One Week Down.

I have survived my first week of farming. Whoo!

One week down, three and a half more to go.

To summarize our first week, I will just say: we pulled a lot of freaking weeds (see before/after picture below). We also dug furrows between plant beds, planted some seeds, picked (and got stung by) a LOT of stinging nettles (whoch are used as groundcover on the plant beds because they are high in nitrates and because the soil is very clay-like and just bakes in the heat), took a lot of naps, exchanged stories, opinions, and ideas with our fellow WWOOFer Michael, who is an agriculture student from Austria, watched a cow get slaughtered, biked ten miles to the nearest "big town", visited a local wine cellar/seller, hitchhiked to a music festival, and stuffed our faces with blackberries.

BEFORE: all that greenery? Those are ALL weeds.

AFTER: hoed, weeded, and ready for planting

There are a few things in that list that I'm sure you want to know more about (COW SLAUGHTER?! HITCHHIKING?!? What the heck do you mean by Cellar/Seller? What did you do for Steve's birthday???) and lots of things you probably don't care about (naps), so here is some detail about the finer points of the week:
Wednesday: Steve's birthday! Yay! We actually had plans to go to Lake Balaton with the farm family, who were having some sort of cousin's reunion, but some light early-morning rain changed those plans - instead the cousins all came to the farm and Steve, Michael, and I were all told to GTFO (not really). We did have to eat our meals in the guesthouse *gasp* instead of the main house, but that was alright. The three of us took the (not new, not tuned up) bikes for the 7-8km to the nearest town, Tapolca, which actually has a supermarket (a few of them, actually), a real train station, and (most importantly) a pub that brewed local beer. One silly thing about Hungary, or at least the rural parts: everything here comes in a recycled (read: washed out) two-liter bottle (formerly soda, juice, whatever). Beer, local wine, local milk, sometimes juices and oil... Basically everything you get locally comes in a recycled bottle. Cool idea - but confusing to those who are used to U.S. Food safety regulations.

Right. So for Steve's birthday... We biked ten miles. And drank local brew from a two-liter Coca Cola bottle!

FRIDAY: we started off the morning with my first cowherding experience! It was time for the cows to move from one pasture to another, but first they had to be herded into a small corral because the veterinarian was coming to check one of the cows to see if she was pregnant - if not, she would become dinner.

When Steve worked at the cattle ranch at school, they artificially inseminated their cows twice a year so that calfing season was only in the fall and spring. Here, the bull runs with the herd and if he does his job correctly, the family expects a calf from each of the cows about once every 18-24 months.

***WARNING: these next two photos are not for the faint of heart.

DEMON COWS! Creepy eyes.... Ahhhhhh!

Yep, that's the vet. And YEP, he is shoulder-deep in exactly where he looks like he is.

The cow was not pregnant. (But she lives a happy twelve years of grazing the fields of western Hungary.) hungary has, for the past two years, had far-below-average rainfall; the grass is not growing enough for the cows to eat now and for Peter to bale for winter feed, so the family has been thinning out the herd. This cow was headed for the slaughterhouse.

Except, as it happens, the slaughterhouse came to us.

We were told a very entertaining story about a previous incident where one of their cows was taken in a trailer to the slaughterhouse as per veterinarian's orders - but the Hungarian Grey are very independent and thus are only handled a few times a year; this cow was so freaked out at the new situation it found itself in that IT KICKED THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE'S TRAILER APART. What a bill that must have been.....

Anywho, so the slaughterhouse guys are happy to come out to the site when necessary, and Steve, Michael, and I were all invited to watch if we so chose. Which, of course, we all did. I expected it to be messy - I imagined blood everywhere and the animal screaming - but I am very relieved that it wasn't. Basically, the cow is bopped on the head with a device that looks (from where I was standing, a few feet away) like a big sledgehammer to knock it unconscious, and this bop apparently does enough damage to the brain that it is basically dead after that. Then the throat is cut (with a small-ish incision at the jugular, not a huge slash that would half take the cow's head off, like I for some reason imagined) and the heart, which is still beating at this point, pumps the blood out of the body. A few long minutes, some involuntary muscular jerks, and two bucketfuls of blood later, the cow is dead in all senses. The horns were then sawed off and I asked Aaron to make me a drinking horn out of one! :D Hopefully the process won't take too long and I'll come home with the coolest souvenir ever!

