jacuzzis, ice baths, and pools.

Monday, Aug 9 (today)
We took an early shuttle bus to Funchal, then boarded a cable car built by the Austrian company, Doppelmayr. They also built the cable cars we used when we went on a skiing trip to Bad Gastein. You can view all of the pictures here - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033933&id=78300124. Later in the album you can see the lunch we had. We had originally planned on going to a Brazilian steakhouse but then found a much more ghetto place near the gardens where we had a pitcher of sangria-like drink along with steak cooked on branches over a charcoal fire and delicious garlic bread. Marlene and I both agreed it was the second best meal we've had on the trip so far after the dinner at Restaurante do Forte.

We've still got a few days left in this beautiful island, hopefully I'll have another interesting entry to make. If you can't see the photos in the Facebook albums I've linked to, please friend request me!

You can view a Facebook photo album of pictures from our hotel here - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033932&id=78300124 - as long as you're friends with me :-)

Wedding Wrap-Up

We last left off one week ago on the day after everyone attended the Arsenal-Neusiedl soccer match and then we had the USA-Austria beer games competition. So much has changed since then!

On Friday we had the legal wedding which was a fancier ceremony than I was expecting. It was held in a large baroque-ish room in Neusiedl am See's city hall. The town registrar sat at a table in the front, Marlene and I sat in throne-like chairs facing her, and then a group of just the closest friends and family sat behind us. I wore my wedding suit with a different shirt and tie and Marlene wore an all white Dirndl. Marlene's mom surprised us by having an extremely talented guitarist/singer there who was a family friend. Marlene had picked three songs she wanted to be played during the ceremony but he played them live instead. The town registrar then gave a speech giving advice and wishing us luck in our marriage, and one of Marlene's friends from university was the translator. We signed the wedding documents and according to Austrian law, we were married. Afterwards we went down to the building's inner garden, all the guests lined up to congratulate us and the next legal wedding filed into the room.

After the legal wedding we all went to a nearby town and had dinner together at a Heurigen. It's basically a restaurant which serves the freshest local wine along with cold dishes made up of bread, meat, cheese, and vegetables. If you're ever visiting Austria or Germany, it's a must that you have at least one meal at a Heurigen.

On Saturday was the main event - the church wedding. We woke up pretty early although we didn't need to. I didn't have anything to do in the morning and Marlene just had a hair appointment in the late morning. Everything started at 1:30 when we met to take pictures. Here are a couple of them courtesy of Franz Helmreich.

Here's the two of us under a willow tree

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And here's the whole wedding party

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After the pictures, we met at her parents' house for a pre-wedding party where people congratulated us and a band played. That lasted an hour before everyone was transported downtown a couple blocks from the church and we had a mini-parade with the band to walk into the church and immediately start the wedding. Everything went off without a hitch even though I was very nervous beforehand. Upon exiting the church after the ceremony, we were greeted by Marlene's folk dancing group who performed a dance for us then invited us to join in. We danced with them and then everyone lined up to congratulate us before we all had a couple glasses of wine and took some impromptu pictures and headed to the reception venue.

The reception was at a restaurant in a nearby town. The food there was amazing! It was pretty traditional Austrian cuisine, we had two kinds of soup to start, then main dishes of Wiener Schnitzel, roast beef, walleye fillets, and breaded vegetable patties. The side dishes were cabbage, zucchini, fries, potato wedges, maybe other things I'm not remembering right now because I didn't eat them. The folk dance group performed again after dinner and we also had a band and dance floor for normal dancing.

We had some American traditions like Marlene throwing her bouquet, me throwing her garter, and cutting the first piece of cake together. Mixed in were some Austrian traditions. At one point Marlene was kidnapped so I gathered a search party and we needed to go to surrounding bars to look for her where she's supposed to be pounding drinks until we arrive to rescue her. There weren't too many possibilities in the small town we were at so we found her at the nearest bar where we all had a couple drinks together. Then if the kidnapper brings along the bridal bouquet, Marlene's witness of marriage is supposed to pay the bill, otherwise the kidnapper has to pay. Luckily for the kidnapper, Marlene's witness of marriage was his mom, so she helped him find the correct bouquet, which took him a couple attempts, then paid the bill. The other strange traditions all happened in a hectic twenty or thirty minutes, Marlene and I were both lifted up on chairs and given glasses of wine which we chugged and shattered on the floor. Then we lowered to the ground and cleaned up the shattered glass. Marlene was given a wooden spoon and cloth which she put around her head to look like an old housewife. Then people threw tons of coins at us and we had to sweep them up while people continued throwing and ruining the coin pile I was trying to make. It was definitely my least favorite part of the night as I was on my hands on knees trying to collect thousands of coins, all the while having coins thrown at me and even shoved down the back of my shirt and pants! After what seemed like an eternity, the guests felt sorry for us and stopped, and a few of them helped pick everything up. There was more dancing and games and the party finally wrapped up at about 4 AM.

Marlene's parents gave us a ride to our hotel after the reception where some of Marlene's friends had brought our bags and already checked in for us. They were also nice enough to decorate our room with confetti, streamers, balloons, of course more coins, and some... ahem... adult toys. The coins were all over the bed and bathroom so we need to clean them before we could bathe and go to bed.

I wanted to continue and talk about the first day of our honeymoon, we're in Madeira right now, but I think I'll stop there and continue again later. We've got reservations at a Thai restaurant and this post has been long enough!