Day 2 in Austria: Turnau and Veitsch

December 16, 2012 –

Good morning from Turnau, Austria!!!  

We've got the following on our agenda today: 1) eat breakfast and 2) visit Opa (or Uropa).  

Yep.  

Pretty long list, right?!?

Did I mention that we woke up at 3:00 AM!!!!!?!!!  Yep.  We were w-i-d-e awake.  And it's especially tough when you're hungry, jet lagged and you forgot to bring soap and shampoo. Guess I'd better add 3) purchase shampoo and soap to our list of things to do today.  I guess I'll postpone my shower until later.  Drat.

And one more thing to add to our to-do list: 4) buy a SIM card for my phone.

Did you hear that??????

Those are church bells!!!  OH!  It's 6:00 am.  We just peeked out the door and the church is almost in our back yard.  Ahhhhh…that makes sense now.  The name of this place is Kirchleit'n.  Kirche = church.  I love the sound of real church bells.

We've discovered German TV…and the girls are watching cartoons in German.  Awesome!  I would love it if they learned German!!!

Finally!  It's 7:30am…time for breakfast!!!  Let's go eat!

An extra hearty breakfast….rolls, bread, eggs, various sliced meats and cheeses, coffee and hot cocoa. Yes, we really stuffed ourselves!!

The bar area of the breakfast room. No photos can capture the sweet cheerful and fairytale-like quality of this room.

There is a tiny bit of snow on the ground so the girls are begging to go out and play in the snow.  Oh, why the heck not?!? 

Annika with the help of Ava made this snowLADY. By the way, that's our little "ferienhaus" (vacation house).

Looking up the hill…see the church up there?

The snow LADY. Nice job girls!

Time to get a move on….we've got a few stops to do before we head to Opa.  We need cash, purchase a few items AND I don't want to show up at Opa's empty handed.  I'd like to get a few baked goodies.  I do know there is a konditorei (bakery + cafe) just down the street from our gasthaus.  Shall we go?  

Whoops!!!

There's one thing we forgot…it's SUNDAY.  And Sunday in a small Austrian town = everything is closed!!!!  No shampoo, no baked goodies, no cash machine.  Drat.  Let's keep driving until we find something open – maybe something in a larger town???  Hmmmm….Mitterdorf's bigger grocery stores aren't open.  Okay- let's try one last town (Muerzzuschlag) and see if there's a bakery and cash machine.  Finallly!  After going completely out of our way we found a bakery open for business and an ATM.  Jeesh.  If we'd known that we'd have to go completely out of our way to find these I think we would have skipped this silly search!

Baked goodies- Check.  Cash- Check. Shampoo- nope.  SIM card- nope.  Well, two out of four isn't too bad, right????

We're *finally* going to head to Opa's place.  

Hi Opa!!!! We got to sit and chat with Opa for a few minutes.  Opa says there's a restaurant open in Dorf Veitsch…let's head there!  (I can say without a doubt that I don't feel like cooking on this trip)

Me, Annika and Opa (or Uropa)

After a lovely late lunch/early dinner and sitting for a while just chatting about our life in China we returned back to Opa's apartment:

As it turns out Krampus and Nikolaus stopped by Opa's apartment!!!!!

The girls are checking out all the goodies that Krampus brought them. Do you see that rectangular beige and red pencil case? That was MINE when I was little!

We enjoyed visiting with Opa.  I know Opa really wished he could converse with his great-granddaughters.  :-( Sorry Opa!!! They NEED to learn German!!!  

Well, I think it's time to call it a day!  Jet lag seems to be rearing its ugly head.  I guess that's what you get when you're fully awake at 3AM!!!!