Later that evening, Aaron and his sister Naomi took the three of us into Hegyesd to meet with a family friend who sold wine. Barbara had mentioned that there was a wine cellar in the village we could go to. I thought she meant it like that: a wine cellar. But when we got to Perger's place, it was really just an evening sitting in his backyard while his chickens scratched around the picnic table and we tasted (and by tasted I mean he kept refilling our glasses for two hours) his two homemade wines and tried (really just tried this time) his homemade pálinka, which is basically a clear brandy made from grape must (the grapes after they have been pressed for wine. The pálinka was so strong it probably burned all my nosehairs off and his little puppy kept trying to chew my shoelaces off, but with all the wine Perger gave us plus his homegrown sweetcorn and his wife's cookies.... There wasn't too much to really complain about. :)

SATURDAY: There are many different pastures on the farm, and on Friday we had moved the cows into one of the upper pastures, which we discovered was next to a field of blackberries. Steve, Michael, and I went up after breakfast to pick some - which ended up being me picking blackberries/stuffing my face with at least half the bucketful I picked while the boys threw tiny wild pears at me and reclined in the grass enjoying the scenery.

We also hitchhiked for the first time!

The farm is off the one main road in the area (maybe a highway?) and in one direction is Tapolca; the other direction, about 8km away, is the village of Kapolcs. Kapolcs is one of the vullages that hosts the Valley of the Arts music festival, which lasts a week. So we ventured out with Naomi, her boyfriend Barney, and their friend Balas. And we hitchhiked there!

Apparently hitchhiking isn't a big deal (ie, not illegal) in Hungary and in fact very common during this festival. After about ten minutes of waiting on the little road leading to the farm, we were picked up by a guy with a cargo van that we all piled into the back of and made our way out to the vendor-filled streets of Kapolcs. We ate langos (MUCH better than the huge greasy ones we ate in Budapest) and wandered to the tune of a man covering Rolling Stones songs.... In Hungarian.

SUNDAY: After lunch, Steve, Michael, and I decided to head back to Kapolcs and see what it was like during the day. We figured it would be easier to get a ride with just three of us instead of six of us. Indeed, two minutes later we get picked up by a BMW (no sketchy cargo van for us!) and we are on our way back to the festival. This time, however, we were only able to look at some of the little vendors before it started raining and we figured we should probably head back. Two minutes after we get picked up by a couple around our age who don't speak any English, the skies open up. It starts pouring, then it starts hailing. We got dropped off at the Hegyesd bus stop since we couldn't figure out how to tell the driver that the farm driveway was about a quarter mile before that - and as we drove by the farm, we saw Barbara waiting in the Land Rover for traffic to pass. Praying that she is heading to Tapolca and not to Kapolcs to pick up Naomi who had gone to the festival earlier in the day, we run out of the bus stop shelter and into the pouring rain onto the road so Barbara would hopefully see us. What great timing - she was just heading to the bus stop to pick up another WWOOFer! Yay - no quarter-mile run back to the farm in pouring rain!

Here is a picture of Steve and Michael moving the two lambs from their outdoor pen into the open half of the pig pen. Beware of those creeper pigs.... Also, beware of sheep, because right before I took this photo, the lamb Steve is holding started nibbling on Michael's fingers. And a few days prior, when Michael and I moved the sheep back into their pen after another drizzly evening, one of them started eating Michael's shorts. :P nom nom nom.

Happy Birthday, Steve!

This really should've posted on Wednesday, but blogger is being a jerk and won't let me change the date >:(

Anywho.


To my dear, wonderful, loving, handsome husband,

Happy birthday! I hope you had a wonderful day of pulling weeds and shoveling manure :P

I love you. I love your versatility: I love that you can adapt to and thrive in any environment you find yourself in, whether it be in school where we met, on the soccer field where you kick ass, at a desk job where you prove to everyone how much of an asset you are, in foreign cities where you can always find the way back to the apartment after I get us lost, and on a farm, where you seem so at ease in the sun and the earth. I love that you work so hard at everything (and that you can easily pick up my slack, because I am the slowest weed-puller ever). I love seeing you smile. I love all the silly little songs you make up on the fly and sing to me. I love that we can share everything and so far have had no problems with communication like so many couples do. You make me so happy, and our trip to Europe, our marriage, and our life together has been so much fun. You are so sweet and so funny and soooooooo handsome. You deserve the best of birthdays, this year and all the years to come.

