Discover Austria by way of Bregenz – capitol of Vor al Berg-berg-berg

We hop on the train(s) from Innsbruck to Austria the next day. An old lady got mad at me in Bregenz for no real reason, and I was like, come on lady…keep it light already! I was hoping Herman the Red Tyrolean hat would charm any naysayers.

Though Doris, bless her heart, got some pretty terrible news as soon as we arrived, we still managed to live it up, Bregenz style, eating cool Austrian food.

Some of it was like that corn stuff (its like soft corn…my dad eats it and my mom hates it, and its like soft corn kernels) but with cool tyrol cheese and onions, and Pfiff – the regional beer. I had a lot of those, b/c I cannot say know to regional specialties, whatever they may be. The whole drinkin alcohol whenever you feel like it is pretty neat…I guess the beer brought out the flavor in the food, but I wondered if I was an alcoholic seeming friend – drinking a beer with every meal. But I don’t think so, b/c I was in Austria!

We also ate cool Weiners, that became “Berners” b/c we ate them with cheese.

Fascinating. We then went to explore Bregenz, where Doris bought a crazy awesome snowboarding suit, and used her multi-lingual skills to talk to the swiss-italian store owner, who spoke Spanish b/c his sister in law was from Ecuador. Snaps to doris for recognizing the equadorian accent. NO snaps to me for not understanding anything.

I had weird volcaono dreams that night, along with some strange one featuring Jason Mraz, and airplane, pinching, and a middle aged lady with a Christmas sweater. Needless to say, the next day I was a little weirded out, especially with the whole, Saddam, Gerald, James Brown death triumvirate. We watched CNN b/c it was the only channel in English, and it ended up giving me the serious creeps, as I got worried that my cousins were in the middle of riots in Iraq. They’re not, I later found out, but I told doris my cousin’s might be overseas, and she got worried, so I got worried, and it was just like worry-time.

So what to do?

The Violands, being awesome parents, decided to ameliorate the situation. Sidenote: Mrs. Violand could very well be my mom with all her losing of her glasses, really loving her warm fireplace, and sleeping on couches (not to mention the black pants black turtleneck style she totally rocks…you are not alone, Mom/Johnny Cash!)

Austrian home movies on the old school movie projector. There was hiking, there was skiing, there was interesting Austrian Christmas, there was Doris as a 2 year old (skiing and hiking). It was Austrian-tastic, and though it made me miss home/wish I had an old school projector so I could see the film strips of myself as a toddler, I totally loved every minute.