So after the inital shock and anger had subsided, Ross went to his school to sort out where we could move to. One option was to come home early and then head straight to France. But luckily another teacher Ross works with offered us a room in her house for similar rent. She lives in a suburb of Erlangen called Buchenbach and it's close to the town centre. She has a lovely house which she shares with her husband and 6 year old son. They also have a cat, which I thought was the most exciting part!!! So the packing begins tonight...
Unfortunately, the move means that we won't have our own landline anymore, but I'm sure we will be able to accept incoming calls at our new place. We will try to keep in touch more by email, this page and Skype from now on. We will also let you know our new address which will be valid until we leave at the end of May. We're really glad this has been sorted so quickly as neither of us were ready to leave Deutschland just yet!
The next day we welcomed Laura's friend Anna who travelled from Vienna. We took a long walk around the sites, took lots of photos and spent that evening drinking even more!
Anna's friend Lorna had been taken on a tour of the city when she arrived last year and so was able to tell us what everything was, give a little history of the city, and point out some interesting sites.
If you look at our pictures on webshots you will see a statue of a man on a horse. This is the only statue in the world to have only two points touching the base (the hind legs of the horse), as normally there must be at least three (e.g. hind legs and tail). Apparently it drove the creator mad as he could never recreate his design.
Vienna certainly had a lot to offer, and some parts seemed to be stuck in the 1940's. We went to a lovely, all be it run down, cafe on our last day. The waiters wore tuxedos and the chairs & tables were very old, probably never replaced since the place opened, I'm guessing sometime shortly after the war! We ordered croissants and ate 3 out of the 4 they gave us. We watched the waiter curiously as he proceeded to take our remaining croissant, put it in a basket with 3 others left-over from another table, and then serve them to someone else!
We also had coffee & cake at a cafe Lorna had recommended called Demel. Vienna is famous for it's cakes, and apparantly this place serves the best selection in the city, so is fairly well known and a big tourist attraction. They had a wonderful selection of indulgent cakes & pastries but unfortunately were let down by their service. The waitress took ages to serve us, and after dumping the bill on our table she never came back for the money. We left the exact amount on the table (no tip!) and went to the front desk to speak to a manger. After praising the extremely good food we informed her of our disappointment with the service. As you can imagine, if you pay nearly €20 for coffee and cake, you expect service to match! As an apology we were given two slices of cake worth almost €10, so we were happy!
Our journey home from Vienna was 5 hours long, but luckily the train we caught was like Hogwarts Express (Harry Potter fans will appreciate this)! Ross, Laura and I had our own compartment with door, and the seats reclined. But we were told off by the ticket inspector as we had pulled all 6 seats out to make 3 beds and this was apparantly "not allowed" - bloody Austrians!
Late March was also family visiting time with my mum, brother & sister-in-law coming one weekend and Ross' mum and her partner, Russell, the next.
It was so nice to be with them again, and I really enjoyed their visit.
That's about all of our news at the moment, so keep watching this space and we will post our new contact details here, along with some pictures of our new residence!
Check out more photos from our recent trips at http://community.webshots.com/user/joanna2079
Jo xx