Happy birthday, my love.

Tapolca, here we come!

Your loving wife,
Madeline

PS: I am Grovernicus. Not Grover.

Farm Life: Day One

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, commonly referred to as WWOOF, is an international organization that connects small organic farmers with volunteer workers. WWOOF exists for a few reasons, one being that it is expensive for small farmers to hire workers and another being that is it difficult in many countries for a foreigner to get a work permit. Rather than getting paid, WWOOFers are compensated with room and board in exchange for an agreed-upon amount of work that the host farm usually has listed in their WWOOF profile. In our case, we are expected to work six hours per day, five days a week, with a minimum stay of two weeks. Most countries have their own sub-WWOOF organization (WWOOF Hungary, WWOOF Austria, WWOOF Poland, etc) which may or may not charge a membership fee (from what we saw, most fees are between $20-50 per year; WWOOF Hungary was free). After a potential volunteer has signed up for their WWOOF membership at their country of choice, they are given contact details for the host farms (you are able to browse the host list without signing up) so that they can arrange their stay. We stumbled upon WWOOF.org when we were planning our trip two years ago - we figured it would be a cheap way to extend our trip to Europe (which we were determined to have last from EURO2012 to Oktoberfest in Munich) and a way for us to get some hands-on experience in working on a farm and living sustainably. Since WWOOF Hungary offered free membership, it was an easy choice for the frugal-minded traveler.

We took a bus from Budapest out to western Hungary, to the village of Hegyesd (pronunciation: Heg-eshed; remember, the "s" makes a "sh" sound in Hungarian), which is close to Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central Europe. When I confirmed with Peter, the farm owner, that we would be arriving on the 14:15 bus out of Budapest that he had suggested when we first began communicating, I thought it was odd that he didn't ask what we looked like - I wasn't sure how big the bus station in Hegyesd would be, so I sent him a description of us anyway. Well, Hegyesd has a population of about 170 people - there was no bus station, just basically a stop on the side of the road. When we got off, a man came running up to us, calling to his son, "Here! The girl with the pink shoelaces!" (pink shoelaces courtesy of Discover Football :D ) and we all shared a laugh. As Peter put it, they never would have had a problem finding us. We were the only ones at that stop.

The farm's main operation is beef production; the owners, Peter and Barbara, keep a small herd of Hungarian Grey cattle, which is a breed native to Hungary that were, in the 1970s, endangered to the point of near extinction - less than 300 animals existed at one point. In an effort to preserve their native species, farmers in Hungary were encouraged to raise Hungarian Greys and today they are much better off. Peter mentioned to us that they never have trouble selling their beef because people come to them specifically because their beef is Hungarian Grey. In addition to the cattle, the family has about thirty chickens (also a native Hungarian breed; I forget the name but they are similar looking to our zebra-striped Plymouth Rock chickens), a bunch of rabbits, five pigs, and two sheep, all of which will be eaten at some point. There is also a young orchard and a small garden with potatoes, strawberries, onions, watermelons, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, corn, squash..... And lots and lots of weeds.

After a quiet first evening that consisted of us meeting Peter, Barbara, their son Aaron (who we met at the bus stop) and three other WWOOFers (two of which were leaving the next morning), going on a short walking tour of the farm, and eating stag for dinner, we went to bed since breakfast was at 6am. Work would be from 7am-1pm Monday through Friday.

Breakfast was homemade bread, homemade jam, tea, milk from a local dairy farmer, boiled beef tongue, and sheep testicles sliced and fried with bacon.

So yes, we have been here less than 24 hours and already we have eaten stag, cow tongue, and sheep's balls - dubbed "swinging steaks", haha. I'm sure the list of strange things we have eaten will only get longer as our farmstay progresses.

The rest of Monday morning found us in one of the smaller plots with corn, pumpkins, and lots and lots of weeds.

My back hurts just thinking about it. We spent about four and a half hours of our first day pulling weeds. The whole time I was having yet another mental freak-out session: I don't think I'm cut out for this!! Is this really what we're going to be doing for the next month?!?! My back already hurts. Do we really have to do this all day? I know the answer to that - YES, because there are so many freaking weeds here! How did this get so overrun?! This is ridiculous. I would never let my garden get this out of control. I'm so tired. I changed my mind - give me my desk job back, thanks.

