Holidays! Traveling! Fun!

In a few hours I'm headed to Vienna to spend the evening with a friend and go to a concert of the German hip-hop group Blumentopf (yeah, you read that right...we'll see how this goes?). Then in the morning I'm off to Germany to celebrate Christmas with the incredibly delightful and wonderful family I lived with when I studied there my sophomore year of college. After about a week in Bonn I'm flying to Barcelona where Michal will meet me for Part 2 of "Yadlin Sister 1 & 3 Take On Europe"!!!!!!! I CANNOT WAIT to see her! Michal and I will be in Barcelona for just under one week and then we will come back to Austria, where I will get to test my tour-guiding skills, showing Michal around Vienna! I am so so so excited for the next few weeks!!!

Here's a very short update of what I've been up to in the past two weeks. First of all, I've visited practically every Christmas market in the city of Vienna several times, and I still can't get enough. Here's yet another picture of the Rathaus market--it's so beautiful you just can't help but feel the Christmas magic!

It should be illegal to have such pretty things.

Five other TAs and I had a lovely little Christmas party complete with a secret santa gift exchange and Ikea gingerbread house construction. The evening with these ladies reminded me once again how special my life here is and how grateful I am to have such wonderful friends! I can't wait to get back from break and see everyone again!

Ikea Gingerbread kits come with no frosting and no decorative
candies. Just Gingerbread and very detailed instructions.
So our house-builders improvised.

Last weekend, some friends of mine descended upon Purkersdorf to finally see what I have been talking about for the past 3 months. We visited our adorable little Christmas market, which was having a special concert that night. The group was called the Holy Moly Christmas Band, and it was made up of local residents dressed up in festive costumes, singing holiday songs in English with Austrian accents! They were fantastic and so much fun! There was also a craft area where we got to try our hands at dip candle-making. Although we got shown up by some very young children, I'm pretty proud of our finished products.

The candles as a work in progress

Finally, it's not all Christmas Christmas Christmas here. We also had a Chanukah celebration as well!! Luckily my friend Annie had the foresight to bring her Menorah from home, so a group of us got together to make latkes and light candles. I told the three gentiles in the group the story of Chanukah and together we all stuffed our faces with food drenched in oil. It was fantastic.

I want to wish you all a frohe Weihnachten and einen guten Rutsch ins Neujahr! Till 2013!