Hello Family and Friends!
Happy 2010! Can you believe it? I entered this decade as a tall, awkward, brace-faced middle-schooler, and while I'm still pretty tall and still somewhat awkward, 2010 brings me brace-free teeth and a life sans sock-hops and PE class. Whew. I like this decade already!
My life has been pret
ty standardly awesome as of late, and I'll try to catch you up on all of the December excitement. After our trip to Portugal, our team played one more league match in Lubljana on the 19th (we won in 3 sets, yay!) before 8 days of volleyball-free vacation! After grappling with the decision on where we should go for a short trip prior to Christmas festivities, Kristina and I had decided that we would go to Venice for a night, and we embarked on our journey early Monday morning.
We're pretty spoiled, because there is a double-decker bus that goes straight from the Klagenfurt train station (5 minute walk from our house) to the Venice bus station, which is about a 4 hour ride. So despite an early wake-up, we were able to rest up on the bus before arriving in Venice around 11am on Monday! We were both pretty excited to be there, but the minute that we stepped off the bus, we realized that we might not have been entirely realistic about our expectations for the weather in the City of Bridges, seeing as it was frigid ice-box cold, and we were expecting something less bone-chilling. Oops...
We stumbled around the city trying to find our sketchy hostel (thankfully nothing too gruesome like in the movie though), and at one point we were so cold that we debated walking back to the bus to get on the next train back to Klagenfurt! But thankfully our little hostel woman came and found us, and we took it as a sign that we should tough it out and take advantage o
f a night in Venice!
The weather made being outside somewhat unpleasant (to say the least!), so all of our Venetian explorations were interspersed with stops at cafes for warm and delicious coffee beverages. This kept us in a pattern of perpetual deep-freeze to slight thawing, which made it manageable. We ended up seeing Piazza San Marco, walking around to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (closed, obviously, because we were cold and looking for a warm haven), and exploring all of the labyrinth-esque streets of the beautiful city! After spending the day on our feet and enjoying some veggie foccacia delight for dinner, we retired to our bare-as-bones hostel room, where Kristina and I indulged in some cheap red wine and saltine crackers and spent the night laughing at our amazing lives!
The next morning came quickly, and after we wandered around a little more, we met Kristina's amazing Italian cousins Roberto and Francesca back at the bus station. Along with their friend Luca, they picked us up for a day of touring around Padova (Padua), an amazingly pretty city home to some ridiculous churches as well as some awesome academic history, and it's also the setting for
The Taming of the Shrew!
Roberto and Francesca played hosts extraordinaire, making sure that we not only got to see all the sights, but that we got to see them on full stomachs! We spent the day seeing Padova, and then hopped back into the car to head to their home in Pordenone, where they invited me to stay for a super Italian feast of pizza with panettone for dessert! It was amazing, and I was really happy to be a part of it.
The next morning I said goodbye to Kristina to embark on the journey back to Klagenfurt. When I arrived, I had been in my apartment for only an hour or so when I realized it was time to meet my local friends for their Christmas eve (they do xmas on the 24th, so the 23rd is kind of like their Christmas eve!) celebrations at a local pub called "Pumpe." Matthias, Marco, Florian and I spent the evening in a place that could have been out of an Oktoberfest poster, and it was definitely an experience I'll never forget!
Thursday morning brought an early train to Vienna, where I was meeting my mom and Anthony for a couple days of sightseeing in Austria's capital city! It was surreal to see them in my new home-country, and the next few days were really special. I think we did almost everything a good tourist in Vienna is supposed to do, including seeing all the old palaces, eating lots of traditional food, and watching some white horses dance. Yep, Christmas 2009 was pretty amazing!
On Monday morning the three of us took the train to Klagenfurt, and Mom and Anthony watched as my team struggled through our first practice back after Christmas holidays. We then headed to lunch at Pumpe with Kristina, Marco and Matthias (Mom and Anthony got to enjoy a beer and Karntner Nudel!) and spent the afternoon walking around town. I had a great time showing them exactly why I love it here so much!
Mom and Anthony took off that night, and things went back to normal for a few days until we headed up to Matthias' cabin in Falkertsee to celebrate the new year! His parents were pretty awesome to let a bunch of twenty-somethings crash at their house for the night, but it was a great group of around 20 people, a mix between basketball guys, some volleyball girls, and other people who I met for the first time that night. We rang in 2010 with fireworks over a postcard-like scene of Austrian mountains, and a great time was had by all.
The first adventure of the new year came yesterday, as the team took off for a practice tournament in San Dona di Piave, Italy. We were definitely a bit rusty coming off of practically 2 weeks break, but it was probably what we needed to jerk us back into the mindset of always striving to get better! We take off tomorrow for the second round of CEV Cup in Belgrade, Serbia, so hopefully this practice tournament was what we needed to motivate going into this important match!
I hope you all enjoyed the holidays as much as I did, and that 2010 is looking great so far!
xoxo
Anna