After Barbara had shown us which weeds were to be set aside to feed the rabbits, we were pretty much left to our own devices (so, Steve worked really hard to pull as many weeds out as possible while I sat on the ground alternately pouting/complaining that my back hurt and digging up the really big roots that I was determined to exhume so that no weeds could re-sprout from it). Barbara came back to check on us at the end of the work shift and had us de-eye and peel potatoes for lunch for the last hour. Whew - thank goodness for that last hour. I can peel potatoes. I get to sit down in the shade while we do it. It was also nice to talk with Barbara in a calmer environment without a bunch of people around.

We had homemade gulyas soup for lunch (lunch, the main meal in most of Europe, always starts with a soup) followed by stew and dumplings. Then it was naptime.

Suppertime, getting to know Peter, Barbara, Aaron (who is a few years older than we are), and Michael, an Austrian who is our fellow WWOOFer for the next two weeks, and sleep was all I could bring myself to do for the rest of the day.

And so concludes day one at the farm.

Good Eats in Budapest.

As it happens, Budapest is one of the only places where, yes, we have taken pictures of the food.

We started off our stay in Budapest by going to the Central Market to meet up with our guide for a wine tasting and tavern lunch tour.

The Central Market is one of the coolest places I've ever been to, I think.

Imagine, oh, I don't know, a Costco warehouse. Now make it three stories and add fresh produce stands, butcher stalls with all sorts of meat cuts, a whole floor of just fish and game, vendors selling pálinka and Unicum and Tokai wines and saffron and various kinds of paprika. Then imagine smells of delicious Hungarian cuisine wafting down from all the food vendirs on the third story, and then you will have an idea of what the Central Market is. It is marvelous. Simply marvelous. So marvelous, in fact, that I was too busy looking at everything instead of watching where I was going and too busy drooling over all the deliciousness spread out around me to remember to take a picture. :(

See that deliciousness that Billy is ready to feast on? That, my friends, is a langos. [Pronunciation: lan-goosh. The "s" in Hungarian is said with a "sh" sound; another example would be that Budapest is pronounced "Budapesht", not "Budapest".]

Anywho, to start off our wine tasting tavern lunch extravaganza, our guide took us around the Central Market and told us about Hungarian cuisine for a bit before heading upstairs to buy us all langos! Now... keep in mind that this langos is a huge piece of deep-fried potato dough. It kind of tastes like a funnel cake, but with sour cream and cheese on top rather than powdered sugar, whipped cream, and fruit like our funnel cake. But for EACH of us to have a langos (about the size of a personal pizza at any of the various pizza chains in the States) RIGHT BEFORE drinking wine and having lunch, and more or less just after having eaten breakfast.... We were off to a delicious but almost too filling of a start to the day.

We then traipsed over to the wine cellar that is actually in the office of the agency putting on the little tour and had our wine tasting down there. Over two whites, two reds, and the famous Tokai dessert wine, we discussed with the one Hungarian woman (our guide), the two British girls (around our age), and the older couple from Scotland what we thought of the wines, places to visit in Budapest, the upcoming vote from the Scots about whether they want to break apart from Great Britain(!), California wines versus European wines, and how silly Americans sound when imitating a British accent - there are subtle differences in the way Brits (or Scots, and probably Irish) speak that depend on what part of the country you are from; since most Americans can't tell the difference between a Brit from London versus a Brit from Liverpool versus a Brit from Portsmouth, etc, we apparently sound like we're from six different parts of the country and none of the Brits buy it. :P

We did try some good wines, most notably the Tokai dessert wine, which tasted like buttered pecans. It was so unusual, delicious, and cheap - so we bought a bottle (for $6!) to take home.

Then we went to a local restaurant for some good Hungarian home-cookin'.

That is a paprika and pork stew with dumplings, and stuffed cabbage. We also had a gulyas (goulash) soup as our first course (in Hungary, goulash is more of a thin soup, not a stew) and apple strudel for dessert.

After a nap, we ended our first night with a stroll along the Danube and sat at a little riverside cafe with salad, tuna flatbread, and two glasses of wine to watch Budapest light up. Here are some before and after shots.

Our walk along the Danube was concluded with a trip to a little coffeehouse for coffee (which, in hindsight, was not a good idea because neither of us react very well to caffeine and it was already almost midnight) and dessert. Steve insisted on taking this silly picture of me with a steamed milk and/or whipped cream mustache. Even though it's not reallllllly a mustache...

The next day, we woke up late, had a late breakfast/early lunch at a place called Hummus Bar (because once again we are craving vegetables) for pita pockets and fresh lemonade before trekking up Castle Hill and the hill next to it (which, as far as I know, has no name).

This long, scenic walk full of inclines was then followed by a walk around Margaret Island, which in over 3km long and surrounded entirely by the Danube river. We saw our first topless sunbathers! Although I don't know why ANYONE (and there were lots of people, mostly non-topless) was sunbathing, because there is no beach - only stone and concrete, which had to have been roasting on this very hot day. Margaret Island is not only home to topless sunbathers, but also a small waterpark, various sport facilities (tennis courts, a running track, a pool, etc), huge parks, and the ruins of a small cathedral to St. Margaret.

All this walking, walking, and more walking, found us at ANOTHER Hummus Bar location at the end of the afternoon, where we gorged ourselves on hummus, vegetables, and pita bread once more before going back to our apartment and having a lazy evening in.

Friday morning found us at Strudel House.

Strudel House is the oldest strudel restaurant in Budapest and has a large assortment of both savory and sweet strudels. We had a paprika chicken strudel and an asparagus, spinach, and carrot strudel for our first round of strudels, and a cherry poppyseed strudel and apple strudel (not pictured) for dessert. Mmmmmmmmmm :)

For our last full day in Budapest, we headed to one of the renowned bathhouses. When the Turks occupied Hungary, they took advantage of all the natural hot springs in the area and built many thermal baths, mainly in Budapest. The one we went to, Széchenyi Baths, is the largest and supposedly most extravagant in Budapest. There are three outdoor pools, one hot, one cool, and one specifically for people swimming laps and not just relaxing. Inside the main building, which is has high ceilings and marble(?) columns, has lots and lots of smaller pools (some only as big as the average household hot tub) with different temperatures from icy cold to burning hot and everything in between. We probably explored only half the building and dipped into at least twenty different pools. We also wandered in and out of the several saunas (dry heat) and steamrooms (wet heat), again with various degrees of heat depending on which room you go into. Some were unbearably hot - one steamroom was advertised as being between 70-80 degrees Celsius, which is 158-176 degrees Fahrenheit... We opened the door and were immediately hit in the face by a scalding hot wave of steam. We only managed to get just inside the doorway before giving up.

The bathhouse was a very nice, relaxing way to end our stay in Budapest.... And a good way to treat our bodies before WE WORK ON A CATTLE FARM FOR THE NEXT MONTH!!!!!!!!!

Pizza Hut.

Guess where we are?

Yep.

Here, in Budapest, it is the equivalent of Olive Garden. It's still pizza and generic Italian food, but it is a sit-down restaurant with cloth napkins and a wine menu.

WHAT?!

It's like this in a lot of places in Europe, we've noticed. Pizza Hut and other comparable restaurant chains in the States are swanky here. Even the McDonalds here are nicer than in the States... And more expensive.

That must explain why Europeans are not as fat.....

Bratislava - Who Knew?

I may have found a new favorite city.

Our last day in Vienna was a lazy one, consisting mostly of us hanging out at the apartment taking naps and doing laundry. We did a little bit more walking and ate more spatzle and wienerschnitzel, but for the most part it was a very lazy day.

We then took an early train to Bratislava, as they run every hour and take about an hour and a half, and walked to our hotel, which was in the shadow of the Bratislava Castle, minutes from Old Town, and on top of a local brewery.

I seriously wish we had stayed more than one night.

We arrived around 2pm and spent the whole day exploring (since we only had one). And Bratislava is surprisingly beautiful. When we mentioned to Martina, the Slovakian girl we had met on the long train ride to Prague, that we were going to Slovakia but only to Bratislava, she warned us that Bratislava was a dirty city and that there are much more beautiful places in Slovakia. Which is probably true, but Bratislava was much more than I expected. We first visited Bratislava Castle whose grounds are open to the public, and we had dinner at the restaurant at the castle, which was much cheaper than we would have expected.

We later went on a walk through the Old Town, which was full of interesting statues and food that smelled deliciousssssssssssss. I wanted to eat more and we had just eaten.

In the evening when we got back to the hotel, we went to the brewery downstairs and tried some of the beers and traditional Slovakian fruit liquors before going to bed.

The next morning we did more walking around, mostly in the Old Town again because it was so lively and fun and full of good smells. We did a little bit of walking around the New Town, which was a bit more modern but less infused with Slovakian culture.

That thing with the oranges? I want to make one of those.

Silly boys. Why is there a statue of just legs? I have no idea. We sat on a bench next to the statue and just people-watched for a while, because it is such a silly statue. My personal favorite of the day was a guy who held up a map where the lady parts would be.

I wish, I wish, I wish that we could have more time in Bratislava. It has, in one day, given Warszawa a run for its money on my list of favorite place. We may be back. We'll see.

The Danube.

We spent a lot of time around the Danube today.

As kind of an early birthday present to Steve (since we'll be on a farm on his special day), I booked us reservations at the revolving restaurant atop the Danube Tower. To get to the Donauturm, as it is called in Vienna, we took a metro from the apartment we're staying in and walked through the Vienna International Center, which consists of a bunch of tall buildings that house important corporations, and through a big park right outside. You can see here what a beautiful day it was!

The restaurant was 180 meters up and the elevator we rode in had a glass ceiling so we could watch our ascent. Brunch was quite delicious and we ate more than our fair share before going to the rooftop terrace (which is actually right underneath the revolving restaurant). There we watched some people bungee jump and took a bunch of pictures of the gorgeous view.

Once we were tired of watching people bungee jump, we rode the elevator back down and laid in the grass at the park and watched people bungee-jumping from that angle. We made plans with some people we met on the CouchSurfing website in the afternoon, so with the extra time we had to kill we wandered around the various areas of the park around the Donauturm and found a sweet playground. After the playground we walked down the river for a while and it started raining (again) so we turned back.

Our plan with the other CouchSurfers was to meet up at The Pub (I'm sure you remember The Pub from Berlin and Prague) and put in a serious competing team... But when we got to The Pub, it was closed! D: On a Saturday??? Why?!?!?!

But luckily the Mexican guy named Ricardo and the Spanish girl named Alma were up for anything, so we went to a different pub to have a few drinks then headed off to the Vienna Film Festival to see what was playing on the big screen. The Vienna Film Festival had a big screen set up outside with stadium seating and every night for the summer a different show or movie or concert is shown on the big screen. Tonight was a showing of a play about Helen of Troy - which we only figured out because the Deutsch-speaking actors dressed in Greek outfits kept referring to a certain woman as Helen (and the play was named Helen). We sat outside on wet seats for about half an hour before giving up and heading to a club that Alma knew about.

This club would be considered only a bar in the United States. It was a bar, a deejay, a small dance floor, and that's it. But it was still fun and the boys spent most of the night building card castles out of the flyers on the table we sat at.... :)

The Wachau Valley.

(Pronounced "Vah-cow", not "Wah-chow")

We had a quiet, low key first day in Vienna yesterday, which included little more than a delicious breakfast, discovery of the Naschmarkt, which is a HUGE outdoor market similar to the farmer's markets in the States except gigantic, more extensive, and every single day, and lots of general walking around the city. And TODAY, we had an AWESOME time on a wine tasting bike tour in the Wachau Valley!

The Wachau Valley is about an hour outside of Vienna, and it is one of the major wine-making regions in Austria. They do some reds but are bestknown for their whites, and almost all the wineries in the Wachau Valley are small-scale producers, who focus more on selling good wine to Austrians rather than trying to expand outside the country and adapting their wines to the taste of the general public outside of Austria (with some exceptions).

My hopes of a sunny ride were dashed the minute we woke up; it was cold and drizzly instead of the sunshine and heat that we've gotten used to in the last few weeks. Boo. Oh well. Time to dress warm and bring our ponchos! We met with the guide at one of the smaller train stations in Vienna and took a train to Krems, a small town that basically marks the eastern edge of the Wachau Valley. We walked to a small garage where we were all given bicycles to use for the 16km bike tour to wineries up and down the banks of the Danube. Steve was stoked because he loves to bike but didn't get to do much biking when he started working. He jumped on his bike and was ready to go! Oh the benefits of being on vacation!

I eagerly hopped on my bike and remembered, much to my dismay, I HAVEN'T BEEN ON A BIKE IN ABOUT EIGHT YEARS.

AAAHHHHHHHHH!

Not only have I not ridden a bike since probably middle school, I've never ridden on the road before. Not a road that wasn't part of my neighborhood. Nor have I ever tried riding a bike on COBBLESTONE!!! so while Steve was zipping along like a pro as we (our tour group of about twenty) rode through busy streets made of rough, bumpy cobblestone to the edge of town where wine country began, I went through various stages of panic, anger, embarrassment, and misery. I was certain I was going to die, or at least crash into a parked car. Thankfully, I made it out of town alive. The mostly flat paved road that the tour actually began on ran along the banks of the Danube and reminded me of the Sacramento River Trail in Redding, which is really the only place I'd ever ridden a bike before other than my own neighborhood. This familiarity had a calming effect, and I was finally able to enjoy the ride (and the view! Oh, the view!) despite the fact that it was raining (drizzling, really).

Our first winery was Domaine Wachau, which is one of the biggest wineries in the region. Its tasting room was not unlike some of the wineries we've been to in California. Our guide explained some of the different technicalities within the naming protocol in Austria and Steve impressed him by asking questions about chaptilization. (Yes- we are kind of wine snobs.)

NOTE: Chaptilization is the process of adding more sugar to a wine during fermentation. The purpose of this is not to make the wine sweeter, but to increase the alcohol content, since alcohol is the by-product of yeast and sugar. Chaptilization is illegal in the Unitrd States because most of our growing regions (like California) get so much sun that our grapes have enough sugar (or too much, really) and thus our wines also tend to be higher in alcohol (think 14% versus the European wiines, which are around 10-11%). Chaptilization is not illegal in Europe because many of their growing regions do not get enough sun and their grapes don't have enough sugar to convert into alcohol for their wines.

Anywho. All the wines we tried were very good and I was particularly fond of them because their whites are more of a tart-crisp flavor rather than oaky and/or sweet like most California whites, and that is more my style. We ended up buying a small bottle of their beerenauslese, whichwas very very good, and a bottle of brandy, which we didn't try but for a bottle from a small-production lotat that price? Too good to resist.

After the visit to this winery, we biked to the village of Durnstein, which is famous for the castle above the village which once held Richard the Lionheart as captive. Steve and I had opted out of paying for the tour restaurant lunch and had bought sandwiches at a delicious bakery to take with us. While the rest of the group left for the restaurant, we hiked up the hill to the castle ruins. We took a little video so you can see what it looks like!

After a short, steep hike, half a bottle of Katsensprung wine, and those tasty sandwiches, we made our way back down to the little shop where we were supposed to meet back up with the group and taste some Austrian chocolate and apricot schnapps. Apricots are one of the most popular fruits in Europe, it seems, because they make all kinds of things from apricots. We ended up buying a little bottle of apricot liqueur (which means that anyone who is eating dinner with us once we get back to the States will be in for a treat, because this apricot liqueur is delicious and will go excellent in or with dessert) (this also means that if we don't curb our buying, we will hav very heavy backpacks). And then onwards to the next winery!

It had just started raining when we arrived at the second and last winery of the tour, so we all crammed into a gazebo to try the next flight of wines. We had a little bit of time after the wine-tasting to just chat and walk around the property, so the two of us, a couple from New York, and a couple from Australia tried to have a conversation with a group of Russians who were on the tour with us, only one of whom spoke any English. That was a fun experience, mainly because we had thought that Russian and Ukrainian were similar enough to understand each other, but everything we said we knew in Ukrainian (which admittedly isn't much more than "yes", "no", "thank you", "beer", "two tickets", and the various kinds of food) had a different word in Russian.

We then took a crazy raft across the river which Steve took a video of and began our bike ride back to Krems. We stopped at a little beach where, typically, they have a volleyball game and people go swimming in the river, but as it was gloomy and drizzly, no one was up for a swim.

The way back to town was a little bit more hilly than it was on the way to the wineries, but the exercise felt good. It really has been a while since we got some real exercise (not counting walking) and it was exhilarating. It was towards the end of the tour that I fell in love with biking (even if I am still a bit shaky) because I haven't felt this good physically in a while, considering I have been in a mostly sedentary state after blowing my knee out at the beginning of April.

The train ride back to Vienna was very quiet, as everyone seemed worn-out from the ten-mile ride. We laid back, finished the last of the Katsensprung, and dozed off a bt holding hands.

It was a very good day.